A reply to the "blame the victim" post above:

Look up Just World Syndrome. It's pretty accurate for this type of attitude.

Look, our economy has a certain level of unemployment, and MUST ALWAYS have a certain level. There are real arguments in an economy about how low the reserve banks can allow the unemployement rate to fall before taking action, "to prevent inflation". These debates are open and public.

But still we pretend our economies are free of such management.

And we still blame the people who make up whatever percentage of unemployment, even when an economy is shedding jobs by the thousands and tens of thousands.

Particularly grating to me was the comment about retraining. I have seen people in all the fields they said were so important, so safe, from finance to engineering to IT, find themselves suddenly out of work, and now they're supposed to, what, go spend another few years gearing up to be productive at something else (the value of which may have shifted by the time they get through)

As for doing something useful like nursing, that's what I do. And despite the clamour about a so-called nursing shortage, the "shortage" is only a result of an exodus from the profession. At one large clinic where I worked briefly, the entire nursing staff resigned, including the manager

Hospital directors don't mind - they get their all-expense-paid recruitment trips. And they get to keep treating nurses badly. Sometimes simple, cost-free changes to the culture would make nursing so much less onerous that so many very skilled and experienced nurses would stop deserting the profession. I keep track of them - some go on to better things, others get so burnt out that despite tremendous and much needed ability they go work as cashiers.

The point being, retraining isn't an answer - that just masks the musical-chairs nature of unemployment. I know nurses in the US who trained into with the sort of thoughts you have hear, and now there's a hiring freeze. Nurses can't change jobs, and newly trained nurses can't find them. That's the reality. I'm talking about people with four-year degrees from prestigious universities. Should they immediately retrain for something else. (Perhaps florist school has some slots.)

We can have a kinder, more tolerant culture, that accepts that many (most) of us will go through transitions, and not batter us for doing so.

Or we could just become a nation of taxi drivers. One ex-nurse I know does that now, and struggles to make minimum wage.

But comments like that one above just come from people who, as far as I can tell, aren't interested in the realities. We could also all move to the Outback, reclaim the land and live as subsistence farmers. That's about as realistic.

Replying to Hasbeen's comment:...Professor, not too much……

At this moment, I would have to agree with you to some extent.

Why does it have to be?

I am 76 years young and I grew up in an orphanage, a victim of brutality that existed against children at that time. Luckily, for me the headmaster saw I had potential and persuaded my father to let me go on to higher education. My first year of technical study was done whilst in the orphanage. I then went to live with my father.
My father said he had not needed a higher education; if I wanted one then I had better earn myself.
With a Scottish/Irish ancestry I accepted the challenge . Working at night to become educated. Later I was able to buy some land on the Murray Valley irrigation. While building a farm I also studied to become an engineer, later went into manufacturing, business consultancy, (both private and government). Retiring December 1994 I continued to work as a community advocate.
THE POINT. If I could achieve that, there is no reason why we citizens of Australia cannot force governments to change policies and culture. Making Australia, not only the clever country, but also a proud one. We can be proud of what we achieved. Proud we are capable of standing up to the dictatorial governments, greedy companies and their greedy shareholders.

We achieved this after WW2, inviting migrants to help with our development of a sound manufacturing base and successful farming operations that were best practice. Those migrants are now part of our country. We led the world in what was best practice. Unfortunately our governments and their departments appear to have become "captive" of international combines and the interests of other countries, especially American interests, not our own. Politicians seem to consider, one elected that they know better than its citizens what Australia. Have we become so apathetic or perhaps self centred, thinking only of ourselves rather than the good of the country? Where is the pioneering spirit that motivated our ancestors.
We can do it again.
Regards
professori_au

I read this post and almost cry. There are so many capable and willing people who would gladly take on work, in law enforcement if the union that rules the roost in that department, would simply abide the law as made by the Parliament of the Commonwealth. For generations going way back to 1342, English society did not need a Police force. Law enforcement was not left to ASIC, or the Federal Police, or State Police, it was done by what were known as common informers.

