belly>>Welfare lobby is displeased with Governments intention to review disability support pensions.
They claim, many agree, some can in fact work, and that some are hiding in those ranks unfairly.

If you don't see this happening, then you are either blind, or you choose to ignore it.

I knew a guy who was on a carers pension. His duty was to be with his partner if her dodgy knee gave way. If!

Now I am not sure if his duty included the frequent visits to the pub, but I assume so. Now a walking stick, or frame could have provided suitable support.

>>Why contract out work like parks and gardens if those jobs could be used for a work for fair wages and benefits ones?

Now you're talking, it's called 'work for welfare', but for some reason, each time I bring it up I am shut down and accussed of being a 'dole basher'.

Now it was mentioned earlier that welfare should provide the three basics, food, cloths and shelter. That's it!

If you wish for more then get a job. That shouldn't be to hard if one believes our madam PM. She recons we are at 'full employment'.

If you want children, then find a way to pay for them.

If you work, then take out insurance incase you get sick.

Insurance costs less than a pack of cigs or a six pack per week. Your choice!

With the risk of sounding like a broken record, stop paying cash!

Pokies and pubs don't take vouchers.

Rehctub: ”If you wish for more then get a job. That shouldn't be to hard if one believes our madam PM. She recons we are at 'full employment'."

She’s a funny girl that PM.

“If you want children, then find a way to pay for them.”

Are we promoting financial abortions now? I guess not a huge difference between that and being encouraged to give birth for financial gain here.

“If you work, then take out insurance incase you get sick. Insurance costs less than a pack of cigs or a six pack per week. Your choice!”

A pack of cigarettes now costs more than 25 loaves of bread so yeah probably. Should we talk about Medicare levies?

“With the risk of sounding like a broken record, stop paying cash!”

I’ve only just quickly read through the thread and saw you say that a few times. You want them to have food stamps or something?

“Pokies and pubs don't take vouchers.”

Thing is – people with various addictions sell their food stamps for cash in countries that work the system that way. If you gave them food they would sell the food etc.

So the problem isn’t what they are given it is how the lives of welfare recipients are managing and who is helping them manage?

In aboriginal communities where they quarantined parts of welfare payments and reduced hours of alcohol being bought, removed porn etc…. what happened? Similar things going down in Alaska last I heard. It seems we're deciding how we can or should treat the have-nots, do we have a spare island we can put them on or something?

Would it need to be a big island, do we know how many decided to stop struggling to feed and clothe themselves or their kids and go to the pub instead?

There's pensions.

And there's welfare.

Seniors: If anybody reaches 65, and meets the assets test, they are entitled to a pension. Period. They've most likely earned it. End of story.

Disabled: if somebody is disabled, to whatever degree, then they are entitled to a disability pension. Unless they can be 'fixed up', that's it, end of story.

Then there's welfare: when there is no work, then OK, people need to be financially supported. But I used to take it for granted that, in rural areas, when the picking season started, UB stopped and you went out and worked. I picked peaches, grapes, apricots, pears, oranges, lemons and helped to raise my kids on it in some years, and pay the rent as a student in other years.

And single mothers of course are entitled to support while their kids are at home. But once their youngest is six or so, then they do either part-time study (genuine TAFE or university) or part-time work.

So WELFARE, as distinct from PENSIONS, is conditional: if someone is able-bodied, and not encumbered by small children, then they should be either studying (i.e. for future work) or working. No matter where somebody might be, this sounds fair enough to me. If people are in remote areas, then they move to where work might be. If they don't have skills to work, then they get them: the onus is on them, not on society in the first instance - but of course, 'society', government, should be facilitating this leap, especially through a re-vamped TAFE, a TAFE which was of actual value to the unemployed and unskilled.

What's the alternative ? That able-bodied people can stay unemployed forever ? We each have only one life - should be anybody be 'allowed' to piss it away ? We are all more or less intelligent enough to live fulfilled lives, raising children in financial security and reasonable comfort, providing some sort of model for those kids to encourage them to do something the same. We all have that duty to our children, to our society, and to ourselves.

Joe

See, i think our MP may of be suggesting that those school leavers that will commence New Start, be granted mailed tokens for the basics of general living expenses, for the reasons out-lined by some. This is to discourage and break the dependency or follow the leeder in the sence of what some of the 60-70-80,s born people that as we know, that time was completely different to what opportunities that are available now.

( singles only it applies to )16 to 20 years of age for that gen gap to be broken, then working will be the only choice instead of the "she,ll be right mate" when one leaves school. Bar-coded photo ID, along with the tokens ( BAR CODED TOO ) so corruption on the system can fool-proof.

Rent, electricity, and food this will apply to only, with center-link interviews required if circumstances for other problems arise.
Some money will be payed of course, but not enough to go and party with. Now if the work for the amount or number of people is not there, the governments cant just pull the rug from with-under the feet, since The governments are fully responsible for the number of people its systems can hold. Population growth and the size of it, again! its the Governments JOB to make sure is don't happen, but of course, we all know Australia is in-fact over-peopled.

On the other hand, and this is where rehctub fails to see....that if the adults or others don't have access to cash.....the have gots will targeted with all sorts of crime included home-invasions, bank robberies, break and enters on percentages never seen before, so I,d think twice if I where you on the adult level of things.

Some because of where and when they were born, technologies have surprisingly left some with no chance at all to gain a foot hold on todays fast-tracked multy-million hoops one must jump through just to get in the door, and you know what red tape Iam talking about.


The new generations have to been redirected now, before the problem continues.

LEAP

Well I don't know, Quantumleap, the last paid work I did at 61 was working in a beautiful brand-new dairy (now successfully defunct) at an Aboriginal community, twice a day, 5 am to 8.30 am, 4.30 pm to 8 pm, seven days a week, during which I gained enormous respect for all dairy farmers.

So I'm not all that fussed about any able-bodied person, Black or White, male or female, being required to do whatever work is available, fruit-picking, ditch-digging, fencing, whatever, and being required to move away for periods in order to tap into available work, if work wasn't available in their home area.

Nobody, who is able-bodied or unencumbered by children or other legitimate obligations, should be so unskilled that they cannot work, so either they go fruit-picking or similar work (so that we don't have to bring in labour from overseas while people down the road are idle - and comfortably on 'welfare') or they get skilled enough to do 'better' jobs, less strenuous, less outdoors, with less impact on their delicate muscles or skin.

Learn or earn, or go to buggery.

I don't think it is as black and white as you say, Loudmouth.

We all know that many prospective employers (be they orchard owners, dairy farmers, road maintenance companies, or whatever) will be choosy about who they employ.

People who haven't been employed for some time may genuinely not be able to find employment, eg longterm unemployed, ex-criminals, previous jail incarceration, those with previous mental illnesses, people with poor English, immigrants, Aboriginals (sad but true) and even people that look 'different' or 'threatening, such as people with multiple tattoos or piercings etc.

We can't simply say 'tough' to these people, and leave them to their own devices rather than give them welfare payments can we?

Imagine the massive increase in crime in this country if we denied people welfare?

Sure, we can send these people to all the 'courses' we want to, but many will still continue to be unattractive to prospective employers for many reasons.
Maybe if the Government itself took on these people to attend to Government funded employment, it may help some of these people.
I won't hold my breath though.