Welfare, introduced as an old aged or invalid pension around the turn of the 19th century was introduced to provide support for seniors with those eligible receiving around one quarter of the average annual income.

Today, there are all types of hands dipping into the cookie jar as welfare covers a much broader range of recipients from single parents to seniors and almost everything in between.

When you have a system that not only pays one to have children, but then supports the children that the parents most certainly knew they could not afford to provide for, the question must be asked, how long can such a system continue before either the payers of this system, they being the 58% of tax payers that pay positive taxes, or the distributors of the welfare dollars, the governments, simply run out of funds to hand out?

Do you really think it is fair for someone to have children, knowing full well they can’t support them, then expect someone else to foot the bill?

Where is this going to end?

The system is necessary as is in a hope that these kids you are supporting will grow up to be taxpayers and support you in a later time.

Rehctub asks

'Do you really think it is fair for someone to have children, knowing full well they can’t support them, then expect someone else to foot the bill?'

If we have money for sports, we have money to burn for the environment, we have money for Women's Affairs, we have money for drinking and gambling, we have money for immigration, we have money for the Arts, we have money for public servants to fly around the world on junkets constantly, we have money for the fauna, we have money for abortions,we have money for tourism, money to bail out banks and business so I really think spending a bit on our most precious resource (children) is money well spent.

Dont forget the money spent on the military.

Without welfare we could all join our comrades in china and india working for 50 cents an hour. Welfare is a safety net that affects the wages and conditions of all our workers. If there was no welfare there would be a race to the bottom as employers took advantage of the desperate and lower wages would eventuate across the board. Not to mention the increase we would see in crime.

How would you like it if some "dole bludger" came to your boss and offered to work for half of your current salary? Your boss would jump at the chance and you are now screwed. You will have to make a better offer and become more and more competitive price wise. Remember labour is just a commodity like any other and capitalists will always try to reduce their costs including what you cost them as a worker. Hence why they are all moving to china where the workers are only one step above slaves.

Welfare should be a minimum safety net for all and not handed out madly to every Tom, Dick and Harry. It should provide the basics of life and allow one to live without having to resort to crime or eating dogfood. It should not be given to people who work or for having children or to landowners. It should be reserved for the sick and disabled, the old and the idiotic, children and maybe for veterans especially traumatised and wounded ones.

I also personally think you should have to work for your dole money. Not full time but to an amount of hours commensurate with how much benefit you receive. In most cases 1 or 2 days per week. Make it flexible and useful. No painting rocks or building trails to nowhere. Maybe even extend it to other forms of community service like bushfire brigades, surf clubs or meals on wheels type things. They are always looking for new members to help out. Get rid of all the monkey tricks and visits to Centrelink and proving you looked for work. As long as you dont have a job and did your required activity you would get paid. This would act as more of a safety net than it does now and it would save millions in wasteful and humiliating Centrelink processes and actualy provide useful and needed community improvements. Paying people to sit on their bums and watch tv or surf forums like this is bloody stupid and self defeating. It encourages and facilitates sloth and drug taking, obesity and other harmful habits that are hard to break and make going back to a normal working life very difficult indeed. The unemployed would be seen in a different light if people knew they were working for their pittance each week. Even more so if some of their work for the dole projects actually had some benefit to the community.

Sadly it wont happen because then who would the politicians have to demonise and whatever would tabloid tv and the shock jocks do without their sensationalist bash a dole bludger stories.

P.S. what is it with this word limit. Why is it only 350 words? Sorry I need more.

Welfare is there to provide a minimum standard of living for all. It was introduced because Governments realised that the capitalist system is intrinsically unfair, and will always lead to a sub-class of society. Without welfare this sub-class is a constant source of danger to society, from petty crime to revolution. Since it's introduction it has slowly grown to cover more and more of the financially challenged, and at the same time those in power have forgotten the lessons of history. The rise of the business model of Gov' has blinded them to the basic facts, and is re-introducing the sub-class. This will come back to haunt them, I hope. I can't help but wonder how the welfare bill compares to the cost of retired politicians, that's running into billions now, but the facts are a state secret, FOI can't touch it, it's much too important for we mere mortals to be allowed to know. It doesn't even appear in any Budgets, state or federal, they take out their money before anything else, and don't include it, gosh, I wonder why?