So make fun of my ideas if you want, they might be stupid, but I'm just trying to find ways for our country to save money, and be more productive and competitive against a backdrop where we've lost jobs and manufacturing and the people who profited from taking those jobs and industry have now purchased our country.
If we we're playing a game of monopoly, and someone else owns Mayfair and Park Lane, plus the green set and the railways and utilities the game is won.
We're just the poor player who keeps hemoraging money until he goes bust.

My idea basically came from the idea that some of these infrastructure problems are too expensive to afford.
And my idea was "What if we can find 100,000 workers? Can we afford it them?"

Some of the jobs on the projects might be:
Mobile Dwelling Assembly and Maintenance Jobs
- Building, Assembling and Maintenance of Mobile Dwellings
Settlement Jobs
- Cleaning and Maintenance of Mobile Dwellings
- Food Preparation
- Laundry
Farming Jobs
Timber Clearing Jobs
- Chainsaw Operator
- Tractor Drivers
Earthworks Jobs
- Front-End Loader Operators
- Truck Drivers
- Excavator Operators
Other Jobs
- Old Track Removal
- Sun Farms
- Quarry
- Loading and Unloading Shipments
- Building
- Fencing

I'd offer foreigners all of these jobs, but I'm not paying them our wages.
If they earn $2 or $5 an hour in their country, then we'll pay them that plus a 25% premium, and when they take their money home they can pay tax in their own country. It helps them and it helps us, and it doesn't take away any existing jobs.

Foreign medical aid and disaster releif, we'll thats a whole different discussion but I will say that when we have aussies dying on public hospital waiting lists I'm not sure whether its borderline treason to put foreigners first, but it is good to try to help others out when they are in genuine need.

Should the HECS people contribute more - Yes they should.
If the government is going to invest in them, they need to take that seriously and make all efforts to complete their studies.
If they don't then by default, they're saying they belong as blue-collar workers and should work to repay the debt they decided to create.

Pensioners?
I'm not running a socialist regime, I have respect for aussies who have already done their bit for the nation.

Not too expensive?
I'm talking about a 6 lane per-direction concrete highway from Darwin through every mainland capital city to Perth with 4 HSR lines, water, oil, gas, power and internet, and a Super-Port in Darwin, a second section from Darwin south past Alice Spings so that southern areas such as Kalgoorlie have better access to the northern port, and then a third eastern inland route branching off at Gulf of Carpentaria inland and meeting up at Port Pirie.
We're talking trillions, which on a per capita basis is well unaffordable.
But build the infrastructure so that the energy to run it is generated from it so that the main transport costs in this country are reduced virtually to zero.

Think about how we do things..
Lets say we have someone who owes $1000 in fines.
It costs upwards of $50,000 p/a to keep someone incarcerated so we say you have to go to jail at $100 a day, so that's 10 days.
"You owe us $1000 so we've decided the best thing to do is spend another $1000 or so putting a roof and food in your mouth for a week or so..."

Does that not seem dumb to you?

Do you think its good that the 'work for the dole' people are whipper-snipping churches and retirement homes, working in lifeline and meals on wheels and clearing the weeds under power lines for private companies instead of doing something something more constructive?
I'm not saying these things are bad, but don't you think its better to get them out there and give them some real skills and do something positive?

And so many other topics I mentioned but didn't go really go into.

Where I stated that doing this might break down barriers between nationalistic Australians and foreigners is that if they are out there working together they might find they have things in common and Aussies might have more respect for them because they are doing something to earn their keep instead of getting a free hand-out.

Hi, Armchair.

I have, at various stages in my life, employed and/or arranged training for more than half of the skills which you mention. I'm proud of the results, which at one end of the scale resulted in a long term unemployed young man gaining fencing, excavator and chainsaw training and never looking back. Five years later, he is still in full-time work. I guess that saved the nation a few bob, as well as keeping a family off the drudgery of the dole.

There are plenty of Aussies who need the skills you listed. Unlike the Yanks, we seem to get by OK without a two-tiered wage system which has one rate for the Mexicans without papers and another for real people.

Your proposal is morally and socially just plain wrong. By all means, offer people training and work, but what's this about offering to pay only 15% of a wage?

No way. It is just not on.

Please don't come back whingeing that you might have been insulted or that someone is making fun of you. There is nothing funny in your idea at all - and despite your affirmation to the contrary, your idea would force real Australians who work on farms and with their hands out of work.

I'm not anti-refugee. I wife and her parents arrived here after spending years in a refugee camp. Father-in-law, trained as a commercial clerk and an accomplished poet worked as a labourer, a truckdriver and on a fork lift. He did what was available, but he had the same rights as the kid next door to a fair day's pay when it was due. Your two posts offend me deeply and, unlike you perhaps, I really do know what I am speaking about.

Refugees are no less human than Australian-born. Full stop.