TheBanyanTree: The man child

[PJMoney]

He moved back home on April 14th 2004.  Yesterday he and his girlfriend
headed off to Alice Springs where he has a job for the next twelve
months.  So he lived with us for a few days short of twenty months.  

Now that I think about it that's probably the longest unbroken period
he's ever lived at home since I married his step-father back in 1983.
He was with us for the first twelve months and then, thinking it was
what he wanted, we sent him off to a boarding school in the country.  I
can't remember how long that lasted.  It might have been a couple of
years.  Then he got himself expelled so back home he came and started
attending the local high school.  There, being an angry, confused youth,
he made friends with another angry, confused youth and before too long
all sorts of trouble had erupted.  He finished up in a refuge, with a
government allowance, and later was placed in a foster home.

After about 18 months away he came home again but only for a few months
while he waited to go into the Navy.  He'd applied to go in as a trainee
cook but places for those were limited so, becoming impatient, he went
in as a quartermaster gunner instead.  He was in the Navy for about
three years and then, after he'd done the thing he wanted - his big sea
tour of South East Asia - he behaved very rudely to a few of his
superiors and got himself discharged for insubordination.  He moved back
to our town but not to our home.

He decided he wanted to go to university but he hadn't matriculated so
he started studying at the local TAFE.  Finding the work involved
uncongenial he tried a shortcut and sat for the university entrance
exam.  As soon as he knew he'd passed he dropped out of TAFE.  That was
a mistake.  When he started his Arts degree the next year he didn't have
enough experience in writing essays.  I think he failed everything that
year.

The following year was the one in which we made our move north.  He went
fruit picking for a while and then decided to go to Brisbane to live.
There he eventually decided it was time to stop mucking around.  He went
back to school, passed his matriculation exams, applied to do Arts at
James Cook U in Townsville and was accepted.  After two years doing Arts
he decided to transfer to Social Science because most of the subjects
he'd done were in that area.  After many difficulties that young people
living at home with both parents tend not to suffer, he finally
completed the coursework requirements for the award of Bachelor of
Social Science (Anthropology) in first semester 2003.  Then, desiring to
become a school teacher and having researched his options thoroughly, he
applied to enrol in the graduate entry Bachelor of Education (Primary)
course which was to commence at JCU early in 2004.  If everything had
gone to plan he would have finished the course in June 2005 and he would
have been qualified to teach anywhere in Australia.  But everything
didn't go to plan and this time it wasn't due to any flaws of his own.

What happened (as I've written here previously) was that about 6 weeks
into the course, when he'd finished the first two intensive subjects and
was in the middle of his first teaching practicum, the government said
he wasn't eligible for student assistance.  They said that because he'd
already done a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Social Science he'd
run out of allowable study time to do another level B course. 

As far as I could see there were two things wrong with this reasoning.
First, he hadn't done two bachelor degrees but had only transferred from
one school to another.  The credit points he'd earned while in the Arts
school were included in the total that allowed him to graduate with the
B Soc Sci.  Second, the graduate entry B Ed shouldn't have been
classified as a level B course but as a level A course.  Entrants were
required to already have a bachelor degree.

Well.  It's all very well having good arguments to put but meanwhile the
world keeps turning, debts are accumulated and one must eat.  There was
no way he could continue doing a full-time course without any income so,
sick in heart, he withdrew and moved back in with us.  And what a mess
he was.

A few weeks before he'd been happy about what he was learning and doing
and excited about the opportunity this course had given him to remake
his life.  I hadn't known him so happy for more years than I care to
think about.  But now he was unable to sleep, unable to concentrate,
severely depressed and extremely irritable.  He kept talking about how
his life had been taken away from him and how he may as well just walk
off into the bush or into the path of an oncoming car.  I was terribly
afraid about what he might decide to do.

So I began mothering him again and was glad of the years of experience
I'd had at that job since he was born.  I needed all of them but
sometimes even that wasn't enough and I had nowhere to go but to God, in
prayer for myself as well as for him.  (And, as an aside, I have to say
that this is a course that I can highly recommend.  I only wish I would
remember to draw on that source of peace early rather than late.)

I don't wish to bore you with all the details of what we went through
trying to get the government's decision overturned.  Suffice it to say
that he appealed and was rejected again.  We went to the local office of
the Ombudsman, wrote to two Federal Ministers and finally, in September
2004, asked for help from the Ombudsman in Canberra.  He took eight
months to finish considering the case and wrote to say that the matter
needed to be tested in court.  He also provided a reference to a case
that was heard by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal that was not
relevant to my son's problem.  But I've written about that before too.
That was the case that I thought I might as well look up and, in doing
so, discovered that the AAT has a searchable online archive which, on
being searched, turned up a case that was directly relevant and
supported the position we'd been putting from the start which prompted
me to write back to the Ombudsman saying, more or less, that this case
appeared to demonstrate that the issue had already been tested in court.

