The Great Deception: Working inside the Bureaucracy

Abstract

After leaving school in 1972 I was content to obtain employment wherever I could. Being an impressionable sixteen year old, the world seemed my oyster then I had clothes, a car, a boyfriend and my choice of jobs. Those were the good old days when jobs were plentiful especially for a young and enthusiastic Black woman. The Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) had just begun a policy to recruit Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the workforce and other places where we dared not go. Consequently I ended up in the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) which is a statutory authority but a bureaucracy just the same, bound down by rules and regulations and a hierarchical pecking order. Unbeknown to me but not surprisingly, I was right at the bottom of the imperial pile an Aboriginal female Typist Grade 1. I never knew anything about class then but had had many experiences and was matured in the area of racial inequality and discrimination. The money is those days was absolute heaven. My $75 per fortnight went a 1-o-n-g way from paying my Mother board to raging a Saturday night away. They say the more you earn the more you spend, and it couldn't be truer in my case. I just loved paydays and would spend money wildly being the extravagant Leo that I am. I also began to learn of the mysterious ways of the tax man. Beginning to wonder if it was all worth it, I guessed I'd have to play this game until my earning days were over. All visibly Aboriginal people without exception are plagued by racism in some shape or form. The public service is not immune to it (racism), and in fact like most workplaces where people of different nationalities are prone to mix, a festering intolerance of difference can be found. This intolerance often reared its ugly head against me but I recall one vivid experience as if it was only yesterday. I had arrived one morning to find two middle-aged co-workers huddled in a corner desk sniggering and laughing. The short fat bald ex-Vietnam veteran marched over to my desk as I began settling in for the day. 'Hey, Jackie do you speak that boong language that they speak at West End?' he roared. Much to my surprise I roared back in a triad of emotional and gabbled defence. Later that morning I was sent to the Boss's office where he told me not to be so sensitive.