Hi Producer,

I agree that able-bodied people should be given the choice of working or starving: fruit-picking is not a bad way to avoid the second option. There's usually some of it available somewhere in Australia, for anybody looking for a working holiday away from home. Young, single people should find this option especially exciting - in fact, if they look around, they may find such work available very close to home. It pays fairly well, it allows people to get out in the sunshine and meet other hard workers, it's a healthy life. What's not to like ?

Cheers,

Joe

Joe

The concept of a Job Guarantee should not be restricted to the able-bodied, indeed should embrace all within our society. A locally controlled system would enable job creation that suits an individual irrespective of ability and intellect.

With regard to the lack of fruit pickers to service the industry, I believe it is more and issue of reward for service, isolation and working conditions that are the issue. There are two major factors that play into the current impasse. Firstly the availability of cheap foreign labour that are exploited by the industry in lieu of employing local labour that would cost more. Secondly the industry has to compete with foreign imports that are produced with slave labour and under less restrictive conditions, effectively forcing many within the industry to exploit cheap foreign labour to survive.

I put it to you that we need an equity tariff at the border that removes the imbalance that is exploited by major neo-liberal corporations like the supermarket duopoly. Such a tariff would I believe also stop manufacturing corporations exiting the country to capatalise on the slave labour and third world conditions in other parts of the globe.

A word of caution, any such tariff should not be used to offset efficiencies of a foreign market, only inequities. If a local industry is inefficient it would have to lift its game or fail

Hi Producer,

No, able-bodied people need to understand that unemployment benefits are a privilege, not a right, and conditional on their being no work within a reasonable distance that they can do. End of.

In Whitlam's day, the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) cut off unemployment benefits in fruit-picking areas once the season started, and resumed it once the season finished. Simple as that. Nobody should expect to be able to live off the back of other workers who pay the taxes so that they can live at leisure.

As for lower wages for foreign workers, I would have thought that was illegal. Your Trump-like notions of an 'equity tax at the border', i.e. tariffs, is totally out-of-date. As for slave labour in other countries, that says nothing about conditions here, and such bizarre 'solutions' as tariffs will do nothing to improve conditions for them either, surely the reverse.

This is Australia in 2017, not the US, not 1917. Get real.

And yes, I have picked fruit, in fact I was doing that at forty. In my last job, at 61, I worked in a dairy. If I could do it, why can't young fellas ?

Joe

They do not want to work, ever and will go to great lengths to prove just that. There is an apt, uniquely Aussie word for it.

You come up against the same problems that warn the military away from ever taking on these men and women, even for a year of national service. Although the Swiss can make it work. Perhaps Australia might learn something from that culture.

There are some obvious differences between the overseas backpackers and grey nomads who pick fruit and the unemployed who find all work beneath the status and view their 'gubbermint' entitlements as their right (even where they may have arrived yesterday).

There never will be a perfect solution and that shouldn't be allowed to stymie any action. A range of alternatives should be applied.

As a base, the cashless card for benefits should be the starting point, see here,
Big Nana, Thursday, 20 April 2017 6:06:47 PM
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=7742&page=2

Producer, the stories about poor wages for fruit pickers are just that, stories.
One of my granddaughters went mango picking just out of Darwin last season and was earning $200/day, the same as the backpackers who were working alonside her.
Accomodation was provided and meals, and although the accommodation was very basic there are no guarantees in life that we get to live in fancy housing. All we need are the basics.
The only reason locals don't like these types of jobs is because they are hard work!

Unemployed people DO have to work for their pittance you know.
Its called Work for the dole. It has been around for 20+ years.
Do you want pensioners to work for the pension? Didnt they already work all their lives?
Who is going to employ them? No one wants to employ 50 year olds let alone geriatrics.

Fruit picking jobs are suitable for backpackers because they are young and fit, already travelling, need to work to extend their visas and gives them money to continue their travels. Locals can get a bit of work in season but once it is over they will get nothing unless they pick up and move every couple of months.Not really feasible for a family is it?
Young singles maybe but even then FORCING them onto the road like swagmen of old seems somewhat harsh and backward.

Sad to see well off, comfortable people punching down at those who cant fight back.
It has become acceptable practice and the way it is done here at the rightwing nutjob 2017 version of OLO.
It used to be a place of debate and interesting, diverse points of view.
Now its just a cesspit of hatred and bigotry and whining about lefties and poor people. :(