Has anyone been made to do this? As much as I find what I am involved in for WFTD it really is a complete waste of time. I am working on a historical project for something that isn't going to do anything. I am also in the middle of setting up a new business and really need the pittance paid by centrelink until I can actually pay myself. I am working towards getting off the dole but am thwarted due to the time constraints on this meaningless govt stuff up. If if there was a job at the end of it then it would be a good thing. I have people here with no clue what to do so just sit around all day just to comply.
There needs to be more research into this. There are three like me that are starting their own business. You know what? Pay us our centrelink, let us build our business and then bye bye centrelink. Instead we are wasting our time doing a nothing project just to comply. What utter bollocks.

I agree. But how come you're not on NEIS?

Disgusting indeed, but then many of us have jobs that aren't doing any good for anyone, perhaps with the exception of their boss's ego.

Dependence on money for survival and the anxiety that comes with it have done far too much damage and encouraged many useless if not even harmful and unethical jobs.

The dole should be unconditional, except for the obvious condition that the recipient truly has no other income.

Even if there be a few abusers, it is better to give them that meagre sum because the majority of us are good in nature and tend to help others in so many informal ways that do not involve money.

I've done work for the dole before, (I'll admit it) and I agree with you.

It IS a complete waste of time, a totally mismanaged resource, a policy managed by idiots and an expense upon taxpayers for which they receive no benefit or expected return on investment.

That's the truth, sorry everyone.

It's also why I advocate for base level socialism (to make our existing system of base level healthcare and education sustainable) for jobs and training.

I don't want to punish people for their 'uselessness'.
I want to provide people with the tools and knowledge to get out of that situation.
I want to stop people from falling between the cracks in the first place so they can be all they call be and have wholesome lives.

This policy is a joke.
It would be better to let play around on a D10 dozer and clear a path for roads and infrastructure and learn some real skills in the process than have you clearing weeds under high voltage power lines (for private companies... wtf?) or whipper snipping the local church as some mundane form of punishment.

I respect that capitalism allows us to choose our own paths and that we must also live by our choices but I want to make it easy for people NOT TO FAIL.

We could provide them with the tools to succeed but we punish them like criminals and force them to work alongside people who are sentenced by a court to do community service.

These people may have made bad choices but is degrading and discriminatory not to help them become useful in society.
We shoot ourselves in the foot with this policy that has never been fine tuned to actually be useful to society as a whole.

Trouble with DSS is unless you ask the right questions you get nowhere, (unless you are a refugee or Aboriginal or Torres straight Islander).

Tell them what you want to do and see what assistance is available, sure there is something available for new business start ups.

A lot also depends on the competence of who you talk to.
Good luck.

Stupid failure of work for the dole is the druggies, drunks and bludgers seem to be able to get out of doing it.

They are the ones who should be put to work.

I agree. The people I am "working" with are a good bunch that are actively looking for jobs; like me they are in their 50's and no one seems to want to hire 50 somethings. We had one character last week though that kept on complaining about the cold and how much it makes him shake and he couldn't possibly stay here any longer... Yep, he was strung out on droogs and they had to let him go.
We are all wasting our time here. No one has the time now to search for jobs. My new business is starting slower because of this. I also didn't want a bank overdraft this time to float the business. Seems like I may have to though.

I have done two WFD projects over the years.
The first was repairing a long neglected historic gun emplacement for the local museum. It was trashed again within six months.

The second was for a Headspace centre turning an old garage into a gym. Was so badly organised we spent 90% of the time sitting around waiting for materials. The supervisor used to mark us on his roll at morning tea then say we could go if we wanted.

The last place I worked was a "social enterprise" that had quite a few WFD participants over the years. I was on 2 days a week part time and they were on 2 days a week WFD. I got $18 an hour. They got an extra $20 a fortnight. We were expected to do exactly the same work.

WFD as it stands is just pointless make work schemes and punishment for being poor.
Straight from the "make them suffer and they will go away" playbook they have used on refugees for years now.

Check
http://unemployedworkersunion.com/
They can help

My grandfather had to work for the dole, during the depression.

Yutsie: Disgusting indeed, but then many of us have jobs that aren't doing any good for anyone.

If you are unhappy with your job you should be looking for one that'll make you happy. Then again, some people will never be happy, it's their nature to be that way, always looking at the dark side.

