When just a wee lass, I was inspired to become an accountant by Monty Python’s The Crimson Permanent Assurance. So I prepared myself for this career path by doing Business Studies in high school, as well as intensive, extracurricular, afternoon training sessions watching episodes of Spellbinder – which were discussed at length the following day in 3 Unit Math class.

After more than a decade invested in adding receipts on a calculator and filing income tax returns, I knew my star was finally rising when I was described by a colleague as “a dangerous subversive”.

After a brief stint shooting off emails, laying minutes like landmines and launching affidavit artillery, I deployed some Special Accounting Services in the form of epic spreadsheets, website and social media content. This resulted in a surprise triumph in one of the early battles, with the resources I engineered having been used as the fulcrum on which to leverage government policy change and provide immediate reprieve from total destitution to tens of thousands of people. Thus, I was soon in over my head, deep undercover within the anti-poverty underground…

I first came to the attention of the Feds whilst loitering in the lobby of the notorious 2019 Australian Country Women’s Association conference, where the PM was struck by a lone wolf egg insurgent. It was nearly stacks on, but the CWA president came to my rescue.  To this day, I maintain my innocence – it’s no yolk – however, like all who work for social security payments to be raised above the poverty line, I remain an ongoing POI.

The #NotMyDebt campaign was beginning to gain traction, so I decided to drop “Little Boy” – a riveting, 18 page treatise on cash vs accrual accounting, which later became known as Submission Number 38 of the Senate Inquiry into Centrelink’s Compliance Program. My recommendations forced the government’s hand into making changes to the communication infrastructure on the Centrelink website that were favourable to us, as well as the introduction of new legislation to harmonise the accounting basis for citizen’s income reporting across Commonwealth government departments.

Not to be outdone, Gordon Legal followed up with a planet-killing, extinction event level $1.7 billion dollar class action that knocked the government for six and in the court of public opinion as well – providing a resounding victory to the oppressed masses.

In the wake of the armistice, myself and several other guerrillas were rounded up and debriefed by the Universities of Queensland, Virginia and Gothenburg. Before I knew it – and despite possessing only the normal ten fingers – I had been labelled a “digital activist”.

To be continued…