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The Forum > Article Comments > Carrots rather than sticks > Comments

Carrots rather than sticks : Comments

By John Töns, published 6/3/2012

Unemployment benefits should be structured to recognise that there are two classes of unemployed - those who want to work, and those who don't.

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John, a very good article that sums up both sides of what I have experienced.

Like yourself, the opportunity for a very highly paid redundancy came my way. Being mid 50's at that time, I found it impossible to get back into the work that I loved and enjoyed. I only started to get interviews after I removed half my CV to effectively hide my age. This didn't stop the effect that the interviews were all effectively over as I walked in the door and they realised what my age really was. The worst cases occurred when the interviewers were younger than my own children!

I reflected on my skills changed into a new career in bookkeeping based on skills from several home businesses that I ran on the side during my corporate employment. The employment agencies as a group were useless, I found approaches directly to employers got one in the door and treated well at interviews. Several of these approaches have led to successful ongoing work in small businesses.

I decided while building the new career that I needed to be active. I volunteered to assist in a charity call centre. I am still there one day a week, some years latter. Your splitting the long-term unemployed into two groups matches some of my experience of dealing at this charity. Like your experience there is a small group who know to the very day how frequently they can request assistance. Then there are the many who do need a helping hand who approach us asking for help but apologising and feeling guilty that they are asking for assistance.

One could expand, but that is another article/comment.

dkit
Posted by dkit, Tuesday, 6 March 2012 9:41:49 AM
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...I don’t wish to rain on your parade John, but, out in the big world live many able bodied dole bludgers doing quite well in the black market drug trade, taking dole payments as a supplement. With 30% of the country admitting to marijuana use alone, and the myriads of other products also available on the “black market shelf”, there is much need for traders in the products! Obviously, only a total fool would admit such involvement to Centrelink.

...Using the example of “Alfie” and his classmates from your previous article, what working future do such children aspire to? Criminality is the obvious answer to too many of them; and by the time they make the dole office, their future working life is lost cause you must agree!
Posted by diver dan, Tuesday, 6 March 2012 10:17:56 AM
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John it seems to me that you have just described a [dole] bludger mate, yourself.

First of all you boast of pulling strings to get a redundancy pay out of tax payer funds.

Then you go on the dole, to gain access to more tax payer funds, to start your own business. Oh, plus the dole for a year, did you say, while in business. Then use your knowledge of government schemes to make your business.

Some of this sounds a bit strange to me. The couple of people I know, who lost their jobs, had to exhaust all their holiday pay & long service pay, before gaining access to financial help.

One who lived 20Km from any transport, & lost his company car with his job, was told he would have to sell the $2,000 bomb he had bought, to look for work, to buy food. He was not yet eligible for dole, because he'd spent that money on the car.

Why am I not surprised, with your display of your ethics, that we find you president of the zero carbon network. Are there some taxpayer funds to milk there, or is this something you actually believe in? Your CD would suggest the former.
Posted by Hasbeen, Tuesday, 6 March 2012 10:58:00 AM
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Thanks for your insightful article John - I must say that you seem to have worked the system better even that the young Vietnamese guy, but then someone with your capacity for a PhD would be in a better position to do so.

In wanting to divide the unemployed into just two basic groups (those who you can find a job for and those who just won't work) I think you are glossing over with your "can do" paint what could be the vast majority of long term unemployed people.

Many would love to be involved & productive but will have little chance of ever winning in a competitive market, especially once global unemployment is more evenly (& justly) redistributed. I reckon you are stigmatising a group which will only grow in number with the globalisation of the workforce.

Of greater interest to me is how you might reconcile in your own mind the consumer market growth upon which your apparent assumptions about job opportunities would depend with the problem of climate change that you have said elsewhere is brought on by just such human activity as you depend on.