Yutsie: The dole should be unconditional, except for the obvious condition that the recipient truly has no other income.

I think you meant "conditional."

Mikk: WFD as it stands is just pointless make work schemes and punishment for being poor.

There is the problem. The attitude of "punishment for being poor." It is not! It's doing, at least, something for the money you receive. Singapore has the answer. Everybody does something & it doesn't matter if you are an out of work Professor, Politician or labour. You must do something even wipe the seats & benches down every morning around town.

Most of the Roads in Australia were built with WFD after WW2. Three days for Married men & four days a week for single men. They lived in Camps away from home. They also built a lot of beautiful stone bridges in high mountainous areas. A beautiful example is the one over Crystal Creek near Townsville. I believe there are lots of examples in Tasmania.

Here is the answer, except our gutless PC politicians do not have the guts to do it.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/670000/Unemployed-Russians-face-parasite-tax-economy-nosedives

Putin launches PARASITE TAX for healthy who won't work.
RUSSIA is set to launch a 'parasite tax' which will fine healthy unemployed people who refuse to work.

Fit, working-age Russians who turn down jobs will face a charge of almost £200 - in sharp contrast to the state handouts jobless Britons can expect.

The levy has already been rolled out in neighbouring Belarus, where out-of-work adults are slapped with a fee until they agree to take jobs being offered to them.

Kremlin officials say they now intend to emulate the controversial scheme, which contrasts sharply with Britain's welfare state.

Moscow's deputy labour minister Andrei Pudov said the bold move by Belarus was a "significant step" towards addressing the economic crisis in Russia.

He told a conference on Thursday: "Our colleagues from Belarus could share their experience, they got serious innovations taking place in their country after they introduced the so-called tax on people of working age who do not take part in any work and do not make any insurance payments.

"This was a significant step. We are only discussing it now and they have already made the decision."

PROBLEM SOLVED.

Work for the dole should be compulsory, but it should be actual WORK. If that means swinging a pick, repairing South Australia's roads (they surely must be the most neglected in the country) so be it. People lacking the strength for manual work can stand about with stop signs; they can deliver meals on wheels, they can work in public gardens, they can work at whatever needs to be done because the government has wasted money on on their unnecessary rubbish projects. No able-bodied person in Australia should be paid for doing NOTHING, whether they be school-leavers waiting/looking for a first job, or non-English speaking government imports under our shonky 'refugee' programme. Any idle, non-citizen should be booted back to where they came from. The dole is a safety net, not intended for a voluntary life of leisure.

PhilipS,

Good find. I'm going to email this information to the two usesless drones, Turnbull and Shorten.

Actually I think you should have to work for the dole.
Getting money for nothing is wrong.
But the way it is handled at the moment is all about making people miserable in the hope that they will just go away.
The whole system of unemployed torturing is designed not to get you a job but to give you a mental illness.
The rightards of the liars party see the unemployed as just another vilification target that takes the focus off them and their bloodsucking, parasitic greed and theft.

We should get rid of the job network leeches completely.
Why is it the governments responsibility to help you find work?
That is what Seek.com and places like that are for.
Most jobs are gotten through word of mouth or internally anyway.
The job network is useless and more than doubles the cost of unemployment to the community.

There should be only two requirements for receiving "the dole".
You do not have a job.
You do some form of work up to the amount you receive for the dole.

i.e. if you volunteer as a legal aid solicitor you would get paid your normal rate from centrelink and only need to do say 5 or 6 hours per fortnight. Whereas if you just swept the streets or picked up rubbish then you would get paid min wage and have to do 15 or 20 hours per fortnight.
None of this $4 an hour "internship" garbage.

You could volunteer with the salvos or the local community garden. Maybe even allow volunteering with surf life saving clubs(do patrols) or the St John Ambulance or bushfire brigades. Sporting clubs, community groups, landcare and environment groups, even aged and disability care. They are always crying out for more people to help. You could start your own project and get it approved as your WFD activity. Start a community garden, adopt a kilometre or two of bike path, keep a beach clean. Anything that gives back a bit for what you are receiving by being on the dole.

Dear Jay,

<<I think you meant "conditional.">>

I meant, with the one and only condition - that one truly doesn't have any other income.
But if you ask me to be more precise, then I'd add two more conditions: that one must have a human body and that one is a permanent resident (or citizen) of Australia.

