Government turns to bullying the jobless — again

Gerard Jackson
BrookesNews.Com
Wednesday 25 June 2003

Studies by the leftwing groups Much Obliged, the University of Melbourne's Centre for Public Policy, the Brotherhood of St Laurence and the St Vincent de Paul Society have roundly condemned the Government's so-called "mutual obligations" regime. For once the left has got it right.

Apart from the fascist ring that attends the phony concept of "mutual obligations" it is the rest of the country that is obligated to the unemployed, not the reverse.

The Government's idea of a diary for the unemployed is stupid, costly and lacks compassion. It assumes, against overwhelming evidence, that there is a large body of dole recipients who are not really seeking work. Yet how can Howard, Costello and Vanstone, possibly suggest such a body of parasites exist when the ratio of unemployed greatly exceeds the number of vacancies?

The best that can be said for these ministers attitude is that it reveals a stunning ignorance of the cause of our widespread persistent unemployment.

Quite simply, the unemployed have been priced out of work. So long as markets are allowed to clear the present type of unemployment cannot persist. Instead of kicking the unemployed, Vanstone should start kicking union leaders and their mates in the arbitration commission who are responsible for the present level of unemployment.

It follows that if politicians and the electorate are going to support job-destroying policies then they have an obligation to compensate the victims of these policies. Bullying and slandering them is inexcusable and despicable. But not according to Amanda Vanstone, Minister for Family and Community Services, who said: "For the vast majority of people on welfare, the current mutual obligation requirements are appropriate."

Really? Well I've got news for Vanstone: she and her political ilk have no moral right to implement fascist sounding policies like "mutual obligations" until they fully liberate the labor market. To attack the unemployed because unions and the arbitration commission have priced them out of work is cruel and cowardly.

But where did the likes of Vanstone and Costello get their ideas on unemployment? It couldn't by any chance have been the Toorak crowd? It seems that there are some from this very wealthy suburb who have decidedly reactionary ideas about the unemployed. Of course, if you have always been financially well off with the right social connections unemployment would be something that only idle members of working class indulge in. It therefore follows that the unemployed are basically responsible for their own predicament. (I really wish I was making this rubbish up).

Vanstone, Costello and their Melbourne advisors come across as pack of callous economic illiterates. It says a great deal about the intelligence of this crew that some of them can simultaneously entertain diametrically opposed views on the jobless, to wit: though they have been forcefully kept out of work they are still dole bludgers who need to be bullied into working.

It's about time these Tories substituted economic reasoning for doublethink and stopped bullying the unemployed.

Gerard Jackson is Brookes' Economics Editor