DAVID PENBERTHY

fensive descriptor we can coin to describe them. Occupationally challenged? Workplace selective? Lifestyle focused? The best term we’ve got already exists. It is dole bludgers. There are plenty of places in Australia where youth unemployment is way above the national average for a couple of reasons – one being the limited availability of jobs, the second being that a lot of young people simply turn their noses up at the idea of what work is on offer, especially hard work.

In my hometown of Adelaide, much of the heavy-lifting in the annual grape harvest is done by overseas backpackers, in both the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale, right on the doorstep of the highest concentrations of unemployed young white Australians in the poorer suburbs.

The backdrop to the debate Natalie Barr waltzed into is, of course, the discussion around whether the Newstart allowance should be increased.

Despite all I have written above, I am of the view that Newstart is no longer enough to live on, not enough to find a job on, and that it’s been so long since it went up that it should definitely be increased.

My view is informed by being a South Australian, and seeing how many decent workers have been forced out of the old manufacturing economy,

“I am of the view that Newstart is no longer enough to live on, not enough to find a job on”

leaving them with no choice but to draw benefits as they try to find work.

The trouble is, an indiscriminate across-the-board increase in Newstart would be a free payday for every bludger in Cowra, or anywhere else, who lives in fear of doing any paid work when there are bongs to be smoked and balls to be scratched.

Raise Newstart, sure. But don’t raise it for the shirkers who abhor hard work.

And we should drop all the Left-Right nonsense too.

The logical reality of the progressive position on every dole recipient – bludgers included – is that low-income, blue-collar workers should be enlisted through the tax system to prop up the lifestyles of those who don’t want to work at all.

That doesn’t seem very socialist to me.