Having a certain percentage of people on the dole is good, because it prevents the creation of useless, abusive, harmful and unethical jobs and also allows people to contribute to society in many informal, non-economic-based ways. It also prevents crime by hungry people, so we can feel safer.

This minimal sum of money should not be viewed as a gift, but as rightful compensation: modern society has forced people to depend on money, so there is nothing wrong about those who most benefit and enjoy the use of money compensating those who don't.

The Romans had a work for the dole system. They called it slavery. The British also had their version of work for the dole, they called it convicts. The Germans had their work for the dole system, but you don't want to hear about that one.
Its not that simple to organize this new found Labor force, given there is a certain percent that are unemployable for one reason or another in the first place, although the Romans did have a solution to that one, they employed them 'feeding the lions', literally, so did the Germans, but we don't talk about that one.
The next problem is if you push the unemployed into useful employment, like road repairers, then on the assumption road repairing is vital, you displace the existing road repairers who in turn become unemployed, and the cycle repeats itself. Then there is the organisational, managerial and resource aspect to deal with as well, it all costs. Before you know it, you have 3 million unemployed, employed and a overseeing bureaucracy of another half a million, and a budget of $10 billion, which you can't pay, as none are paying tax. The rest of the populace are just getting all of these free services. complements of the government. Then someone will suggest we privatize unemployment, the Romans did, they sold the slaves on the open market, the Germans did to, but we wont talk about that.

cont.

cont.

The reality of "work for the dole" is, some populists politicians see an advantage of appearing to be hard on the unemployed, and work for the dole falls into that category, it appeals to a certain section of the community. The politician who uses the tough talking rhetoric to win votes, is not much interested in the practicality of the system, or the outcomes. The politician is not going to commit billions to the scheme, as might be required, but rather sees it as window dressing to win votes. If the unemployed sit around doing nothing on badly organised and inefficient useless projects, that's fine, as they are not creating any new unemployed and its not costing that much, and more importantly the constituency has been satisfied.
The Roman authorities had to pay a price for having lots of unemployed citizens, slaves doing the work, they had to provide bread and beer and free entertainment in the Colosseum, another useful line of employment for slaves, working as gladiators!

Paul1405: the Romans did have a solution to that one, they employed them 'feeding the lions', literally,

Now there's an idea for the purposely unemployed. Good one.

Paul 1405: appearing to be hard on the unemployed, and work for the dole falls into that category,

It depends on weather you are a worker or one of the purposely unemployed. By you attitude I see where you are coming from.

Paul1405: If the unemployed sit around doing nothing on badly organised and inefficient useless projects.

It depends on what "you" class as badly organised and inefficient useless projects.

Paul1405: doing the work, they had to provide bread and beer and free entertainment in the Colosseum.

So the Romans didn't actually provide money. They provided food & entertainment for free. Now I happen to think the Romans had it right. No money to spend on Drugs, Alcohol, Tobacco & Souping up the road car.

I read a report once by some Professor that the right amount of unemployed is 7% of the Workforce. Apparently this allows for people to improve their working conditions & find a better job etc.

//The reality of "work for the dole" is, some populists politicians see an advantage of appearing to be hard on the unemployed//

Populist politicians also like to be seen to be tough on crime, so here's a practical solution: make the unemployed police. Most categories of crime have been decreasing steadily for years so they might not actually have much to do, but clearly that doesn't matter because law-and-order politicians are always promising us more police despite falling crime rates. The new police can be employed the same way as other unnecessary police: fining people over minor traffic infringements and serving as glorified conductors on public transport. That way they'll be generating some revenue.

Toni, not such a silly idea. The Romans had a similar scheme, I'm very up on the Romans of late. When the Romans defeated an enemy army, and they did that quite often, rather than crucifying all the defeated fellas, they would invite them to joint their Roman army as mercenaries enforcing Roman law. The Romans were very big on law and order in those days. In that way you could say the new unemployed, were now working in law enforcement, a work for the dole scheme no less!
.

Maybe the government could start employing some 50 to 60year olds in government offices.
Lets face it private enterprise wants fit young adults.
The goverment could employ two people over 50years of age for every one job.
Job sharing.
The way technology is advancing with robots etc. A lot of people will be out of work
in the future. Better not shoot themselves in the foot with draconian centrelink requirements.

Most of these work for the dole schemes are Mickey Mouse schemes.
Instead of bringing in skilled labour, maybe the profit making end of town could put out some money
to train our own unemployed to become skilled workers.