A rethink is needed about what is truly productive social involvement and what is dubiously counted as "get a real job". Some moves to do this have been made by government redefinition of "mutual obligations", but as yet it only applies to unemployed people over 55 (a group your two tier idea would crush). Centrelink does need to change, but its change needs to be more realistic - more productive too. With globalisation, social harmony will rely on us finding creative options for the unemployed, not on competing for jobs. There's plenty to be done to help build a sustainable future - see http://bit.ly/vtcDO7
Posted by landrights4all, Tuesday, 6 March 2012 12:07:44 PM
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you can be sure the idiotic carbon tax will eventually put many more on unemployment benefits or entitlements or whatever u want to call them. So called new Green jobs will make a few feel fuzzy but won't cool in the summer and heat in the winter. Pensioners will go without.
Posted by runner, Tuesday, 6 March 2012 1:04:50 PM
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I hope State and Federal politicians and senior public servants involved with employment, education, training AND small business take heed of this article (and give it a better hearing than some of the commenters on this thread). Though some of the comments are also illuminating.

Our author may have 'worked' the system to build a successful business, but appears to have more than repaid the faith some placed in his abilities, and has served the greater good - as well as gaining the necessary 'experience' to make valid and valuable comment on the deficiencies in the 'system' and sound suggestions for remedy.

It does seem reasonable to differentiate categories of the unemployed, paying particular attention to those who have lost their job after long-term successful employment, and to young starters looking for a career - as well as winkling out for extra special treatment those who are just milking 'the system'. Not everyone 50's and over suddenly retrenched will be able to set up a small business, but it seems unfair that they should have to expend all their savings before anyone is willing to provide them with any assistance. All will not have sufficient superannuation to see them through (and they may well be too young to access this anyway), so it would seem reasonable to assist them both to eke out their savings - by some welfare provision - whilst also assisting them to either get work or set up a business. Labor's only answer is to increase employer super contributions - sounds great, but is yet another cost to small business, and likely to put even more people out of work.

As for bashing 'the 1 percent' (as Wayne Swan loves doing), these at least keep industry and jobs going, and the country going, while Labor sucks the guts out of the economy with ambitions to reduce everyone to the common poorhouse. Fair Work Australia is a complete disaster, and a master of procrastination. Labor's industy and industrial relations policies are proving disastrous for investment, for small business, and for jobs. Election - bring it on!
Posted by Saltpetre, Tuesday, 6 March 2012 4:33:01 PM
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See John Tomlinson's article here OLO "Mutual obligation’ policies do little to help the poor and underemployed" for a much more erudite understanding of the policy and demographics of unemployment.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=1979
Posted by Rainier, Tuesday, 6 March 2012 5:21:12 PM
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Jon Tons,
yours is an inspirational story in its context. But I'm inspired by a different context in which people don't draw their self-worth from recognised, salaried work--the more money the more self-worth. Your examples suggest vocation to a certain extent, with the appliance repairer for instance, though I don't think it is, unless vocation means drawing your self-respect from what's expected, a work ethic devoid of craft and pride and verifiable need. What do you mean by "work"? If work's just drudgery, the price of peace of mind, you're making a virtue of psychological enslavement, in fact a fetish of it. Those who put their whole stock in their work, their labour, not their inspiration, are legion. It seems to me you haven't yet divorced yourself from your speech-writing days; you're still on song and haven't considered the possibility of life untrammelled with a work-ethic. Your Vietnames baker perhaps saw through the patronage you're promoting--which maintains the kings and queens in their castles as well as their minions--if not, I know people who do.
You seem like an enlightened guy but this piece just teaches people to conform.
Inspirational stuff.. but people need to be uninspired.
Posted by Squeers, Tuesday, 6 March 2012 6:49:07 PM
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The problems are well identified, but the solution is not to have two doles - the solution is to abolish the dole altogether, to be replaced as a safety-net by a negative income tax.

Accordingly, everyone - whether they work or they don't, whether rich or poor, will receive a basic subsistence payment unconditionally. There shall be no testing whether one wants to work (and whether one works already is a matter for the tax office). As there will no longer be a financial disincentive to work, most people will want to find (or create) work because that way they will end up with more in their pocket.