I sent that letter off at the end of May 2005.  In June we visited the
local Community Legal Aid centre to ask for advice.  They organised an
appeal to the Social Security Appeals Tribunal and we went along with
that even though neither of us could see why it was necessary given that
the AAT finding was a de facto precedent.  

At the end of July, having heard nothing from the Ombudsman, I asked my
local Senator for assistance.  He sent off a barrage of faxes to various
people which may or may not have prompted some action from the
Ombudsman.  At any rate in early August he sent a letter acknowledging
receipt of my letter.

Halfway through September I rang the Ombudsman's office and was told
that he was still considering the issue.  At the end of September a
letter came from the SSAT giving us a hearing date - Tuesday, November
8th at 11am.

On Monday, November 7th we had a meeting with the Community Legal Aid
person.  By that time I'd discovered 4 other AAT cases and one Federal
Court case that supported our argument but with less specificity than
the Cormack case.  We were told what to expect and advised to devise a
signal to pass each other if either of us thought the other was getting
angry.  You are not allowed to display anger at such hearings.  You must
remain calm, which is good advice, psychologically speaking.  Once you
lose it, you lose.

So the day came.  There was last minute hunting for hard evidence.  The
Department of Family and Community Services person had said that
postgraduate courses are fee paying rather than HECS based.  What did we
have to show that the statement was untrue?  For a moment I couldn't
believe that anyone could doubt that it is untrue.  Of course it's
untrue.  But the legal aid person seemed insistent that a URL by itself,
of which I had a few, wouldn't do.  So I grabbed a couple of pages off
the web, one from UNE and one from UTas, offering respectively, HECS
based Masters courses in Economics of some sort and in Computing.  And
then we picked up the legal aid person, found a parking spot, found the
building, stopped outside to smoke furiously for ten minutes and then
went upstairs.

The Tribunal had three members.  They usually manage with two.  The
fellow in charge, we'd been told, was a former Centrelink prosecutor.  I
discovered later that he's actually a bit more than that.  He's the SSAT
Director for Queensland and the Northern Territory but nice for all
that.

He started off by asking what practical result we expected.  Most people
going before the SSAT are in need of money, today if possible, but we
were way past the time when there could be any expectation of getting
back pay.  The legal aid person said that it was a matter of principle. 

Eventually he asked the HECS versus fee paying question.  I was still
surprised that anyone would ask it but was ready and silently handed
over the pages.  "What are these?" he asked.  So I told him that they
were pages I'd taken off the web that morning that proved that the
statement by a DFaCS Ministerial staffer, asserting that postgraduate
courses are fee paying rather than HECS based, is demonstrably untrue.
I'm not sure that I could call his reaction a flinch but he certainly
moved and blinked.

We'd been allocated an hour but he was ready to finish up in half that
time.  Were there any final questions?  I asked the legal aid person if
we should deal with the issue of the one degree being called two but the
man said that if they decided we were correct about the course level
being A rather than B then that issue was irrelevant.  So it was done,
over, finished.  We went and had an early lunch at the Kozy Cafe.  If
you're ever in Darwin you should try it.  I recommend the food, the
service and the wine. 

The next day the legal aid person rang up to tell us that Centrelink had
advised that if my son is successful in his appeal he will automatically
incur a debt of $180.  This is because he was receiving NewStart
allowance while he was studying.  This is because they lost his first
application for Austudy (which is paid at a lower rate) and by the time
they told him he had to reapply he was already doing the course.  He
could avoid incurring the debt by withdrawing his appeal.  He said,
"F*** 'em.  I don't care if it's $180 or $180,000.  I'm not
withdrawing."

What I think is that we will win and in about another week we'll have
the piece of paper that says so.  The only people who will be cheering
will be us and the legal aid crowd.  The dimwits who told us eighteen
months ago that they were going to provide a new course to train
Centrelink officers in how better to explain to Austudy applicants what
is the difference between a level A and a level B course will have to go
and redesign it.  They were wrong in law from the start and would have
known it if they'd bothered finding out what the law says.  Or maybe
even that's too big an ask.   

Almost everything my son has wanted has come to him in the last two
weeks.  He's been looking unsuccessfully for months for his own place to
live.  He's been looking for a new job.  He's been waiting to have the
Austudy thing resolved.  The girl friend he found about six months ago.
She has been very good for him indeed.  He now knows for sure that I
love him, will fight hard for his interests and will care for him.  And
now, despite all the pressures and difficulties his presence and
problems introduced into my life, he's gone and I feel all out of sorts.


Janice