Tuesday 7 October 2014

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats, So No Wonder We Have A Stop the Boats Policy. - The AIM Network

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats, So No Wonder We Have A Stop the Boats Policy. - The AIM Network



A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats, So No Wonder We Have A Stop the Boats Policy.














One thing you can depend on with our current government is that
they’ll contradict themselves. And I’m not talking about going from a
budget emergency to spending billions on a war in the Middle East, where
Australia has resembled some loser wandering up and down the street
outside a party, suggesting that their invitation must have been lost in
the mail, but they’re here now, so why doesn’t someone just let them
in. And I just loved the Defence Minister’s warning not to expect a
quick end to our involvement. It may take months, he said.



Yeah, well, given enough time, everybody contradicts themselves, but these blokes do it within the course of a single interview.


(Is the term “blokes” sexist? If it is, I apologise to the woman in Cabinet)


Take Eric Aid&abetts this morning. Yes, they were backing down
from 40 applications a month, but it wasn’t a backdown, it was because a
lot of time would be wasted with token applications. Not the
applicant’s time, but the poor people forced to read them.



Applicants have plenty of time, so applying for one job in the
morning and another in the afternoon shouldn’t be something to complain
about. Because when someone is unemployed, looking for work should be “a
full-time job”.



Get it.  “A full-time job”!


That’s what the man said.


Ok, now there whole waiting six months for the dole thing is likely
to be blocked in the Senate so the absurdity is never going to be fully
demonstrated.



But let’s leave for a moment the obvious point that the Keystone Coalition weren’t going to be paying those under 30 for this “full-time job” in
that first six months, and let’s move onto the work for the dole where
these lucky bastards will be effictively paid below the minimum wage for
25 hours work.  What he was actually suggesting that those under 30 –
 at least the ones who’d managed to survive for six months with no
income – were expected to work 25 hours a week but still maintain their
other “full time job” of looking for work.



Amazingly, he did say in the event of a person obtaining a job
interview, they could be excused from their work for the dole to attend
the interview. (I wonder if they have to make the time up later…)



Of course, Eric did go on to say that work for the dole was a
wonderful thing because that way people would be doing something useful.
(Had I been the interviewer I would have asked at this point
whether this was hearsay or did he have personal knowledge of doing
something useful at some point in his life.
)



And there you have it. The Liberal philosophy in a nutshell: People
are best able to manage their own lives without a lot of government
interference because we don’t want a nanny state, but if you’re
unemployed, you’re clearly incapable of finding a way of doing something
useful without us managing you.



Contradiction? What contradiction?


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