Without the dole, there will be no dole-bludgers, while good and honest people will no longer be humiliated.
Posted by Yuyutsu, Wednesday, 7 March 2012 12:20:24 AM
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Hi Rainier, - Thanks for that reference to John Tomlinson's still relevant article from 2004 - "Mutual obligation’ policies do little to help the poor and underemployed" http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=1979

I agree it is a "a much more erudite understanding of the policy and demographics of unemployment."

However while Tomlinson lays the blame at the feet of politicians saying "This is a paternalistic imposition upon the entire community in an attempt to change the motivation of a few." I think the truth might be that it is a paternalistic imposition BY the entire community ... (or by the vast majority of taxpayers anyhow). I also reckon that it would never be politically accepted that "reciprocal obligations should not be attached to elementary income support programs". That is an idea I myself would challenge, but only if the paternalism was dropped first.

I do agree that the current Centrelink mutual obligations system is counterproductive and unjust, denying basic human rights. So given the political barrier to change, I think there is another way to skin this cat if we begin by addressing the question of rights, putting aside both "noblesse oblige" and "socialist solidarity" for long enough to do so. see http://bit.ly/vtcDO7
Posted by landrights4all, Wednesday, 7 March 2012 2:07:43 PM
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Apparently, Landrights4all, as is obvious from the correspondence you brought, the government is only interested in increasing its "workforce", so that more people will earn the money which it prints and taxes. It is willing to finance those it brands "job-seekers", but only for its own sake, only because it considers this a good investment.

So let the mask be torn once and for all - the government is not interested in the poor and needy or in the welfare of its subjects, never did, but only in its own power-base. Let it be therefore known that Australia has no safety-net!
Posted by Yuyutsu, Wednesday, 7 March 2012 8:50:22 PM
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Hi Yuyutsu - I am sure most people would not agree with you - they would see themselves either on the left in social solidarity with the poor or on the right as believers in noblesse oblige. In reality however I think you are right.

If we accept what you say, then the only way forward is to propose a creative responses that might appeal to the self interests of the majority, whether they are from the patronising right or the bleeding heart left, while also empowering the poor.

One idea I have some faith in is to gradually evolve productive, enriching & empowering UNemployment opportunities. see http://www.ntw.110mb.com
Posted by landrights4all, Thursday, 8 March 2012 10:58:26 AM
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Dear Landrights4all,

First I need to comment about the terms you used: "noblesse oblige" means "nobility obliges" -with authority comes responsibility. I believe that the expression you were after was "Laissez-faire", meaning "let it be" -let people do what they want.

There is a myth as if the "left" has to do with the poor. Nothing is further than the truth. The "left" indeed believes in social solidarity, but instead of solidarity with poor people, it is solidarity with the "poor class", which is but a name for a particular club, consisting mostly of white-collar intellectuals, some of which being quite rich themselves! When a football club is named after a particular animal it doesn't turn its players into that animal and when a club calls itself "the poor" or "the working-class", it doesn't automatically turn its members into being poor or into people who actually work.

Calling the Left "bleeding heart" and the Right "patronizing" are propaganda stereotypes divorced from reality. If anything, in reality it is usually the reverse where the Left is patronizing and the Right is bleeding heart.

Now to the subject-matter:

The way to get the majority to support the poor people in earnest (rather than the "poor class"), is through education, dispelling the Marxist propagandist myth of social classes.

A safety-net, within reason, IS in the true interest of the majority because:
1) no one is immune from bad fortune.
2) it is both unpleasant and unsafe to live around others who are desperate and hungry.

Once you feel safe enough that your basic needs are going to be met no matter what, then (and only then) you can proceed to have creative ideas, like the ones you mentioned and others. There isn't even a need to PROPOSE creative responses because people all over, once no longer under the pressure of survival, will find plenty of them anyway.

I'm proposing an unconditional safety-net through the operation of a negative income tax that ensures your basic needs.
Posted by Yuyutsu, Thursday, 8 March 2012 6:34:26 PM
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