Shirkers should not get free ride
It is unfair to tarnish all people who are unemployed with the tag ‘dole bludger’ but there are some who just don’t want to get their hands dirty doing real work
THE term “dole bludger” is a harsh and brutal one. It is a uniquely Australian form of words demonising those who can work but choose not to.
It is often used indiscriminately and unfairly to make generalised slurs against anyone who draws some kind of unemployment benefit, even though they might dearly love to find a job and might be trying to do so.
But dole bludger is also used, 100 per cent correctly, to describe the sizeable number of Australians who truly deserve this unpleasant title for the simple reason that they couldn’t work in an iron lung.
Perfectly decent Channel 7 presenter Natalie Barr made the fatal journalistic error recently of confusing ideological denunciations from trendies on Twitter with the mainstream sentiments of suburban viewers who watch her on the hugely popular Sunrise show.
Barr, no doubt because she’s a nice person who lacks the appetite for an all-in social media brawl with every bleeding heart in Australia, folded the tent very quickly when she was upbraided over Seven’s use of the term “dole bludger” in a story on welfare fraud.
“Dole bludgers shamed: 78 per cent of Newstart recipients have had their payments suspended”, read the headline on the screen, a grab of which was posted on Seven’s official Twitter account, with poor old ON LIAM JURRAH FINDING HIS AFL CAREER IN MELBOURNE TO BE A WORLD AWAY FROM YUENDUMU
Yuendumu just won the 60th Yuendumu sports carnival. It was a big weekend with many communities present. Andrew
As a Melbourne supporter I watched Liam a lot, marvelled at his talent. But I knew it was going to end badly. I’m glad he is back on track, I was very pleased to see he played at ASP. Hopefully he can use his experience to guide the young ones coming up. I believe the AFL clubs do the Barr’s head right next to it.
As a result, Barr herself became the focus of the angry mob, which was whipped up at first via some public tut-tutting from the ABC’s Juanita Phillips.
Pretty quickly, Barr was having a full-blown attack of the vapours, and issued her own apology on-air and also on Twitter.
“We made a mistake today Juanita. We’re sorry for it. I’ve apologised. It shouldn’t have happened, Nat.”
Anyway, here’s an interestright things by the youngsters now, getting them an education, etc. All the best, Liam. Rob
The pigeonhole bit and turning up to training late. That’s his fault? Please, goes to show you how much a basket case Melbourne really was, surely he should have been shown the way for a while to adjust. Mark
@Mark I was thinking that myself. Why didn’t they give him an orientation to show him around the place on his first day? And let him know his obligations, like being on time for meetings? ALL new players, indigenous or not, would have to be advised that they had a pigeonhole, ing story that ran in The Australian this week under the headline “Samoans replace Cowra’s job snobs”.
“Some mornings Peter Brown is so desperate to find workers for his NSW regional abattoir that he’ll drive around town at 6am looking for casual employees.
Mr Brown, general manager of Cowra Meat Processors, said he advertised for local workers but most didn’t want to do more than two days a week so as to maintain their dole benefits.
The company he runs is the biggest employer in Cowra, in the state’s Central West, with 180 to 200 workers, but he is constantly under pressure for staff and sometimes works on the floor himself to make up numbers.
‘We had a good base of locals, older blokes,’ Mr Brown told The Australian.
‘But over time they got older and retired, and when relying on younger blokes, you can’t fill the jobs for this sort of work.’
For Mr Brown, the answer lies thousands of kilometres away in the South Pacific.
He recently brought in his first seven workers from Samoa under the Federal Government’s Pacific Labour Scheme, in which they can work for three years and are then expected to return with a view to taking their skills with them.
Mr Brown said his seven Samoan men, who earn the same award wages as his Australian employees, were ‘excellent, reliable workers, clean-living, God-fearing, and all play rugby union for a local side’.”
Now, what’s the term you would use to describe these unemployed locals who would rather keep the dole than get their hands dirty like these hardworking Samoan men?
Maybe there is a nice inofotherwise how would they know about it? Beggars belief. Suellen
Liam, keep looking forward. We all make mistakes in life but it’s the way you come out of them. What you are achieving now is wonderful. People who post negative comments don’t understand. Greg
Well done. Get them boys as good as you were. We all make mistakes. Don’t look back, move forward. Darren
I am glad that Jurrah is getting his life back on track. It was a shame to waste such a rare talent as his. He made some terrible choices, and has paid the price, but hopefully he can help a whole new generation of kids avoid the same pitfalls. Sometimes the best person to guide you past making mistakes is the person who made those same ones. Susan ON BIG CHANGES REVEALED FOR $200 MILLION LUXURY WATERFRONT HOTEL
I wonder if gambling regulations will be relaxed and Darwin’s casino choices improved. Peter
I doubt Delaware North (the new owners of the Mindil Beach Casino) would welcome another casino licence. I imagine the arrangement (as amended) with the original casino owners, Federal Hotels, for only two NT casino licences (one in Alice Springs and one in Darwin) still stands in some form. So I doubt that could easily be broken. But if Darwin was a multi-casino town it could be a tourism drawcard. Dave Wane
Not surprised as Waterfront owners/residents who attended the DWC & Landbridge very short community stakeholder meetings have yet to have many questions answered including what the hotel will look like from our apartments. These buildings block the view of the Waterfront residents Darwin Elders Real Estate sold Toga offthe-plan apartments to in 2013 when NTG, DWC & Toga controlled the land. Mark