I was job seeking for 4 mths, and though I have many skills in many areas, I needed to undertake some courses to upgrade my skills, get the necessary 'certificates' to get back into the jobs I could do. Most of the upgrades were on the computor. As I had NOT been unemployed for 6 mths, I was not allowed to access any training program and had I undertaken a course on my own (which I could not pay for) I would have been penalised for not fulfilling my obligation booklet rules. Had I been given the chance I could have gone back to being a medical secretary, back into property management, or back into administration.

After a time in a call centre,(disaster) I was then back on Newstart, I then had to complete 30 hours of training and coaching in a classroom on how to fill out resumes, and find work on-line (basic skills), only then would I have been able to do a course in computors to open doorways to a job. It would have saved the Government a lot of money, and I would have been back working and paying taxes. For the over 50's - the situation has to change and immediate re-training must be offered. We are not kids living at home, we need to work to survive.
Life has turned full circle and I am now self employed, but how many highly skilled, intelligent people are left behind all because they need a course in wordperfect or excel to get the job to match their skills? How many people only need a short course to open doorways to employment? Howe many people over 40 are having to take jobs which would be back breaking for a younger person because they cannot get another job, due, only to, needing an upgrade of the skills they already have? We may be baby (boomers) but we are definitely being thrown out with the bathwater. Wake up Australia, we are sinking fast.

I left school at 15 and remained gainfully employed untill I was 35, when I was faced with having to apply for the dole. Being deaf, I was told by centrelink I could not get a newstart allowance- they put me on a pension instead. That's right, I didn't even have to look for work. Didn't even have to front up every week as others did. and I got about $30 a week more into the deal. I'm 43 now and still can't find a fulltime job in spite of having a Cert 3 in horticulture, a forklift licence and a truck licence. The only work I can find are casual jobs, and this casualization of our country's workforce, I fail to see how it's a good thing. In fact, I fail to see how a welfare system is a good thing at all. What did people do in the days before centrelink? They were self sufficient and proud of it, they looked after one another and actually knew who lived next door. It seems part of our social interactions have been replaced with an artifical system where one has to rely on the government to survive, a system that is eternal because it robs Peter to pay Paul and will always have the support of Paul.

Well said, Gitmo Guy.

Government policies can be very blunt instruments indeed – Paul just doesn’t sense the source of his pain. Perhaps the state’s objectives are more focused with redistribution of unhappiness.

It shouldn’t be this way and I sincerely wish you better.

Housing affordability also impacts heavily on work incentives. When my father was young, many workers could buy a home on a single income. Now, for a single person to be realistically hopeful of owning a home one day in a large city needs a high income in order to:

meet rent on a property of adequate standard and reasonable commuting distance to work;
meet motor vehicle or travel expenses;
adequate, vis a vis basic, living expenses;
savings to raise a reasonable deposit.

Unless you have a partner, you'll need lots more than minimum wage to do it. Investors have pushed up market prices for property with negative gearing handouts from government deepening their already deep pockets. Single persons will be a great future pocket of hidden poverty in this country. While some may be assisted by families able to do so, others whose families will not, or lack the capacity to, will languish in poverty for most of their working and retired life unless they can earn in excess of average weekly earnings.

Why go out and work if the pay is so hopelessly inadequate that you'll merely be fattening up your landlord and destined to eat soup in retirement to afford your private rental, or if in public rental pay inflated rent during your working life for what is essentially a shoebox in a slum. Work is about money, and the best incentive to work is if people can honestly be assured that they will be SIGNIFICANTLY AND SUBSTANTIALLY better off for their whole lives, not merely through taking poverty-level remuneration subsidizing the wealth building of someone who will derive this money through minimal personal exertion at all.

Firstly i would like to thank Seeker for the kind wishes and others for their input. I'm not sure I'm going off topic with this but here it goes - I recall the government gives a 'baby bonus' , of, I think, about $2000 per child. This goes direct to the parents of the child and appears to have no conditions, and many just spend it on playstations and other garbage (I'm sure some do use it wisely) and it seems this is nothing but the government buying votes. Now, if the government was to continue to give $2000 per child, but instead of giving it out to the parents, they put in into a long term investment account linked to a tax file number (or similar) where the money would become available when the child reached retirement age. I think this go a long way towards easing the burden on taxpayers given the number of pensions that will have to be paid in the coming years. Now I'm not exactly an accountant but I wonder if anyone else sees the merit in this idea, and has it been discussed before? Or maybe such ideas are doomed to the scrapheap of good things that have no political value.

Gitmo Guy - $2000 does not go far when a new baby arrives - especially if it is the first one and the mother has given up paid work. It costs this much in nappies alone for a year so I don't think many will be buying playstations with it. It is supposed to be an alternative to paid maternity leave which is often considered a good thing even by the same people who dislike 'middle class welfare' as I do. Personally I think it should be means tested - but this could be because they only introduced it just after our youngest was born and we missed out ;-)

An incentive to start superannuation funds earlier is a good idea. The government has just informed me it has added $1500 to my superannuation fund based on a contribution made on my behalf by my husband who got some sort of tax deduction from it - very nice too and I will no doubt appreciate it one day but surely there are better ways to spend taxpayers money? Something similar at the birth of a child would encourage parents to keep investing. The State government has just given me another $150 as a back-to school allowance - yet another waste of taxpayers money that should go directly to public schools.

So much money is wasted in these schemes and in inefficient bureaucratic organisations that could be put to better use. When I decided to retrain after taking time off for children I had to pay full course fees of $7000 myself - no allowance or even a tax deduction for that. Most would not be able to afford this and HECS places are very limited. This is where money should be directed - assisting the unemployed (not just those on benefits)to gain the skills that are really needed - that means apprenticeships, TAFE certificates and University degrees, not just useless short courses in introductory computing etc.