">My Big World Of Crap

Jess Maulder, a medical student who performed much voluntary work following the Boxing Day tsunami last year, has been denied Federal Government support to return to Thailand for the first anniversary of that massive tragedy.

The Government is providing free flights and $300 in accommodation costs for each of the 60 bereaved Australians returning to the region. A spokesman for the Department of Family and Community Services said Miss Maulder did not fit the criteria. However, Centrelink told her she was ineligible to receive the financial aid available to Australians who were caught up in the disaster.

“It’s something that would have been very, very important to me,” Miss Maulder said.

“But, as I’m a student, I couldn’t afford it. I wrote to the Government and asked if, given the unusual circumstances, they could help me. But they declined.”

Jess Maulder was seen in some of the tsunami’s most inspirational images after she abandoned her Thai holiday to work 14-hour days in a morgue. She tended the wounded, identified bodies and comforted scores of bereaved relatives on the island of Phi Phi. A month after her work in Thailand, Miss Maulder went to Sri Lanka to volunteer at refugee camps on the devastated east coast. She later resumed her second-year studies at Monash University and has been on a scholarship scheme working at the Aboriginal community of Yuendumu, about 280 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs.

I reckon that the Government will end up stumping up for the cash for her to go. I expect that someone with some political savvy will very quickly decide that a couple of grand is a small price to pay for some positive PR, even if they don’t just do it because its the right thing to do. No doubt the decision to refuse to pay for her to go was made by some minion in Centrelink.

Update: After this story appeared, some generous donors, including a Sydney travel agent, Goldman Travel Corporation, paid for her to go to the reunion in Thailand.

Coincidentally, she was voted Australian woman of the year by readers of “The Age” newspaper. Some interesting choices in this voting - the first 3 women are good choices, after that we’re getting silly (Amanda Vanstone??? Missy Higgins???). In the man of the year, good first choice, Nobel prize winners Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, Michael Long … does good work for aboriginal Australians (if thats what people voted for him about, not simply the fact he was a good footy player), Warney …. come off it, great cricketer, but otherwise a dickhead!