The Real Welfare Cheats

Unemployment in this country is at a twelve year high.

We keep being told, particularly by News Limited, that unemployed people are dole bludgers.

Many individuals and corporations have made a great deal of money from the privatized job placement industry.

$18 billion of taxpayers’ money has been spent on this scheme since 1998.

Now, Four Corners has revealed fraud and exploitation of job seekers by some of these organisations.

Surely it’s about time the heat was turned on these agencies, and a royal commission established. After all, we’ve had royal commissions into all and sundry since the Coalition came to power.

There is something about conservative governments that creates a default position of exploitation of specific groups. It can be soldiers, indigenous people, or the unemployed.

It is an absolute disgrace.

Many years ago, before the advent of the privatised system, Special Schools in Queensland saw it as part of their role to find post-school opportunities for their students.

At that time, I was principal of Petrie Special School, and we had a programme for the senior students called “Transition”. It was run by an experienced teacher who was off class for a few hours per week, when he would liaise with prospective employers.

In the three years I was there, we were successful in finding work for a large proportion of these students. Remember, these were young people with disabilities significant enough to get them enrolled at a Special School.  

The school did this for free – we saw it as part of our role. Most Special Schools operated in this fashion.

It seems to me passing strange that well-resourced agencies set up specifically for the purpose in the year 2015, have less success in placing the unemployed than we did at a school back in the mid-eighties.

Isn’t privatisation wonderful?

For mine, it’s way past time the real welfare cheats (the companies to whom we outsourced job services) were nationalised and the perpetrators of these frauds were put behind bars.

Nationalise them so that the focus is on finding jobs not making a profit for wealthy shareholders.