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Collected Item: “Humans of Covid-19 AU: Josh Burns”

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Humans of Covid-19 AU: Josh Burns

What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?

Instagram post

Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.

“As a politician, I’m used to spending my days being out in the community, interacting with people and groups. We politicians are extroverts, we like having people around us! All that’s stopped and that’s the biggest change. I used to travel a lot - to Canberra and other places - never being at home enough. Now I’m home all the time. It’s great but it’s much more difficult to connect with people.
I’m finding that there are waves in terms of how I’ve been called on to help people. At first it was offering support to the thousands of people who lost their jobs and were queuing outside Centrelink. Then it was helping people who found themselves stranded overseas. Now it’s about assisting individuals and businesses in accessing grants. The financial strain is immense, but it’s also about people’s sense of self worth. The mental health issues are huge. With so much hardship and such dramatic changes, my work is harder but it’s also meaningful.
What’s next? How do we unlock the next chapter? There are so many approaches about what we should be doing at this moment. We need a clear government strategy for now before we can work out next steps. But we have to keep going.”

Instagram post on Josh Burns, a politician, and his experience during the pandemic, which was created by a psychology student living in Melbourne who was interested to hear about how COVID-19 was impacting on different peoples’ lives.

Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)

Amira Moshinsky

Give this story a date.

2020-04-18
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