Animals or people in poverty?

I don't believe that any person is an “animal”. Many people I've read about have been called “animals”, yet people are not animals. Even – especially – politicians are worse than any animal could be. Cutting benefits isn't something that an animal would do – or could do.

Live Science said that “We lie, cheat and steal, carve ornamentations into our own bodies, stress out and kill ourselves, and of course kill others.” This behaviour isn't in comparison to animals, but according to Live Science it is compared with most animals. I don't know any animals who do any of this sort of thing other than killing others – that is their food, they have to kill it!

But animals don't have benefits which they can cut.

Live Science listed 10 of the “destructive human behaviours”:

1. We lie
2. We crave violence
3. We steal
4. We cheat
5. We cling to bad habits
6. We bully
7. We nip, tuck, plump and tattoo our bodies
8. We stress out
9. We gamble
10. We gossip

Out of those 10, for me there are only seven destructive behaviours: number 7 is your personal choice to get any of that done to you, number 8 isn't behavioural – it can be short-term, long-term or chronic – and number 10 is social (although it can be destructive if it is verbal bullying). I might write about those in the future. So let's go through the others.

People lie. Many do. Children tell wee lies when questioned by their parents. That is simply what they are learning. Older children tell small lies when they are questioned about something they shouldn't have done; that also is learning. Adults, young or old, tell lies when they are asked about a crime they might have been involved in, or when they make their own choices, or when they don't want people to know what's happening to them. Learning how to tell lies – or how not to - happens years before people really grow up; adults who lie haven't still learned.

Lies, when they are picked out, can cause a lot of grief. Adults should be aware of how lies can hurt your family, friends or workmates – and should care. Have a look through Dawson's Blog, How to Stop Lying, or through the Uncommon Help website for suggestions about how you can recognise these problems and, hopefully, fix them.

Politicians should learn how lying hurts too many of this population. Why do they do this? Maybe they just don't care.

People crave violence. This suggestion demonstrates how humans fight to live. The law relating to parents physically reprimanding their children changed somewhere in the last 50 years, saying that hitting your child is violence. Too many children I see these days who have had no reprimand and behave extremely bad, yet most people don't crave violence until too many changes have hit us.

ABS reports about violent assault which includes domestic violence, yet too many assaults are from a stranger. Australia doesn't have a “war” within our country, but politicians send soldiers overseas to fight someone else's war. Do they really need to? Do soldiers crave violence? Maybe we would all crave violence to fight to live – after all, it started with “Mad Max” in 1979... was that too early? Or too late?

Just stop cutting the benefits – very low benefit income will send too many people into crime and violence.

People steal. Do they do this in need, or for the thrill? Do children learn throughout their young age what stealing is? Do adults steal for fun? In Australia crime goes up when benefits go down. Be sure of that – it's not planned, it happens because benefits reduce. The reduction of the benefit has pushed people too far into poverty. If you can't eat, you would steal. I'm not just making that up; it happens. In Italy, apparently, it is not a crime, thankfully.

Why do Australian politicians keep making access to the benefits so much harder? Do they decide that crime is okay? They should start to really think about how and why people will steal. Stealing to eat is real. Stealing to sell something to live on that income is real.

People cheat. This is just what the politicians have blamed beneficiaries for. Apparently many of us aren't even eligible for a benefit. Maybe we don't get to job interviews. Maybe we don't really have a brain injury. Maybe we should work even when we have children to love, look after and support.

In May this year ScoMo provided cuts to far too many programs to “save money”, including reforming the “Work for the Dole” program (saves $494.2 million over four years from 2016-17), “ongoing administrative efficiencies” in the Department of Human Services (saves $80 million over four years), changes to the Medicare benefits (saves $56.5 million over four years), ceasing the Job Commitment Bonus from 31 December 2016 (saves $242.1 million over five years) and so much more. Saving?

Do you know what the NDIS is? It is a National Disability Insurance Scheme which has been supported by the government, yet to support this they have cut welfare benefits. By $27 billion. I have attended two meeting from NDIS in Brisbane, but I still don't understand how this organisation would help people. Why are we supporting this? The government is cheating us.

People cling to bad habits. Personally, I think this is because bad habits seem to work for us... until we actually find out otherwise. According to news.com.au, our bad habits have taken over in 25 years. For people my age, that makes sense. As a kid I lived a very good life. Then Maccas came along, followed by KFC, Burger King and so on. As a kid, later as a young adult, these things were treats, not “every day” food, yet by the change of the century the price worked for beneficiaries because they could afford this. Takeaways were starting to cost our health. Maybe Maccas et al should be taxed for the bad food preparation.

Smoking has been taxed... and taxed, and taxed, until it's too expensive. Why does the government charge people who do not smoke against the law? By increasing the percentage of young people who don't smoke (age 12-15, had never smoked, up from 53% to 77%) means that the adults who still do will always pay more tax. Why charge them that, if there is no real proof that smoking will kill you? I don't believe that smoking causes breast cancer, or prostate cancer, or dementia, or stroke, or brain tumours, or diabetics. Don't say that sort of stuff, because you can't prove it!

People bully. Very recently a young gay boy, Tyrone, killed himself. He had been bullied far, far too much at his school. I know other people who have tried or committed suicide because they have been bullied more than they can handle with it. Three weeks ago that happened to me.

The Australian Human Rights Commission wrote on their website:

“Bullying can happen anywhere. It can be in schools, at home, at work, in online social spaces, via text messaging or via email. It can be physical, verbal, emotional, and it also includes messages, public statements and behaviour online intended to cause distress or harm (also known as cyberbullying). But no matter what form bullying takes, the results can be the same: severe distress and pain for the person being bullied.”

According to the Bully Zero Australia Foundation, “[v]erbal bullying is the most common form of bullying in Australia”. Bullying is happening from politicians who seem to believe that heavy-handed or disgusting verbal treatment of people who are on a benefit will send those people to work, even though those politicians don't understand that there are not enough jobs.

People gamble. Have you played the machines in the local pub or RSL? Do you know why they are there? Or have you been to a casino – a large, glamorous casino with hundreds of machines, card tables and too much other stuff? There are 12 casinos in Australia, spread out between every state and the two territories. There are 974 RSLs throughout Australia, and more than 5,500 other pubs or clubs which carry pokie machines. When Gillard was the PM she introduced reforms to deal with the gambling addiction problems (115,000 were usually low-income people – figure that out), but that was dumped by the LNP and state governments which “introduced changes to make life easier for serious poker machine players”.

Why make life easier for serious poker machine players? Why include that sort of thing in pubs, clubs, casinos, RSLs? Why make it too easy for beneficiaries to get into those places, when they are desperately trying to get more funds than the government gives them?

Why not increase their payment, rather than cut it?

As I wrote this, I felt worse. Sicker, maybe. Politicians never take real attention of how people on a benefit will live. Or whether they will live. Poverty is unreal, but it is definitely happening here in Australia. Most people aren't bad; they simply don't have a choice when they are dumped from their previous employment. Most people on DSP should be on DSP, because disability isn't what they chose. Penalties for the unemployed are unfair; why are there too many “jobsearch” contractors who will always get paid for cutting the benefit to almost everyone they see? Why are the politicians cutting benefits? WHY are they cutting benefits?

Every politician should have to live on a benefit for four weeks when they are elected. No other assistance. Every politician needs to understand how people way down there in poverty – or so close to it – live. We did not ever choose poverty.

Politicians would never choose that either.

And real animals never have to.