Tears

When women cried, they usually cried about their men. In Broadmeadows, Brenda Longwood had spent years setting up local children's programs but was reluctant to be singled out. Uncomfortable with the tape recorder, she asked me to turn it off. ‘I don't like that thing being on’, she said, ‘I'm sorry if that's a problem’. She said that she didn't feel very good that day. She sighed, cried a little, told me not to mind her because she was just a bit upset. It was her unemployed son. He was back home again. He was 36 but he'd never really settled down to anything. After five jobs, each lasting less than a year, and a retraining position he lost as soon as the government subsidy ran out, he had decided he wasn't going to get another job. He'd come home because he didn't know what else to do. ‘What do I do?’ Brenda asked, ‘What do you do with a man who's not even 40 yet and says he's never going to work again? I never thought this would happen. This isn't meant to happen.’

In Inala, Lorraine Goodman and Val Stephens wept over their unemployed sons and grandsons. In 1995, Lorraine's son had been unemployed for five years, and one of her sons-in-law even longer. One of Val's grandsons had a job when he was 15 that lasted until the day before his eighteenth birthday, when he was fired rather than moved up to an adult wage.