Centrelink’s reported figures on compliance reviews don’t support any inferences on the rate of dole-bludging. All they show is that Centrelink’s ‘non-compliant’ clients are in the minority. The figures on fraud investigations and prosecutions are much more revealing.

First, they suggest very strongly that the number of people who deliberately cheat the welfare system is not merely a small proportion of Centrelink clients it’s a positively a miniscule percentage of the total number of Centrelink clients. They also suggests that there aren’t too many more of them out there who could be caught and prosecuted if Centrelink did more investigations; at most you can expect Centrelink’s fraud investigations to produce between ~2700 and ~3500 prosecutions each year. This will save somewhere between $100m and $150m off welfare spending – consistently less than 1% of the total welfare budget.

That’s a lot of – uncosted – bureaucratic effort for very little result. As noted above the ANAO found that it’s impossible to say whether the ‘Support the System that Supports You’ campaign delivered value for money by saving more off the welfare budget than it cost to run the advertising and provide the administrative support.

Producer,
Sorry you see it that way. I always thought it was case of management going on strike and the workers (eventually) begging them to come back and crank up industry again.
So you obviously believe that a persons intellectuality and physical capacity to invent, produce and supply is the property of everybody else and he should 'share' it.
Crappola. Might has always been right.

Dear Hasbeen,

<<Unemployment benefits as you seem to fail to understand, are not meant to be an alternate way of living. They are meant to tide someone over while they look for a job to support their lifestyle.>>

True, but this can be changed. The name of that money should probably be changed as well to reflect this change of attitude.

<<Too many see bludging on the taxpayer as an acceptable way of life>>

I don't find it acceptable myself, so I don't live that way.
However, it's a fact that others do find it acceptable, who might as well find worse lifestyles acceptable, such as crime or begging in the streets.

<<& far too many bleeding hearts want the level of support increased so it is a lifestyle.>>

I don't take credit for the heart-stuff, but otherwise I am with them for the following reasons:

1) Dole-lifestyle is better than crime-lifestyle. When people are hungry, they will end up eating this way or the other. Fortifying our homes would cost more. In fact, the poorest workers that live in poor areas and cannot afford to fortify their homes and hire armed guards to patrol their streets, will be the first victims, so they too would prefer to stay home rather than return at the end of the work-day to find it empty. Jailing people is even more expensive for the tax-payer.

2) Dole-lifestyle is better than cheating. Those who don't want to work - don't work, but in between they play cat-and-mouse with the authorities, wasting the time and resources of government (at our expense), employers and doctors.

3) Dole-lifestyle is better than begging. If you've been in countries where dole is not available, you would know the feeling when they rattle tin cans at you when you stop at the lights, or knock on your door at home. It certainly doesn't feel safe, nor comfortable.

4) Dole-lifestyle is better than the busy-lifestyle of those who get paid and are kept busy producing nothing of real value and often even vain products and services of a negative value.

(continued...)

(...continued)

5) Dole-lifestyle is better than slavery-lifestyle, where people need to work against their will and often against their conscience, just to keep their children's stomachs half-full.

6) Those willing to live frugally, thus have only a minimal impact on the environment, should be encouraged. Why force even more people to commute daily to the city and back, causing traffic-jams and wasting our money (including tax-payer money) on dedicating roads, office-buildings, air-conditioned rooms and heaps of electronic gadgets for their use?

7) With less people offering work, those who genuinely want employment get more bargaining power. Apart from pay-conditions, this more-importantly includes the ability to refuse unethical chores.

8) Many good things, if not most, come in informal ways. While it is probably impossible in this dark age and the foreseeable future to completely severe the stressful link between contribution and money, easing it a bit will increase informal productivity and all acts of free kindness.

9) I rather live in a relaxed society than in a rat-race.

10) Many who don't work, actually are unable or have a limited capacity to work. They may not be recognised as such, often not even by themselves, because they could work for a while but then get sick. Unemployment is often a way to avoid admitting one's limitations to oneself and/or to their loved-ones (nevertheless, those limitations do exist).

11) Peace of mind is a valuable asset!

Now of course I prefer that this not be at the tax-payer's expense and in an ideal situation indeed it wouldn't, but so long as our tax-money is given to others, each receiving 10-15 times more than dole-recipients, paying those others should be cut first.

Chrisgaff1000 – Might is always right?

I wonder if you would subscribe to that philosophy after being relieved of your wallet by a mighty thug.

I believe that the current system distributes our productive wealth in a disproportionate manner and is the root cause of the global dilemma.

If an inventor, invents, produces and supplies property that individual is entitled to 100% of the proceeds. The inventor is limited by his own ability and time, as a consequence so is his income.

If an inventor invents, 50 individuals produces, another 20 individual supplies material and another manages production of property they are all entitled to a portion of the proceeds. None should receive a disproportionate share; this is not to say the share should be equal either. The manager is not entitled to 40%.

The top 10% within our economy receive 40%, this is disproportionate and unfair. They are parasites and the real bludgers!

Yuyutsu & Producer, It really is frightening that there are people with your attitude in the country. It will not take too many with your ideas to destroy the society you depend on for your existence, but would destroy if you could.

These last few months of reading the opinions on here are softening my attitude to the Muslim religion & attitude. A Christian country will never treat the ne'er-do-well as firmly as it should, but they will.

Like the mobs of Rome, who destroyed their civilisation with demands for bread & circus, your attitudes destroy the foundations of ours.

Western civilisation is being eroded by the bleeding hearts, & the bludgers who use them to advance their demands.

To paraphrase another bloke, well may we say god save the queen, because nothing is likely to save the western culture.