Sorry LEGO, you've got that wrong, at least the pensioner part.

The age pension is running at $877 a fortnight, $438.50 a week. I suspect you might be talking about the unemployment benefit at $320.

If however you are right that the benefit given to unemployed asylum seekers, the so called refugees, is $476 a week, quite a bit more than our aged pensioners & that becomes public knowledge, I expect there will be a pretty violent reaction. The very minimum reaction would be a landslide of support for One Nation & a huge increase in the number wanting to stop this stupidity, & spreading to a growth in opposition to all immigration, & the foreign blowins wanting a cut of our welfare.

It is not only in the USA that resistance to getting ripped off by vote buying political parties is growing.

Armchair Critic "I think the culture in Australia was traditionally 'No culture'."

Culture is however people live together, shared understandings and practices, not palaces and peasant dresses.
Because our culture is "modern everyday life culture", it's "invisible".
Fish don't see the ocean, because it's all around them.

Modern everyday life evolves too, so we were never fossilised in any one era or mode as some like to claim.

Nor were we averse to adopting exotic elements if we *really* wanted them, e.g. surfing, pizza.

These exotic elements were absorbed into the "modern everyday life culture", not something apart from it.
And through commerce (surf shops, Pizza Hut) not immigration.

I'd like to know where the $476 figure comes from.

My understanding is that refugees get the same social security entitlements as citizens of the same age, employment and disability status.

//I'd like to know where the $476 figure comes from.//

It's made up.

"In recent years, a series of emails have been widely circulated throughout Australia claiming to describe the social security entitlements for refugees, compared with those of other Australian residents. A common claim in these emails is that refugees in Australia receive higher social security benefits than age pensioners. Some also suggest that refugees receive free gifts such as houses. Claims of this kind are erroneous and appear to have caused some confusion in the community.

There is no truth to claims made in emails circulated throughout Australia that refugees are entitled to higher benefits than other social security recipients. Refugees have the same entitlements as all other permanent residents—they do not receive special refugee payments or special rates of payment.

Given the circumstances in which refugees come to settle in Australia, they are exempt from the standard waiting period that applies to migrants seeking to access social security payments or concession cards. Refugees also receive short-term assistance from DSS under the Humanitarian Settlement Services program, aimed at helping them settle effectively once they have received permanent residency."

http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1415/AsylumFacts#_Toc413067447