Tony Abbott's Dumb Idea

Bludgeon The Dole Bludger, He Says

I don't know how Tony Abbott comes up with this stuff.

Mr Abbott raised the controversial idea during a two-hour meeting with senior resources industry leaders in Perth on Monday night, The Australian newspaper reported today.

He said cutting dole payments to people aged under 30 would take pressure off the welfare system and reduce the need to bring in large numbers of skilled migrants to staff mining projects in Western Australia and Queensland.

Does this even make sense? The unemployment rate in Australia is 5.3%, and this is in spite of the so-called GFC and its aftermath rocking the world economy. At 4.5% it pretty much reaches full capacity employment at which point inflation kicks in hard.

So we are to understand that the 0.8% gap between where we stand today and the 4.5% full capacity is going to be the zone of anxiety he's going to take to the electorate as a problem issue? We're talking somewhere in the order of 80,000 people at most. Of whom, if they are under 30, he wants to cut their welfare payments and send them off to work in mines in WA. The mind boggle at how he comes up with this stuff.

He really should meet some of the people who are under 30 and are the long term unemployed. I meet them from time to time as they come through looking for work if only to get away from the prying fingers of Centrelink. They're a really miserable, sad, intellectually deficient bunch. I doubt they'd get work being toughs for a gangster somewhere.  They're just dysfunctional human beings.

These folks are not going to be successful working in a mine in WA, no matter how desperate those employers might be for workers. It's just simply stupid and irresponsible to think that you can just grab some of those kinds of guys, give them shovels and stick them on a mining job. It would be an OH&S hazard for a start. If Tony Abbott's so damned worried about them, he should be talking about creating real opportunities for them to get real jobs that these kinds of people can hold down.

At a certain point Tony Abbott should acquaint himself with the bell curve and face the reality that some people at 3 Standard Deviations to the left of the median bands are just no employable regardless of age, and that there's a point to keeping these people fed and housed even if it seems like a waste of money. It sure as hell beats having them turning into petty criminals that end up in jail (at the public's expense anyway) or as suicides on Crystal Street or some other sad statistical outcome.

But of course he's the Liberal Party leader and a Jesuit-wannabe; short on compassion and common sense while long on not sparing the rod and meting out humiliation.