What would you do if a government official did something that was contrary to what you have been working towards? Australian National CEO of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, Dr. John Falzon took his pen to his paper in a different way to let former prime Minister Tony Abbott know how he felt about his crackdown on people who receive disability support.

After it was reported that Tony Abbott praised his government’s crackdown on the Disability Support Pension, (saying it was far too easy for people with “a bad back and a bit of depression” to access the benefit), Dr. Falzon wrote a poem, describing it as, “a rejoinder to those who seek consolation in the art of bashing those who are struggling.”

Falzon said,

The members of the St Vincent de Paul Society see every day what it is like for people who struggle to survive, “often waging a daily battle from below the poverty line. It’s hard enough to be locked out in prosperous Australia, what’s even harder though is having salt rubbed into the wound of inequality when people in positions of power and influence, in politics and in the media, for example, blame people for the exclusion they experience.

Read Dr. Falzon’s poem below:

It’s that time of year

When the privileged and their proxies

To distract us from the revenue foregone

Through tax avoidance and plain old injustice

And the dream of a society that spends nothing on the many

So as to preserve and strengthen the purses of the few

Gleefully put the boot into the people

They love

To crush curse

Threaten and stamp on

Who

To them

Are welfare villagers

Leaning on the rest of us

On the strength of a bad back and a bit of depression

Or an unwillingness to work

But to us

(And here it’s up to you to choose your side)

To us

And we are many

A mixture rich in brokenness and brimming with dreams

Of a fair crack at happiness for everyone and

The simple necessities

A place to live a place to work a place to learn a place to heal

To us

Are simply us.

Source: PRObono Australia