Hahahahahaha... very amusing way of providing some very important information. (This is a comedy piece people.) Breaking down the myth of the Dole Bludger 18 NOV 2014 - 1:25PM Can Australians really be categorised as either Lifters or Leaners? Comedian Jordan Shanks gets off the couch and argues against the myth of the Dole Bludger. By Jordan Shanks Seeing as this is on SBS comedy, I’m assuming that if you’re reading this, you’re on the dole. As LNP backbencher Ewen Jones put it so eloquently, you are probably fresh in from collecting your welfare cheque just in time to play Xbox and eat Cheezels. Well may I be the first to say, lick your fingers with pride you modern day cave goblin, because, as it turns out, you’re an endangered species! Do you know how many people in this country are underemployed/unemployed? 1.8 million. It’s great to think that all 1.8 million of these ‘freeloaders’ are lining up to jump on Joe Hockey’s gut like it’s a trampoline with him crying from underneath to a Herald Sun reporter, “See! I told you they’re taking the Treasury for a ride!” You all called me mad! Well, now whos mad!? Now whos mad!? The only problem is that the well renowned mythical ‘dole bludger’ is just that, a myth. On average, the amount of job vacancies in Australia sits at around 150,000 a month. If these ‘job snobs’ (as they are named by Joe Hockey and Eric Abetz) tried to ‘move to where the jobs are’ there would still be 1.65 million people underemployed or unemployed. You can exchange the scapegoat term of ‘dole bludger’ with ‘people who aren’t willing to take a job pretending their testicles are pieces of chicken in order to lure crocodiles away from retirement villages in Darwin’ but that doesn’t change the fact that only 0.65% of Australians qualify as ‘dole bludgers’. If this is the case, (and it is), then why are ‘dole bludgers’ to Tony Abbott what gypsies are to medieval peasants? Are we always going to blame them for the crops that failed and the eclipse that “angered the sun” last night? They shouldn’t be demonised. They should be put into intensive forced breeding programs, just like pandas! We shouldn’t be shaming that guy we know whose two most employable skills are: 1) The know how to halve his food bill by using his mouldy mattress as both a place to sleep and a mushroom farm 2) Despite being stoned for a decade straight, still remembering how to get rocket launchers on Golden Eye 007 for Nintendo 64. We should be putting this guy in a zoo enclosure with a depressive Goth chick that’s too agoraphobic to refuse being in a box with him, despite the smell. We need to bring this genome back from the brink! Here are just some of the pre-Roman emperor ‘motivators’ Abbott wants/tried to impose on welfare recipients. Let’s start with the clanger - FORTY job searches per month. They reluctantly yielded on this one but not without a fight. Even when it was pointed out to Senator Abetz that in some areas there just aren’t that many job vacancies. I’m really glad that even at this wasn’t enough to change Abetz’s mind. It showed us that not only does Senator Abetz look like Scrooge from, ‘A Christmas Carol’, he thinks like him too. Remember that classic exchange of, “Many would rather die than go to poor houses!”? Scrooge replied, “Then perhaps they should! And reduce the surplus population!” What is the difference, other than a couple of hundred years and a focus group, between that and Abetz’s comment that if the jobs don’t exist, “try harder”? Even dead horses getting flogged must be looking down from horse heaven at Abetz and wondering when he’s going to stop. Then there’s the next ‘motivator’ of work for the dole schemes, despite all research on that old chestnut policy indicating it’s an abysmal failure. Having said that, I do really wish someone forced me to make model World War One re-enactment dioramas for RSLs in Adelaide. It would definitely, as Abetz suggests, “Give (me) the vital skills (I) need”… to be the coolest guy in a Warhammer Games Workshop. Think just how many greasy 15 year olds would look up to you as if you were a REAL war hero like the guys in the RSL. I guess we’ll have to concede that as Hockey suggested, doing meaningless tasks, “gives one a sense of pride.” I bet it’s a really good feeling being able to paint space marines better than anyone else in the store. Well, at least we have the tactical skills we need to launch a revolution. Finally, (as if we even needed to be told this) apparently, according to Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey, you can survive for six months of the year on allowances that are waaaaay below the poverty line IF for the other half of the year … you live off nothing. It’s like Kate Moss is the LNP welfare advisor. People have been accusing Mr. Abbott of following in the footsteps of the Tea Party, but not anymore! The student has now become the master! He seems to have repeated the metaphor that, “The poor are nothing but sponges”, for so long that he actually seems to think that poor people really are sponges, perfectly fine just absorbing microscopic organisms that reside on oceanic shelves. These views of the poor raise an important question. Is the guy that double checks policy for the Liberal Party Dr. Jekyll? Here’s a quote from Mr. Abbott talking about business conditions in Australia, “Stability breeds confidence, confidence breeds prosperity”. This he uttered to a round of applause from what I’m assuming were walruses with top hats. In the words of The Monthly columnist Richard Cooke, “Humiliating job seekers is supposed to build their moral character, but even tepid criticism of business might lead to uncertainty”. At which point Mr. Hyde jumped out from the shadows and slobbered “exactlllyyy” and then ate Richard Cooke. I’m sorry his family had to find out this way. No measures have been taken to stop a third of the ASX 200 companies paying less than 10% tax. 57% are operating overseas, costing Australia 8 billion a year in revenue. No one in the Liberal party seemed to bat an eyelid when Andrew Twiggy’s company, Fortesque Metals, admitted they “Have not cut a corporate tax cheque to date”. It seemed perfectly reasonable to a party that wants welfare officers to refuse to accept, “reasonable excuses” for missing appointments that Gina Rinehart’s company, Hancock Prospecting, failed to lodge its annual financial reports 7 years in a row. No, they can’t discourage that; otherwise they may hurt their feelings. What we can do though is make poor people clean toilets for well below minimum wage, and then later on in the year cut them off entirely and ask them to hibernate for 6 months. I suppose it is, at least technically character building. Surliness is a character trait. This is our future. That’s the Australia I want to see, 1.8 million Surly’s ‘Seven Duffs’ mascots from The Simpson’s Duff Gardens telling me when I look at them, “Take a picture it will last longer! Get out of here!” I think this would help Australia a lot. For all the latest comedy articles, videos and updates at SBS Comedy sbs.au/comedy/article/2014/11/18/breaking-down-myth-dole-bludger
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 04:15:03 +0000
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