ICYMI, the Turnbull government’s under a bit o’ fire atm, after Scott Morrison revealed in his budget that job seekers will be required to undertake internships as part of their job seeking experiencing, putting in 15–25 hours per week for the low, low price of $200. If you put in the max. number of hours per week, that works out to be $4 per hour.
And in other internship news, one just sold at women’s website Mamamia for $10,000 – for the low, low pay of zero dollars per hour.
Mamamia was asked to donate one of their two week unpaid internships for a charity action at the Caritas Women For The World lunch today.
Twitter, of course, got wind of it. They were not kind.
lol Mamamia is auctioning things at the Caritas Women For The World lunch, including this “priceless” internship pic.twitter.com/bZC5wDoIha
— Michael Roddan (@MichaelRoddan) May 5, 2016
Overheard: “I’d pay $10k to never have to work at Mamamia”
— Lauren Ingram (@laureningram) May 5, 2016
We can take comfort in the fact that the kind of person who’d pay 10 grand to intern at Mamamia is the kind of person who deserves to.
— Ben Pobjie (@benpobjie) May 5, 2016
Look. No one’s in any doubt that raising money for charity is A Good Thing, and Mamamia – and some very deep-pocketed Mia Freedman fans – have just raised $10k for impoverished communities in the Philippines.
But media is already criticised as being an industry for the privileged, with the very nature of unpaid internships locking out those who cannot afford to work for free from even entering it. And apparently Mamamia – nor the event’s MC Ben Fordham – saw any irony in helping the underprivileged by catering for the extremely so.
Priceless? Sure – but only if you can afford it.
DISCLAIMER: Pedestrian doesn’t offer unpaid internships, but allows companies to use our jobs board to advertise them.
