- by William Briggs
- The Guardian
- Issue #2119
Photo: rawpixel.com (CC0)
Geelong is a depressed city. Among its least affluent suburbs are two of the poorest in the country. It gets cold in the winter and the homeless suffer. Statistics tell us that life expectancy for the homeless in Australia is just 45 for men and 40 for women. Carly, Guy, and Jack are three of the more than 120,000 people who are homeless in Australia. They are broken people living in a broken society.
These three are often seen outside a Woolworths Supermarket in Geelong. They are never together but they probably know each other. They sit, quietly hoping that someone will drop a coin into their caps. They dare not ask too obviously. The management of the supermarket has signs declaring that ‘loitering or soliciting for monies’ is prohibited. Staff regularly come out to tell them to move on. They meekly comply. They do no harm. They rarely ‘solicit’ for monies, unlike the busker a few metres away who is permitted to solicit, or the stall that sells paper poppies and ribbons for Remembrance Day or Anzac Day. The three homeless, however, might just remind us that the system is not working.
Sometimes someone is seen in the supermarket trying to hide a couple of tins of food in their jacket. Staff descend on them, physically handling them and often chasing them out of the building. The staff have been told to do this. Some are sheepish about it. Some are happy to ‘follow orders.’ Woolworths returned a profit of $1.7 billion this financial year.
Carly is quiet. She knows not to draw attention to herself. Occasionally someone offers her some food. She was enjoying a packet of doughnuts the other day. She does no harm, but a capitalist system that refuses to support the most vulnerable has discarded her. She is broken and has been broken. She is doggedly polite, profuse in her thanks but as she is in her late 30s her cards are well and truly marked. The government talks of mental health but there is no care for Carly’s mental health.
Guy sometimes rails at the world. His demons drive him to loud protest, but he is easily calmed. A quiet hallo, a “how are things?” and the mention of his name is all that is needed. He is becoming a pitiable sight. Small wounds and abrasions are no longer healing. His body, in its late 20s, is beginning to break down. Drug-use and a world that refuses to notice or care has left him a living shell. You can only wonder about his early life.
I don’t see Jack anymore. He was young. His life is over. He would have been no more than 23 years old. In his more lucid moments, he would chat. He was articulate. He had pneumonia and came back talking about feeling much better, but winter in Geelong can be cruel if you have no permanent shelter.
As the economy crumbles, as more and more people have to work longer for less, compassion becomes problematic for many. Charitable organisations perform herculean feats but must help more people with less resources. The state, capitalism, government all turn their backs.
Grotesque amounts of money are spent on funding new ways to wage war. Edifices to capitalism are erected. All manner of bread and circus ‘entertainments’ are staged and the press waxes lyrical about how many dollars are brought into the economy. Precious few of these dollars go to solving the problem of homelessness, of poverty, of the mental health crisis that allows Carly, Guy, and Jack to ready themselves for an early death.
There is a debate going on about law and order and youth justice. Fixing the problem at the root will cost a lot of money and it is highly unlikely that the money will be spent. These are societal problems, problems of state and capitalism. They are expensive problems but the cost to society of not fixing the problems will be far greater. As the crisis of capitalism grows, so too does the cost in human degradation grow. The squalid world that Engels described in Condition of the Working Class, written so many years ago, is being revisited upon us today. The deprivations that affect body and mind are here for all to see.
When you walk past Carly, or Guy, or Jack, when he was still with us, and travel along Geelong’s highly regarded café and shopping strip, you will see other broken people. These are the victims of a society that has neither the time nor the inclination to care.
There are many Geelongs in wealthy Australia. There are many Carlys, Guys and Jacks. Their numbers grow and remain a constant reminder to us all of the neglect and contempt that the system has for its most vulnerable.
