For years Indigenous people living through out Australia had agreed to work for the dole as away of restoring pride in our society doing what was neccessary on the communities to keep them running. It wasn't perfect but it kept people busy and out of trouble and included the unemployed the aged, those on disability and veterans pensions and the young..

Then some white dude in Canberra decided that this was not a good thing to encourage and promptly stopped its operation, possibly because white's might be made to follow and that would not be a vote winnner in an election.

So what happens, we now have all these social problems associated with our young people thinking like european children, who believe that the world owes them a living. Now our communities essential services maintained by these people have broken down as has the social structure and chaos rules.

As a taxpayer I do not believe that any person should be given a free ride on my taxpayer funded handouts, so I believe that the intervention in the north should be applied to all Australians especially those in public housing like my neighbours in the flats.

Mutual obligation should be the corner stone of any financial support from the taxpayer and I would like to see these bludgers made to work for their money by cleaning the streets or something similar now before any increases occur

I'm not holding my breath that the Rudd Government has the will to implement any meaningful changes to the delivery of welfare services.
I have brought to the attention of Ministers of Federal and Territory Governments,examples of imposed hardship on recipients due to the intervention that have been ignored. I feel sure they have heard of hardships directly from Community people themselves.

Federally, the responsible Minister appears to have slipped comfortably into the shoes of Mal Brough and does not appear to have the initiative or ideas as to how to address the problem of dealing with those parents who require quarantining of benefits whilst exempting the responsible ones.

The means testing of benefits also employs unfair criteria where people on allocated pensions are denied health benefits forced to draw down on their Super principal in order to meet medication costs because they are deemed to be too wealthy from inaccessible joint assets.

My God, a socialist dinosaur in the wild! Thought they were extinct.

Yes, yes, let's re-introduce no-strings attached welfare. After all, it's worked so brilliantly for the Aborigines.

Yindin
Your non-condescending comments can best be described in the Euphemism “downward envy”. And in that attitude lies the whole problem to a sensible solution of the huge disjointed complexity; the current welfare system.

The author of this article clearly is out of touch with the unemployment situation in this country at the moment.

The vast majority of people who are unemployed when unemployment is at 4% are those who will find work in a few weeks, those who are unemployable and those who don't want to work.

The first group will find work very soon, because they are only out of work temporaily. They will benefit very little from increasing the dole because they will only be on it for a few weeks.

The second group will have less incentive to become employable. Since many have drug-addictions, the extra money will make them buy more drugs. Hence they will become more unemployable, to the detriment of the rest of society.

The third group will have virtually no incentive to find work if their payments are increased. They would essentially be rewarded for being lazy and not contributing to society. Hence they will never find work again, again to the expense of people who work.

The author claims his proposal is fair and decent. In fact, it would represent an injustice for those who do the right thing and work.

The emotional pandering this article contains is enough to make one want to vomit.

Phrases like “The existing system of social security is inadequate, unjust and maintains people in poverty.” It is not designed to lift them out of poverty but to maintain their level of poverty between any notion of a minimum wage and above nothing.

AJFA “The author claims his proposal is fair and decent. In fact, it would represent an injustice for those who do the right thing and work.”

I would wholly concur.

The only way to produce a fair social safety-net is to keep it to such a low level that it does not become an attractive alternative to working for a living.