Makes you think
Word has it that sole parents and the disabled could be required to make themselves more employable or forfeit their full payment under the federal government's next round of mutual obligation initiatives. We are supposed to be searching for a system of welfare that enables recipients.
Makes you think, doesn't it? Mutual obligation as a core principle of civil society is not something to be sneezed at. No siree. In this day and age we should not be asking what the country can do for us, but what we can do for the country.
Girted by globalised sea and all that, we are all mutually obligated in some way or another, hither and yon. It's not right to be married to the state. What sort of career choice is that?
There's thousands of single mums and once-upon-a-time blue-collar types with dependent kids or bad backs out there who should be enabled ASAP. That's the sort of empowerment that builds self-esteem and breaks the vicious circle of dependency.
Look at your everyday Aboriginal-type person — hacking out a career path from skin colour and a squashed nose! Really that's not on. It only breeds downward envy.
While the rest of us are putting in our requisite eight hours at the coalface, some lucky bastard finds a GP willing to say they've got a bad back — or they're black or pregnant. After you've been retrenched as a result of restructuring, it's easy to be channelled into disability welfare. When you have been working most of your life, you pick up some ailments which you can trade on.
Why pursue a relentless lifestyle of work and poverty when you can stay at home for the same return?
Makes you think, doesn't it? Indeed it does!
But there's a hitch. How do you convert your standard unwed mum or your average disabled toilet user into a card-carrying proletarian when the jobs aren't there?
a) Marry them off; let them be someone else's responsibility. b) Create more jobs. c) Take away their benefits.
Makes you think, doesn't it?
By Dave Riley
<dhell@ozemail.com.au>