Australia: Labor pledges new assault on the jobless and welfare recipients

[Hannah Bell]

In a document entitled “Modernising Australia’s Welfare System,” the Labor government yesterday announced far-reaching measures designed to punish the unemployed and dismantle welfare entitlements.

Labor’s welfare plan, released 10 days before the August 21 federal election, makes clear that one of the central agenda items of a re-elected Gillard government will be to force jobless workers off benefits and into low-paid work, and to give employers a green light to slash pay and conditions.

The announcement is the first instalment of deep cuts to social spending that will follow the election, regardless of whether Labor or Liberal forms the next government, in order to lower corporate taxes and repay the debt incurred through the government’s bailout of the banks and major corporations in 2007-08...

Labor’s welfare document also confirms that the government plans to impose its “income management scheme” throughout the entire country. The scheme deprives welfare recipients of 50 percent of their fortnightly benefits and redirects those funds onto “BasicsCards” or direct debit arrangements for approved purchases, such as food, clothing, rents and utility bills. The Rudd/Gillard government had already extended the “welfare quarantining” measure—which the previous Howard government initially introduced to 75 Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory (NT)—to all welfare recipients, indigenous and non-indigenous alike, in the NT...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/jobs-a12.shtml

[Jim Sagle]

1. This is global clawback. It's unfolding just as some long-dead guy with a beard predicted.

Who WAS that guy? ;)

[canetoad]

2. Tell ya what Hannah

This unaturally obsessive concern you have about a reasonably content country half a world away from you; it makes me think you have a deep, unfulfilled longing to be one of us but are too awkward to know how.

So here's my offer. Stop spouting crap that you know nothing about, get a passport, a visa and a plane ticket. I promise that I will offer you accommodation and food for a month. You can't get any fairer than that can you?

After your month is up you can go back to wherever you come from and post honestly your observations, remembering that I'll be here to call you on any inaccuracies.

This is an honest offer. You either put up or shut up.

[Hannah Bell]

3. the wsws content from australia is written by australians, not by me.

but pay for the plane ticket & i'll visit. :>)


ps: i know more about australia than most of the people screaming about fgm know about ethiopia or uganda, that's for certain. if you want to point out any errors of *fact* that contradict mainstream sources, please do.

as for interpretation of facts, that's within the purview of *opinion,* & the opinions of australians reporting for wsws are just as "australian" as yours. maybe more if you're an expat.

[Name removed]

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