Ha Ha Ha,Well said.
The divide between the all knowing wise men of Canberra and us,all the commen people is wide and long.

Working as a volunteer community advocate, I see many problems with the privatised job placement system.
Despite complaints about the old CES, officers were sent into the field to try to drum up job vacancies, which were then listed on the board.
Today if you do not get your form in on time, then you will find your payments cut.
One of myclients, a young mother on a special benefit with three children when her six weekly review comes up, has problems receiving the forms in time to enable it to be completed and returned on time.
It appears that they are sent from Melbourne, taking a long time to arrive, and processed in Melbourne.
I pick her up, take her to Centrelink, yet nearly every time her payment is stopped because according they did not receive the form on time.
Absolutely Bull dust!
As soon as she receives it, I call and pick her up to make sure that it gets there on time.
Centrelink back pays on the next pension but does not consider how she is expected to feed her family for two weeks.
There is a problem with the system. I am not sure what it is.
Whether they too much reliance is placed on computerised information; whether the information is fed into the computer on time instead of face-to-face interviews or; there is a lack of staff training; a lack of experienced personnel, a system causing unnecessary delays because it requires everything to be referred back to Melbourne.
In the "Old Days”, people make an appointment, speak with a Centrelink Caseworker or Centrelink Social worker, and have the matter addressed locally.
Centralised government has always failed as they were too far from their clients, especially those in the rural areas and principle cities.
Governments then realising it was not working would return to regionalised services. The old City versus country mentality also seems to becoming more prevalent.
I have seen older workers go through training schemes and when qualified find there are no jobs in that area.

continued

Several years ago, I was employed as a consultant developing employment and training schemes for the government and at one time, I spoke at a forum for older workers. I asked members in the audience what their backgrounds and experience were and their success to obtain work.
Most were highly skilled professionals and trades people and there should have been work available but with the government policy about so-called level playing fields and global economy was allowing jobs that these people could have filled to go off shore.
One older worker, a high skilled technician was advised to “Retrain?? (with his qualifications I would suggest de-skilling), as a teacher’s aide”.
Once qualified, he applied for work in the public and private sectors.
Schools told him they would love to employ him but budgets did not provide funds to employ a teacher’s aide.
Mickey Mouse ideas fail because they do not plan. If the government wanted people trained as teacher’s aides then they needed to provide a budget to the education system for it.
This demonstrates poor quality policy development by government. If you want people to train in specific areas, you must ensure that there will be vacancies available.
Job Placement companies are not interested in job placement. Those they do find there is little checking and very little follow-up. Their preference is that you to study one of the courses they promote and receive grants for.
I have spoken with young people training or studying, find work lasts only as long as a subsidy lasts, then they become unemployed again and the company takes on the next optimist who will receive the same treatment.
Companies complain about the lack of good training; the lack of experienced people, etc. Well, you do not get that until you train.
Instead of allowing companies to steal from other countries the government should insist companies train Australian citizens and then ensure the work is not poor quality and exploitive.
These comments are not aimed at the good employers, but to those who qualify as bad employers, who use the minimum wage to exploit.