My wife is a counselor with a not for profit job network organisations. As a counselor she handles all the very long term, [18 months & longer] unemployed. In our district she tells me that less than 15% of these long term people are at all interested in finding a job.

There are 3 organisations doing this in a part of our shire with about 14,000 population. Her case book has around 650 cases, as do the other two organisations, giving almost 2000 long term unemployed against approximately 8000 employed. Not a great figure when you look at the costs to us.

She aranges about 90 appointments a week with these unemployed, with about 65 turning up. If the unemployed miss 3 consecutive appointments they are breached, but it is usual for three breaches to be allowed before they suffer any loss of benefit. That is, they can get away with over 4 months of not keeping network interviews, or job interviews before any penalty is likely.

The entitlement thing is rampant. My wife arranged, & the organization paid for, a 22 year old young lady, unemployed for 3 years, to do a real estate institute course, & arranged a job in the rental section of a local real estate company.

The lady & her mother demanded she be supplied with a full wardrobe of clothes suitable for the job, & called my wife 3 kinds of fatherless child when this was refused.

The girl lasted 3 months & just stopped turning up.

Anyone who bleeds for this garbage is a fool.

Things were different in the 60s. That might be why there was much less unemployment.

Remember the CES, the Commonwealth Employment Service, as it was.

In the late 60s I was living on my yacht at a Balmain [Sydney] marina. [I'd sold my house to buy a Brabham F2 racing car, & had enough left to buy a boat, but not a house].

One Saturday a CES bloke turned up looking for someone to get him out to a decrepit old boat moored out in the stream. I rowed him out.

I found he was going to see a dole bludger who camped on the boat. They had sent him to interviews, & he turned up, but unwashed, in torn stinking shorts & singlet, & was still unemployed.

The CES bloke gave him a new pair of shorts & a singlet, & 2 appointments for job interviews, & told him to turn up clean, or else. He told the bludger his dole would be cut off on the next thursday. It was suggested it might take some weeks for any payment to be recommenced. I guess this was the or else.

I can not imagine a bureaucrat putting in part of Saturday today, nor can I imagine some bludger being told to take an offered job, or starve.

Sounds like a great concept for today to me, & one proven to work in the past.

Talking about bludgers, so many "public servants" grab a salary over 10 times more than the dole each, off our taxes and do more harm than good.

Even if they cannot be fired, telling them to "not come on Monday", to stay home doing nothing instead and cutting down their overtime and travel-expenses will save tax payers more than the whole dole system several times over!

Also, maintaining the Centerlink monstrous administration to check on people whether they indeed are willing to work (which makes no difference, in the end those who want to work do work and those who don't do not), all that cat-and-mouse play costs us more than just giving that meagre dole-money, less than 10% of an average public-servant's salary, to anyone that asks.

Just to keep things in perspective an estimated 30,000 economic welfare for lifers will arrive this financial year to add to the ever growing sponge on the taxpayers.

These sponges are worse because they will get preferential treatment.

Philip, thanks for reminding me of the ongoing mess this incompitent mob, encouraged by the loyal support of thier brain washed followers, have created for those of us like myself, who read between the lines and saw the incompetence before it surfaced.

K Rudd and co should never ever be forgiven for this mess they have created.

Y while you and I often disagree your ability to think can not be questioned, unlike some who only see a Labor problem here, yet it has been with us for generations.
I from Labor, agree with you.
Any reforms to my party after the smash must include looking at the failures of the public service.
The world will not stand still nore should we.
I worked in the insanity that is NSW public service.
And beg!
That not the target every one red neck get their way, but that accountability checks and balances be the rule for every public servant,while we develop a way to replace them with something better.