The biggest cartel in Australia is run by lawyers. Just going to university will not get you into the club. Once in you must do two years on menial pay, learning the dirty tricks, before you will get an unrestricted practicing certificate: The first step on the ladder to earning $350 an hour.

But you and I are both already qualified. S 13 and 15F Crimes Act 1914 ( Cth) are Commonwealth Laws, supposed to be binding on the courts judges and people of every State notwithstanding anything in the laws of any State. You are defined in the CCAC which came into force on the 20th October 2001, and in its dictionary you are defined as a Commonwealth public official if you take up the offer to act on behalf of the Crown.

Every law needed to allow you to make enough money is a very short time and retire, is in place, but there is one block. It is the Union: The Liberal Party Union of Lawyers. There are enough fifth columnists in the Labor Party whose first loyalty is to the Law Societies, and Bar Associations, to make the Union a sacred cow. The Union has made law courts a closed shop from top to bottom, since 1953. The Justices of the High Court would have been leaned on from the Law Societies. Hawke was leaned on in 1983, by the lawyers in the Labor Party to protect the sacred cows drawn from the ranks of lawyers. The victims are the homeless and unemployed. Rudd should fix it

This article and comments are all symptoms of a larger problem, which is decades in the making, and will take decades to fix, if at all; if and when those with the ability to do so, get aware and get started. We are swapping our standard of living, and quality of life; with that of the emerging economies: BRIC: Brazil, Russia, China and India. Oh, I know Russia seems to be going backwards at the moment, but that is beside the point. Look around the globe. Some go up, while others go down. The downward spiral is punctuated by 'rich get richer, and number a smaller amount, poor get poorer and number a larger amount'. Quality of life is like money: There is only a certain amount to go around. With money, some are crowing about how it has been 'lost', with the global financial meltdown. Not 'lost', are you nuts? It has been transferred to others, who took it from you, as surely as the man in the bank wearing the balaclava takes it from the teller. Just in a smarter manner, tricking you with AAA ratings which were smoke and mirrors, or is that thimbles and peas? We can all see what is happening here. When are those with the influence going to do something about it? That's what I want to know. I work 20hrs/wk, on award pay, changing prices in a Dept store. Recently when still employed full-time, finished with a mortgage on a small, unrenovated 50yr old home. So I get by. For now. Tried the Centrelink thing, but they won't help unless I do the training, and the only course available is operation of phones, faxes and photocopiers. Guess what I have been doing for the past 30yrs full-time? Working in an office. So - (and they have my resume, so they know) - I might know how to use this equipment.
But - what is more important than getting our standard of living back? Whether a politician treated a car dealer favourably! What a waste of our resources.

The sworn enemy of skilled unemployed are the Liberal Party. It is the Liberal Party who because they have totally destroyed Australia’s legal system, introduced civil conscription as a qualification for Newstart allowance. When the Australian people made provision for the payment of unemployment benefit, in 1946, a move sponsored by the Labor Party, the provision contains these words. ( but so as not to authorize any form of civil conscription). The work for the dole, mutual obligation, harassment of unemployed people to attend useless courses, by the private employment agencies are all examples of civil conscription.

It is time to form a union to compete with the Liberal Party Union of Lawyers. Get together with some other unemployed people and form a local unemployed union. We the skilled unemployed are in a position to do so, and form a not for profit local association, to push our local member for reform of the legal system so we can, as a committee of skilled unemployed, use our talents to bring some very large corporate offenders to justice. The laws are all there but there is a road block standing in the way of prosperity, and it is called the Liberal Party. It includes members of a liberal party as well, who claim to be Labor, but in reality are part and parcel of the problem. These liberal party members are in power in State governments, and are just as bad as the Liberal Party when it comes to oppression and serious harassment of unemployed people and the homeless.

Most of us can use computers now, some of us are over the retirement age, and would welcome the freedom that limitless earning capacity will bring. There are laws, like the Statute of Westminster the First, that say a person MUST have a choice, of jail, or a fine. Every time a member of the lawyers union sends a person to jail, for the State to support, he or she is breaking that law, but cannot at present be fined for doing so. Kevin Rudd should be asked to help us.