I am very pleased to read that John Brogden is leaving public life.
He can now address whatever issues he has without the added burden of being a public figure. 

I hope he gets good quality solution-focused brief therapy and even better drugs.  

 
Image from here  

 
Let’s just say that I am a Muslim woman of middle-eastern origin.  My husband and I have lived in Australia for 15 years.  We are the proud parents of a young son aged five.  Shahrdad is dark, charismatic and asks us lots of questions and we would do anything to protect our son.
We regularly travel back to Tehran to catch up with extended family and immerse our son in culture and language.

What will he have observed as the norm for him and his family by the time he is ten and the new anti-terror laws come under review? Will he think that all Australians spend anywhere up to three hours getting out of ’security’ at the airport after their arrival back from an overseas trip?  Will he learn from us that venturing out in our white van causes suspicion?
What I am to tell him of our chosen homeland when, at the sunset clause stage of these new anti-terror laws, he is 15 and he has been stopped again and again, since he was 13.

How will I explain assimilation to him when none of his ‘white’ friends want to go out with him as they are sick of getting stopped by the cops?

"[…] that a particular suburb, there’s a threat about to emerge from that, or you’ve got credible intelligence information that some group of people in a white van are going around the countryside and they’ve got explosives on board. It gives you the capacity to search any white van, for example, if you put this act into place. It gets an instant response from the police. Now the Federal Government’s not talking about that, but they should be." – Kim Beazley

And how am I going to explain the concept of an opposition to him without him laughing out loud?

As a very young girl I was taught to knit by my Oma for the ‘boys on the front’.
I remember wondering why they might need woollen socks and scarves in Vietnam until I understood the finer points of Dementia.

I have recently reclaimed my ability to knit and have made a sock (for an amputee I know) and 3 hot-water bottle polo-neck covers.

Put your orders in for a SUKS original now…

Hello and welcome to the new home of suki has an opinion.

 
Image from here  

The government’s new welfare to work change will cause future hardship for sole parents and the disabled (these two not being mutually exclusive).   Sole parents and the disabled who are put on to the Newstart allowance from next July will discover it attracts a waiting period for people with savings, a delay that doesn’t apply to the current Parenting Payment Single (PPS) or the Disability Support Pension (DSP).

Basically, a Centrelink payment keeps the bare necessities in your life.  Housing, food and clothing.  None of these are extravagant.  You will not find many PPS and DSP recipients with a Harbour view, unless they are 25 to a house.

Now this government will force them to use up their savings before they can get a Newstart payment.  If a PPS or DSP recipient has savings that will usually be to cover the unexpected.  A school excursion or a belt on the washing machine.

This government is mean and punitive.

I’m predicting that cash-under-the-mattress will return to favour.