Yes mate, until and unless you've walked a country mile or two in those same shoes! You've absolutely no flaming idea whatsoever!

Just how decidedly damned difficult it is to Move from welfare to work! Particularly where some occupations pay less for forty hours than the dole you could collect on your ass?

Remember one period of unemployment in the eighties where I applied for forty or fifty jobs per week, I was qualified for or over-qualified, for near on twelve solid disheartening months.

When summoned to CES to explain myself took a briefcase crammed to the gunnels with rejection notices from the tiny percentage that bothered.

The official who was girding his loins to rescind my benefit. Looked with sheer disbelief at the mountain of documents from the length and bread of Australia and a few offshore!

Told me if he were in my shoes would seek casual work under an assumed name. to supplement a manifestly inadequate income.

One hears stories almost daily, of single mums forced to turn tricks to pay the electricity bill, the rent or put tucker on the table, and mostly because they come from the less advantaged socioeconomic cohort! Which is entrench by those holding power and privilege.

Imagine if all pensions and benefits were measured by what's good enough for Christer Pine? Who given he retires now? Gets an additional $60,000 per, Or three multiples of the old age pension as the extra padding on his parliamentary pension? Oink oink?

The answer is cooperative capitalism and creches at the workplace! Which could easily include a housing co-op and not for profit industry health insurance!

This same approach keeps our money in the local economy for up to seven times longer, doing seven times more economic work at the local level!

Our approach is to harass and harang, sell our heritage and our economic sovereignty. Export our jobs and industry! Then rebuke those now on welfare! Go figure!

Welfare is neither gift nor privilege, but a form of compensation.

Wealthy people benefit from the existing social structure and the safety it provides, not only to their bodies, but also to their possessions. On the other hand, those with little or no possessions do not benefit from this structure, in fact they are disadvantaged by it, so what's in it for them? Why should they respect the laws that protect wealth if they receive nothing in return?!

In other words, back to the baseline: in nature, plunder is the rule. What morally allows one to forbid others to plunder what they amassed when it is well beyond what they can physically keep an eye on?

So welfare is the balancing factor: the wealthy get their part of the deal - and so do the poor.

If you break your neighbour's leg, then you ought to compensate them unconditionally. You may have unrelated grievances against your neighbour and possibly the right for redress, but you have no right to use the opportunity of breaking their leg to discipline your neighbour and demand that they change some of their habits which you do not like.

Of all the things that government does with the money they rob us in tax, direct welfare to the poor is the most sensible and just.

While I oppose compulsory taxation, shame on him who is unwilling to open their heart and pockets voluntarily for the sake of the poor, or who forces conditions on them.

This is where a Flat tax would do a lot of cleansing in the dirty system !
Unemployment isn't caused by no work, it's caused by "expert" advisors to Govt & ignorant Govt Ministers ruining the prospects for employment & even more ignorant voters giving us incompetent Govt & then blaming those who are left to rebuild the economic & social mess.
Stop being stupid at the polling booth & you can stop incompetent Govt from taking the helm !
oppositions need to stop sabotaging good Govt & let it get on with the job !
It's up to us voters to keep showing those in Authority the way by cooperating not by opposing for opposing's sake !
We need to push for referendums when Govt is on the wrong path !
Voters need to be less greedy also.

Groan!

Every now and again, some cloistered academic comes on OLO trying to claim that dole bludgers are a minor problem, and that most welfare recipients are genuine. I know from my own personal experience that such an attitude is insanity.

Here is the inconvenient truth.

Allowing for Inflation, the GDP of Australia has doubled from 1965 (25.4 USD Billion) to 1371.8 USD billion in December, 2011. Growth has averaged 4 % per annum in the past decade alone, increasing GDP by 50 %. But something rather interesting happened in the intervening years.

Overall since 1965 the country is 2X richer, while the number on welfare is 5X.

The ageing population would be one explanation, but most baby boomers have yet to retire. Could the answer be that the prime reason for poverty in a wealthy country like Australia, with all of its attendant intractable social problems, is because we insist on importing it?

Aghans alone have employment rates of only 6% after five years of residence. Iranians are the next group most at risk from long unemployment and poverty, with 88% still unemployed after five years. In Europe, 80% of the Muslim population is on welfare benefits.

In 1965, 3 % of the working age population in Australia was on welfare benefits of one sort or another. Now 16 % of adults rely on welfare. This is bad for them, bad for their children and is financially unsustainable – ie bad for taxpayers. Another take on this – in 1965 there were 22 taxpayers for every one person on welfare; now the number is 5.

Extrapolate forward and you see a vision of Greece, Spain, Cypress, and Ireland, with their own national insolvency problems. The populations of these countries and their elected representatives were acutely aware of their financial insolvency, decades ago.

Phillip Mendez had better flash on the idea that Australia must reform it's welfare, immigration, and refugee programs before we become a replica of the nation he fled from.

Lego:
You need to learn some very basic economics before you start bagging immigration! Let alone selectively bagging migration from a majority Muslim country!

Migration at the moment is all that's keeping us out of a recession!

Maybe it hasn't occurred to your pea brain that oppressed women might want out from such countries, ditto oppressed an or persecuted minorities! Like those who stood shoulder to shoulder with us when we were there trying to expel the murderous border hoppingTaliban!

Individual:
Absolutely on the money! An unavoidable flat tax of 15% would end so much of the tax fraud and evasion that's rife in this country!?

Moreover, given it would be automatically collected via the banking sector, as funds were transferred. NORMAL TAX COMPLIANCE COSTS (7%av) COULD BE RETURNED TO THE BOTTOM LINE. MEANING THE EFFECTIVE TAX RATE WOULD BE JUST 8%!

And the lowest tax rate in the world. A generous rise in the tax-free threshold would both end bracket creep and allow some income to be quarantined, so that those currently living below the poverty line, would not pay tax.

Couple that to MSR thorium as the energy policy and high tech manufacture/the jobs of the future would be queuing to relocate, as would an army of cashed-up self-funded retirees

Further, if we promoted/preferred and quite deliberately prospered, as government facilitated and funded co-ops for all manner of manufacture and service delivery!

There'd be no unemployment or folk living below the poverty line, except by choice or physical or intellectual incapacity!

Wealth may have increased by 2X but when 90% of it is concentrated in the top 10% of income earners Dummkopf! It self evidently paints (spins) a false picture and deliberately so!
Alan B.

People like this bloke have to write this gross garbage, to justify the whole area of academia, that gives then a nice soft living. That it is more propaganda than fact is obvious to anyone who moves in the real world. I would like to sit the fool [or is it smarty?] in the long term unemployed chair in any job network organisation for a couple of weeks.

My lady occupied that chair at a Mission Australia country town office, for 3 years. All enthused with the milk of human kindness, she was going to help these poor souls to a better life.

She organised training courses for them, bought clothes for them, & organised transport for some, all at Mission expense. She found employers who would give them a chance.

Yes she had success stories, but less than 15% of those she found work for, were still working after just 2 months.

She also found quite large numbers who would never attend appointments on say Tuesday or Wednesday, as those were the days of their cash in hand jobs. She was threatened a number of times when she breached some of these cheats.

Disillusioned & becoming depressed she got out of the line of work, no longer the total bleeding heart she had been.

So Philip, give us a break on the bleeding heart stuff. many of us have lived in the real world too long to fall for it