My daughter in law, who comes from a big family whose normal is intergenerational #poverty, startled me by mentioning shared shoes. She shares her father’s second pair of shoes. She told me this in the context of her father being privileged enough to share a second pair of shoes.

2/ They have the same shoe size. And I was reminded when this was our normal, too. Nobody ever had more than one pair of shoes. The men sometimes had ‘court shoes’.

3/ That’s not the court shoes women had. You dressed up for court because everyone knows you need to so that you don’t get as long in jail. Nobody even talks about this being a thing. It’s an unassailable fact and handed down like povo folklore.

4/ There is also stuff we know that middle class white non disabled people don’t. If I go to the house of a person and they have a burnt match photo frame with a vintage picture of a young man in it, I know it is likely to be prisoner art from back in the day.

5/ The bigger the piece or more complex, the more time the person spent inside. My grandmother in law had a whole coffee table. I laughed at the photo frame reference in the Castle, for that reason. And GREYHOUNDS.

6/ There is cultural stuff among poor people. Christmas food. Cheezels in a brown wooden bowl. Squares of cheese with cocktail onions if you were really flash. Tinned beetroot or asparagus. Special, treat food, not every day food.

7/ Poor people don’t talk about community interdependence because they don’t know that it’s not an everyone thing. Yes, you will pick up your stranded mate from a town three hours away. Yes, you will share your food even if you don’t have any. Your money, too.

8/ It’s this myth, that poor people don’t know how to manage money. There’s evidence they do. They are ALIVE while living under the poverty line. But the poor live among the poor. You all share what little you have. I was surprised to learn that the rich and middle class dont.

9/ I am privileged to have grown up with relative wealth and then in poverty and then in middle class spaces because it gives you a good idea about classism. And one of the biggest issues we have right now is that policy makers don’t understand the lives of the poor, nor culture.

10/ Those myths about welfare recipients and how people don’t work. Do you know how HARD it is to live in poverty? Poor people are magnificent at making do. Drug dealers often have brilliant social skills. And resilience?

It’s not the poor losing their minds in lockdown.

11/ If we had policy makers who had lived with intergenerational poverty, they would KNOW things. How best to invest in people to help them get out of poverty. It is not just about jobs, you meatheads. Ask any cashed up bogan who is still broke by next week despite FIFO.

12/ My eldest daughter put herself through uni & was the first person on her dad’s side to do so since they arrived as Irish convicts. Her dad was the only one of his many siblings not to have been in jail. Getting out of poverty involves learning not just new skills but mindset.

13/ I would vote for @indica2007 as a politician who represents poor people. Because tbh I see not a single person who represents people who share family shoes. It’s not the same as just being ‘working class’ or a kid of migrants. And the exceptionally marginalised have no voice.

14/ I don’t really understand why politicians are increasingly so privileged - go look at their track records. Many of them haven’t even had a real job.

How can we fix this?

I will add this. I disagree vehemently with @JacquiLambie on many policy issues, but she is a legitimate voice for people who are like us, politics and views aside. I would have liked for her to be stronger on disability especially around income support/NDIS, but she's authentic.