Too Busy For Words - the PaulWay Blog

Mon 4th Aug, 2014

Stop the unemployed

I think there's quite a simple answer to why the Coalition is putting so much effort into punishing the unemployed: it's exactly the same as their "stop the boats" policy. If they make it so unattractive to actually register as unemployed (in order to get Centrelink benefits) then a lot of people will just not register. They'll look for work, and they'll depend on the charities and on other forms of income (begging, stealing, etc), but they won't show up in the books as unemployed. Instantly, unemployment goes down, the Coalition looks like it's "tough on dole bludgers", and someone else foots the bill.

I've been there. I was unemployed for six months in late 2000. I tried to get benefits, and after spending every day trying to find work so that I could tick off my twenty-five job searches a month I was told that since I had shares I didn't qualify for assistance. In other words, you can't save, you can't have any reserves, you have to be scraping the bottom of the barrel yourself before you get any money from the Government.

So I just didn't bother. I didn't show up to Centrelink again, and they (presumably) removed my name from the list of unemployed. Howard at that time was trumpeting the work he was doing to reduce unemployment and kept pointing to the unemployment figures. No-one looked at the number of jobs at the same time. I think a few people pointed out at the time that the worse of his policies - which match those of the Coalition today - were just designed to punish the unemployed and make them into a cheap work force rather than actually get more jobs.

It's especially poignant since the Coalition also wants to sign into law trade partnerships that send jobs overseas (by making it uneconomical to manufacture things here in Australia), denying climate change and cutting spending on renewable energy (stopping the entire renewable energy sector from investing and thus losing jobs), cutting funding for education and health (as if States are suddenly going to find that money somewhere - more jobs lost), and telling Toyota and Holden that they get nothing to keep people employed here in Australia.

It's been well pointed out that there only about 146,100 jobs for 741,700 unemployed people. But the government's own way of calculating this only thinks a person is unemployed if they actively looked for work in the week of being surveyed - they identify an entire group called "currently inactive (not in the labour force)" and then coyly ignore that group entirely, not even mentioning it on the page.

That group comprises a lot of people, some of who need help. It's the long term unemployed who have given up on the mindless form-filling, tracking and justification required for government payments. It includes mothers who stay at home full time to care for their children (which is a full time job in my opinion). It includes lots of disabled people. It includes people on pensions. And it's that group that seems to be conveniently ignored by the Coalition in their War On Bludgers.

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