Thanks, Geelan Mitchell Media @victoriannews.com.au What a coincidence that Sarina Russo's job agency let you off after 2 weeks. They must have seriously panicked. And they hadn't even got to teaching you how to read and write!

It is, absolutely! Job providers are grifters, cowboys, out to rort our welfare system. This is what happens when when govts of whatever ilk bring in private consultants/private companies, supposedly to save money, but the opposite occurs.

Superb work!

As I was effectively reporting on myself, I contacted MSM peers and The Age reporter, Gareth Hutchins 'took the story' and I 'handed' (sent) him all my notes and recordings. (Not ethical to report on oneself unless it can be justified ethically).

See: www.theage.com.au/politics/fed...

"Sure am," I responded. I was also wired to the dictaphone in my pocket, recording it all.

Heck, they even tried to send me to an English class to learn to read and write ffs.

So, yes, get rid of it & bring back the CES.

I soon worked out that I'd 'upset the apple cart' and at that meeting the Russo staffer asked me "why was I conducting reporting on a mutual obligation worksite?"

So, I responded: "As you asked, I'm working to improve my employment prospects."

The staff then asked if I was taking notes.
7/🧵

It was a mix of those sentenced by Victorian courts to 'community work' and those "sentenced" by mutual obligation doing the same tasks at the same places.

So I started interviewing them. I filed reports. Some made the local Leader newspapers (Murdoch) I once filed and worked for.
3/🧵

Yep. When I left Murdoch and became a (then) unemployed freelancer, yes, I went on 'the dole' for a while.

I had to sign up for a Sarina Russo job agency and meet the mutual obligations crap. So we saw an opportunity to both 'flip the script' and continue being a journo.
1/🧵

So when Russo's agency assigned me to some useless task to 'improve' employment prospects, we showed up, but we had all our journo gear (pen, pad, dictaphone) in our pockets.

Realising what I had in front of me, I started speaking to others doing the same 'mutual obligations'
2/🧵

So then we all (the locals kids) went and got 27MHz CB radios and soon had our own network across Greensborough, Montmorency, Eltham etc) Channel 18, on 27MHz CB 'the Greensborough' channel.

When we got cut off we kids found a way around it. That was the 1980s and 90s. Social media ban? lmfao.

The social media ban won't work.
I'm of the 'one phone' in the loungeroom/hallway days.
One day, when Mum was out, Dad at work, my bro and I, well, we climbed under the house and patched in our own phone lines. (This idiot forgot to turn the ringer off and got busted by Dad days later, grounded).