Our son Martin is still working his way through becoming an Australian citizen. He has to apply for citizenship after spending the last 35 years here, being a regular at the dole office and getting his share of medicare. Neither of these agencies worried about asking whether he was a citizen of this fair country and now he has to jump through all sorts of hoops to get a piece of paper which will give him the benefits he has enjoyed over three decades. It should all be done in about three weeks, meantime, he will probably lose his job. Centrelink is going all out to help him, but government works very slowly. His employer, Coles Pty Ltd is reluctant to give him work until he can show the bit of paper as there is a $66,000 fine for employing each illegal immigrant.
I also had a lot of good information from the office of the Federal Member for Fremantle, Melissa Parke. One of her staffers spent considerable time talking to and emailing Canberra and mapped out the best route to take on the citizenship trail. Must drop him off a nice bottle of bubbly.
I had a visit with ‘my’ nephrologist yesterday and the latest results of my Proteinuria were surprisingly good....no protein ‘leaking’ from my kidneys. In a period of three years it has gone down from significant leakage to none after this test. Proteinuria (excessive amounts of protein in the urine) is an indicator of chronic kidney disease, so that is pretty good news for me. Must be due to my medication...crisp white wine.
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2 comments:
Glad to see things are working out Kevin. It would be very unfair if Coles sacked him. One of the commercial TV stations might like the story and be able to help.
kev, Hopefully things will improve for Martin but we know how slow government departments are.What a shock for Martin and you.There are lots of people who were born in New Zealand or elsewhere, who don't have Australian citizenship and just take itfor granted that they are Aussies,I wonder when the law changed , My mother didn't know about this. Live and learn. Marg
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