Work for Dole?

Trog, it was never the duty of Centrelink or the DSS to place people in employment. Their job was to provide financial support to those eligible. The Commonwealth Employment Service which was an arm of a different department had that function of assisting people to find employment. The newly elected Howard government closed down the CES between 1996 and 2000 making the Job Service Providers a nice little milk cow for LNP mates. The CES copped a lot of criticism from job seekers for not sending the seeker to an advertised vacancy on one of their job boards. They could only refer people who fitted the employers specification as long as the employers criteria were not illegal or discriminatory. Age was an example of an illegal discriminatory criterion. The usual practice was to refer six people to a new vacancy then wait to hear back from the employer. If no-one was satisfactory then another six would be sent if there were another suitable six. Frequently an employer would fill a position and not notify CES so the vacancy would be up on the boards until someone was told it was filled. Some employers had highly discriminatory criteria and the CES would decline the vacancy. Examples-No blacks or catholics, under 40 y.o., no tattoos, no body hardware, no outlandish hair styles (purple mohawks and the like), no poms or kiwis.

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Originally Posted by trog

Well said , maybe a few of these providers should try their products. From my experiences the labour hire mobs weren’t much use either.

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Indeed, labour hire establishments also operate on numbers. I have personally applied for the same job every week for the past 4 or 5 months (sometimes twice a week) when it pops up on SEEK. I get an automated reply within 2 mins of applying stating that "We have had a large response to the advertisement, and we'll get back to you as soon as we can in regards to the next stage." and the ad may have only be up for <1 or 2 hours. And that is the last I hear from them. This is why people give up and just jump through the hoops and survive as best they can on Newstart without seriously looking for employment.

For me I now have a casual position but the hours are not guaranteed and at times slim, so I still jump through the hoops and get something from the government. Don't hold it against me I'm still trying to get something with more consistency but at my age (just turned 58) nobody wants to know you.

I sympathise. It's hard. Hope something better comes along for you.
Those who berate the unemployed as lazy are the ones who need a reality check. It's hard.

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Originally Posted by DiscoMick

I sympathise. It's hard. Hope something better comes along for you.
Those who berate the unemployed as lazy are the ones who need a reality check. It's hard.

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I am pretty certain that Nobody here is saying that ALL the people that are on Newstart are "Lazy" But there is a percentage of people that are on this benefit that wouldn't work in an iron lung and some of them have been on welfare for their entire life without Ever doing a days work and these are the people that are responsible for the Draconian measures that have recently been put in place.
YES it is tough to find work these days But it isn't IMPOSSIBLE and I do Empathise with older Australians that try their hearts out to find work (I turn 65 this year) because it is that much harder to find work as you age.
Welfare dependence has become intergenerational now with single parents kids now becoming single parents and the long term unemployed kids leaving school to enrol on the dole because of the way they were raised as they think that being on welfare is the "Norm".

Some people need to be "Motivated" to join the workforce and something has to be done about the apathy that many long term unemployed suffer from and if working for the dole can be designed to address these issues instead of simply being used as a tool to punish these people then it is a great idea.

The idea of working for the dole is Not a bad idea It just needs to be implemented and managed so that it moves people forward and helps them to break the welfare cycle instead of just keeping people busy for the sake of it.

Deleted.

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Originally Posted by DiscoMick

We're copying the Americans and producing a generation of 'working poor'.

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I went to a talk by Paul Krugman on the 14th of Feb - it was pretty wide-ranging but one of the things that he spoke about was the deliberate destruction of the US middle class, which means that there are now a lot of working poor in the US. And, a bit that really resonated, that there was no safety net (like the dole) for people who were victims of economic restructuring.

Krugman didn't appear to know much about Australia, but everything he lamented that the US didn't have or hadn't done was something that we did have or had done.

There are good reasons why The Economist held up Australia as an example to other advanced economies.

Interesting.
Last thing we want to do is copy the USA.

We have been copying the USA for years. We used to be a social democracy before most government utilities and programs were privatised. Education used to be free. We are barely clinging onto public health, social security and the pension. Without these three we’d be almost exactly like America. .

..everyone forgets that our prosperous housing market could collapse like the US if we went down that path too. 100% privatised markets do not self regulate in the interests of the majority and competition doesn’t work in the long run (there is always one winner in a competition). ...come to think of it what do American taxes pay for apart from the presidents golf courses and antiquated walls?

Most US States have an unemployment insurance scheme. You contribute whilst working if you want more than the safety net. The insurance is only paid for a determined time then stops. Long term unemployed? Get out on the street and hustle. This is the land of the free and of private enterprise. Fend for yourself.

In California to claim unemployment insurance you have to provide documentation showing how much you have earned in the past so long. Got no documentation or your employers refused to provide? Worked for hot cash, no paper? You can't get more on insurance than you earned. No insurance premium paid. Eat grass.

"Welfare" in the US is the bottom line. No money paid. Food stamps to you, and rent assistance paid to the landlord. Also welfare is composed of three inputs, federal, state, and local govt all have to contribute. Local govt input in many states is subject to a local option vote. Do you want welfare in your county? Yes or no? Many localities vote against welfare because the residents fear it will attract "undesirable" ethnic groups.

Not just individual states , unemployment insurance was part of the scheme when I worked in Canada