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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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