Come on you mob. Sit down money is not the exclusive preserve of remote settlements. Although high profile and much discussed it is a small fraction of the national problem. I would love some debate without the dark glasses.

Hi Producer,

Debate ? Feel free :)

Joe

Got it.

Your dark glasses are stuck on!

Producer, once again no!
Loudmouth/Joe has told us much about him self, and his wife, maybe you should ask?
Too about successful University educated first Australians.
I feel like a passing breeze only just noticed you, I and Joe, all think not far apart.
I know first hand about the death of that scheme, it hurt in very bad ways.
It was a great plan, but in the wrong hands looted!
A young man I knew, not unlike many others, went from pride in a job, to hanging himself.
IF an answer exists, and it just has to, it will be confronting for some.
Remember how we started this debate? who we remember Noels words?, most put our trust in?
Such men are rare, todays bitter PC driven world, on both sides, YES BOTH SIDES, needs a push.
And that push must not be just to start us, but to oversee us, at every step.
Remember this country is a two party two directions one.
And if we think the other side always gets it wrong, know whave done very little too.
And that our chance to change is nearly over, for a time.

Belly – your last post had a lot of stuff in it. You clearly have a lot of respect for Loudmouth.

My position is that “sit down money” is an issue for all Australians, not just the first Australians. To discuss it in the context of one part of our community is not balanced. I put it to you that the lack of that balanced approach divides and distorts.

I find most discussion on this forum get too specific. They tend to get personal and the context of the discussion is lost.

You talk about sides. Life is not a football game and should not be treated as such. We all have different philosophies and our representatives for better or worse should reflect that difference. Representation should be proportional, democratic and as small as possible.

We all are very similar. If we don’t have food and shelter we die. There are people from all sectors of this wealthy country that die from these causes.

There are people in this country that take so much of the wealth but make none of the wealth. We are so busy supporting their habit; they are getting away with it.

We need to stop looking at our lives, our country and indeed the world through the prism of the dollar.

I agree if everybody’s wrong, nobody’s right!

Maybe you remember this song from Buffalo Springfield in 1967.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp5JCrSXkJY

Thank you, Belly, you do me proud :)

Producer,

So where are at in the debate ? Do we agree that welfare is necessary for anybody caught out, for a short time, between jobs, or between school or training and a job ?

Do we agree that, past a point in time, reliance on welfare starts to become a bad habit, one difficult to break ?

I would respectfully suggest, for Black and white, old and young, male and female, as long as people are able-bodied and not caring for others, that they should be assisted to find work as soon as possible after they find themselves in a position of relying on welfare.

In the old CES days, and maybe even now, employment centres used to post up detailed job descriptions - one checked out if there was a job which matched one's skill (or desperation) level, and off one went.

Nowadays, it sounds much more sophisticated. I certainly like Forrest's and Generation One's approach (see: http://generationone.org.au/),
to match a person (perhaps + short skills-training) to a job, push them through training, and then into the job. No mucking about, no pointless training programs that get people nowhere (except to allow them to put off the evil day of having to find a job).

Also: a limit on how many, or how long, somebody can enrol in endless training programs. Perhaps put an up-front fee on each course, nothing huge, just enough to 'encourage' people to get serious, say $ 100.

On a slightly different slant, thanks to the Bradley 'reforms', huge numbers of people will soon be graduating in cultural studies, art & design, and all manner of professional courses, from which they will never find work, not in those fields anyway. But they will have huge HECS debts, for many years to come.

Meanwhile, great numbers of people are needed with all manner of professional science/mining/engineering/geology expertise.

Will anybody be surprised when somebody discovers a sort of, I don't know - imbalance ?

[TBC]