...Well, what can one say to this? It’s a tough life out there; better be ready for it since life under the oppressive regime of “Totalitarian Capitalism” ruled by a bureaucratic class of Bolsheviks; its only set to worsen!

It's not just the amount, it's the rules and the mindset behind the rules: If you don't have a job you're workshy. If you're on disability you're a malingerer. It's the same punish-the-victim mindset that underpins policy on refugees. People on the dole are required to spend hours (and fares they don't have) going from employer to employer to hear the message they're not wanted. Keeps them in their place. People on disability have to prove over and over again they're not stacking it on.

Some remedies:

1. Weed out any officials, including those planning the rules at the top, who are not devoted to HELPING people find employment, and put them on the dole.

2. As near totally as can be managed, staff the section of the Department of Human Services which manages disability payments (including those at the top who write the rules) with people who are themselves disabled enough to need to work on short time.

(PS: Graham, the article is not displaying - has to be read in the print version)

I can just about hear the writers teeth grinding in anger - and with good reason.

No one believes we have an unemployment rate of 5.3 per cent. It's about 9-10 per cent if we ignore the ridiculous ABS methodology which states that one hour of work per week is fulltime work. We know for a fact that older people 50+ are simply giving up looking for work for a variety of reasons but mainly age prejudice. Youth unemployment in areas west of Sydney and north of Adelaide is about 19 percent and some pockets its as high as 30 percent.

Shorten actually came out in favour of raising the Newstart allowance a couple of days ago. It's time people on the dole got a kick up to at least match CPI, which is also rising.

Well John, I don't think you're a failure - but fairly obviously the 'system' has failed you badly, and so many others besides. Excellent article, providing a clear case for reform of the treatment of so many 'ends', big and small, young and old. We have lost the spirit of 'community' in the stampede for capital self-sufficiency (or opulence), with so many left behind or trampled in the crush.

A suggestion: What a pity the Building the Education Revolution (BER) was not instead a Building the Community Revolution (BCR) - whereby community centres were established, complete with educators, instructors, counselors, workshops, creches and self-help child minding facilities, etc - whereby individual skills and potentials of the under- or unemployed, including stay at home mums/dads and single mums and dads, could be developed and actively utilised. After all, Work for the Dole is such a limited and mind-numbing approach compared to such a broader, more encompassing and fulfilling approach - and government-funded Employment Support Services by private firms are such a rip-off and a clear failure.

Why paid Childcare and Early Education for example, when mums (and dads) have the necessary skills (or can easily acquire them with a little help), and could share these responsibilities if the necessary infrastructure was provided? And, they would have personal knowledge of the 'carers' as well as being a constructive member of the care group. Community and self-help in action. Skills and knowledge could also be shared for mutual benefit, and part-time work enabled. Win-win.

Similarly, such facilities could include accommodations and services for abused mums and kids needing care (as indicated in a host of other articles), and could even extend to modest longer-term accommodations for the long-term unemployed. Potentials?

So many in our community at risk, isolated and needing support. We can and should do better, and there's more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak. Self help is not an alien idea, and in the right setting could provide at least part of the panacea so badly needed. Opportunity yet?

PS, John, you sound like someone who could have a career in writing, journalism or IT?

And, BTW, >"The lyrics were by Ian Curtis, who committed suicide at a very early age. Another song of his ‘Insight’ is poignant in its intensity of emotion."<

The lyrics of these two songs should have alerted someone to the underlying troubled mindset of the writer. If we did not have such an insular and isolationist societal model perhaps he may have had a different outcome. So many are similarly lost because others either don't care or fail to read the signs. Such a pity to lose so much potential.

Of course we also need more jobs, and not just in mining. Our governments certainly do need a change of mind-set, and your article provides a much needed wake-up call.