Cherful: maybe the profit making end of town could put out some money
to train our own unemployed to become skilled workers.

I agree Cherful, but they will put profits before anything & say it's the Governments job. It never used to be so.

A problem with the unemployed is the SG Standard as opposed to IQ. SG stands for Specific Grouping. SG1, + or - is for people who can be trained to do anything & be really good at anything they train for. SG2, + or - Can be trained to doe any task & retain that Skill. SG3 is your average person, Can be trained to do specific low level jobs adequately. SG4, F'n hopeless. Unfortunately with the head bangers, Druggies etc., there are around nowadays there seems to be an ever increasing number of SG4's & even lower down the scale.

What can you do with the SG4 + or - group? They are the totally dependent Group unfortunately.

My Army Records show me as IQ 129, SG2+. Low Clerical ability. Later assessments show an improvement to IQ 132/4 & I took pains to increase my Clerical Skills. I guess, that's why, in 50 odd years I was never out of work & I had good, satisfying jobs, even if I had to start at the bottom & work up.

Now Cheerful the Romans had a solution for the over 50's unemployed, those they didn't crucify that is, the Romans were very big on crucifixion, I would go as far as saying it was a national pastime. The Romans turned the over 50's unemployed into roving tax collectors, mainly due to their high IQ's but low MS, that's military skills. These roving tax collectors simply traveled around the empire taxing at will, always remembering that old Roman adage "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and the rest is yours". Tax collecting then, as it is today, was not a popular occupation, today that is demonstrated by the high number of tax avoiders, then it was demonstrated by the high number of tax collectors stoned to death, an occupational hazard, although the Romans did have a very good Funeral Plan for Tax Collectors, they fed them to the lions.
You could say the Romans tax collecting system was a kind of self funding work for the dole scheme.

CHERFUL, I agree with everything you say however I'll bet private enterprise will not part with money to help work for the dole schemes. The owner and/or shareholders will want to pocket the profits of course, first and foremost. After all, they are not running job creation schemes in anyone's books. Well, that's anyone's books that are based in actual reality.

I'll own up to participating in these WFD schemes because I'm over 50 and no one considers us "oldies" anymore, too much of a liability in some industries and occupations it seems.

The thing that's going to be shaping a lot of these schemes in coming years and I don't think any of the mainstream pollies will dispose of these WFD schemes because the pain of NOT being PC is too much to bear. "They" reason that the WFD schemes are good because they help to demonstrate to prospective employers that you are prepared to go and "volunteer" for work... thus, keeping your workplace skills and participation in the outside working world. But I"m sure a lot of employers if not all of them know you HAD to go and do it or your Newstart benefit gets chopped.

The thing that will really astound us all is the pace of advancement in robotics and AI invading low AND middle level jobs in coming years.

I heard very recently that the big Foxconn factory in Taiwan had to chop some 30,000 employees because robotics and AI can do their jobs more efficiently. What or who is next to instigate large job losses because of technology... I fear this is only the beginning.

Which brings us to the proposition of how are people going to get money to live on? BIG PROBLEM. The economy will suffer because of lack of consumption.. Perhaps the recent proposal in Switzerland for a "living wage" will shed light on this.. the fact that they even considered have a vote on it is most enlightening.

The problem with work for the dole schemes is of course the design of them. It is obviously ridiculous to have public servants, who have no idea of what a day's work looks like, design the systems. A much better idea would be to allocate people to private employers for their work time.

On the other hand, any worthwhile person would want to put back at least the value they are holding their hand out for. Anyone who doesn't consider that fair is not worth supporting.

This does not help the frustration many involved must feel.

One real advantage could be the elimination or rorting of welfare. If all recipients had to work the same 2.5 days each week, they could not register in many names, or hold down full time jobs while getting welfare.

Another such good idea destroyed by bureaucratic control is community service in place of prison sentences. I was involved a couple of times. In one instance we got 8 inmates on work to release & a prison guard for a couple of weeks to help on a park & sports oval project. This was great for them & our community.

The next time it was people sentenced to community service for similar work. They turned up, I turned up, but the public servant supposedly overseeing the project was either hours late, or did not appear all day.

We need a 3 strikes system with public servants. When they accumulate 3 legitimate complaints from the public, they should be out & on the dole que themselves.