About 90% of bad health, drunkenness, drug taking and crimes - stealing or assault, can be attributed to too much spare time, and this generally is unemployment and loss of pride, even many accidents can be attributed to this with no genuine involvement in an interesting career or hobby. When this is recognised and proper action is taken to ensure that this error is overcome, and people can obtain full time work, not just two or three days to satisfy the politicians desire of a low statistic on employment, the pride of these people will return and the country will settle into being a hard working, happy population, but mainly, the politicians have to start being intelligent and get integrity, and realise that they are only the same low class people that they think our workers are, and should return their salary to what it would have been if other politicians had left it in relationship to the workers over the last fifty or sixty years.

Our biggest dole bludgers are the has-been politicians on the tax free benefit scheme.

How do you think they can fund it?

we could fund everything imaginable if we just closed the loopholes that tax avoiders exploit to get out of paying their share.

Sorry, who are the bludgers?

I am sorry if the truth hurts your ears, Tristan. The fact that our welfare system is being looted by foreigners can be very easily verified by the simple expedient of walking into any social security office. I did just that only a few years ago when I was unemployed for a few weeks, thinking that it would be just like the old CES layout, with the jobs on cards where everybody could see them.

Nup. I found that I had top register as “unemployed, when I was simply looking for a job. It was “spot the Aussie” right from the word “go”, and the very first thing that the (foreign) woman at the desk asked me was “Which country are you from?” Says it all, eh Tristan?

Just like every trendy lefty who wants to tax Aussies to death to pay for multiculturalism, you refuse to see beyond your ideological blinkers. So you adopt the three monkey approach to anything that might even suggest that the holy doctrine of multiculturalism is not infallible. Well, just like the Labor Party, you have lost the Australian working class, because know that when you say “tax the rich” and “tax the emitters” we know that you are really talking about us.

If you really want to know just who your most ardent critics are Tristan,they are the disadvantaged class people who do work for a living on very low wages, who live in depressed areas surrounded by dole bludgers who sneer and laugh at them for their honesty and work ethic. Next time you go into a sandwich shop in a depressed area, tell the woman making sandwiches that there is no such thing as a dole bludger. You better stand back if she has a knife in her hands.

You must be either a social worker touting for business to have the bizarre opinions that you do, or else you were born so high up in an ivory tower that you can’t see what is happening on the ground for the clouds.

Jesus, Merv09, which planet did you beam down from?

As an ex Housing Commission tenant, I can absolutely assure you that the biggest factor in long term unemplyment by people who are perfectly healthy, is low intelligence.

Dumb people do poorly at school, they do not want to work, they drink, smoke, gamble, and take drugs, spend all of their time watching Sky Channel, and when they are not doing all of these things, dump people are in bed procreating more dumb people.

Your premise that poor people really want to work to get some "dignity" is a premise more worthy of hilarity than serious consideration. Did it ever occur to you that dole bludgers realy do think that they are smart because they don't work? Yeah, that's right, old mate. I have lived among them. They get their sense of self worth and self esteem by thinking how clever they are at beating the system.

The problem for Australia, is that dumb people are breeding a lot faster than smart people. This is especially true of smart women, who today are hardly breeding at all. It is interestring to extrapolate forward and calculate how long it will be before the smart productive people are no longer able to support the dumb counter productive people, and the country goes broke.

This is already happening in France, Germany and Britain.

So, if you are a smart female, do your bit for the country. Go forth and get pregnant! Because we need more taxpayers to keep the welfare industry solvent and the country afloat

LEGO;

Firstly; as I argued in the 'Carbon Tax' thread support for high immigration is bipartisan. If you have a problem with immigration, then I'm afraid the Liberals in this country aren't going to help you. They only 'dogwhistle' to get people with opinions like yours to support them. Howard depended on Hanson preferences to stay in power, but Abbott turned on the Hansonites because an overt alliance would cost them the 'classical liberal' vote...

Secondly, I've been in the low income demographic most of my life. I know what it's like to struggle. And I've seen the consequences on inadequate health and aged care systems first-hand.

And as I argue in the 'Carbon Tax' thread: forces for reaction will use your fears about minorities to distract you from the fact they want to undermine YOUR rights in the labour market, while changing the tax system to redistribute income from people like yourself to the very wealthy. And undermining public health and education upon which ordinary working class people depend.

All this fear about 'dole-bludgers' is part of that same process - and people will believe arguments against these suppositions are 'ridiculous' simply because their Ideological prejudices are confirmed in the mass media every day. That onerous active labour market programs re: Newstart already exist is a fact. Now Abbott is turning on disability pensioners whose suffering he probably cannot begin to comprehend...

But if a Carbon Tax is complemented by the kind of compensation structure I'm suggesting - the low income people you mention will be better off in terms of their final income and purchasing power.

Finally re: your resentment against immigrants. I understand there is angst in some sections of the community; There is a feeling in some areas that 'Australian community and identity' are in decline, and there are feelings of cultural exclusion. Lashing out against migrants is not the right response, though. What is needed are active policies aimed at promoting inclusion and community for ALL Australians - for migrants AND those born in this country.