As it's more than 100 days now, it has been suggested that a new thread was needed. The current govt has been breaking promises and telling lies at a rate so fast it's hard to keep up.
This below is worrying, "independent" pffft, as if your own doctor is somehow what? biased, it's ridiculous. So far there is talk of only including people under a certain age 30-35, for now. Remember that if your injured in a car, injured at work or get ill, you too might need to go on the DSP. They have done a similar think in the UK with devastating consequences.
and this is the 2nd time recently where the Govt has referred to work as welfare???? So when you go to work tomorrow (or tuesday), just remember that's welfare.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-20/disability-pensioners-may-be-reassessed-kevin-andrews/5400598
Independent doctors could be called in to reassess disability pensioners, Federal Government says
The Federal Government is considering using independent doctors to examine disability pensioners and assess whether they should continue to receive payments.
Currently family doctors provide reports supporting claims for the Disability Support Pension (DSP).
But Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews is considering a measure that would see independent doctors reassess eligibility.
"We are concerned that where people can work, the best form of welfare is work," Mr Andrews said at a press conference.
Unemployment could be solved overnight in Australia by doubling unemployment benefits and giving Newstart recipients a job and it would be a relatively cheap to do. It would only cost 6-8 billion Australian dollars per annum plus materials (probably 6-10 billion dollars). The whole country could be cleaned up (literally) and many problems solved i.e. menial tasks, nursing homes, schools, military forces, emergency services, clerical, overseas aid, rural development, environmental problems, farms, extra buildings for poor communities etc.. This could provide a training ground for so many different occupations. It would not solve unemployment completely but could reduce it to at least 1% or lower.
Currently the Centrelink budget is about 90 billion per annum. 80% is for the old age pension with 10% for the unemployed. The other 10% is for the disabled and other minor categories. Roughly 6-7 billion dollars is spent on the unemployed. A pittance.
but......this lot in Govt are following the US Capitalist 'formula' as posted by iapetus earlier on in this thread......the Govt/s aim for a permanent, no less than 4%-6% unemployment rate at all times - noting that our unemployment rate is much higher atm, much higher than officially reported too prob @ 25% actually with all factors considered 
capitalism requires that there be not just unemployment but that the unemployed be unhappy. . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. Capitalism requires an excess supply of labour in order to bid down wage growth and industrial militancy. When Norman Lamont said unemployment was a โprice well worth payingโ to get wage inflation down, he was just blurting out the truth seen by Kalecki 50 years earlier โ that โunemployment is an integral part of the โnormalโ capitalist system.โ
2. Capitalism needs the unemployed to look for work โ to be an effective supply of labour. This requires that they be โincentivizedโ to seek jobs by meagre unemployment benefits and by being stigmatized. In other words, the unemployed must be made unhappy.
3. Blaming the unemployed for their plight serves a two-fold function in legitimating capitalism. It distracts attention from the fact that unemployment is caused by structural failings in capitalism, sometimes magnified by policy error.
And in promoting the cognitive bias which says that individuals are the makers of their own fate, it invites the inference that, just as the poor deserve their poverty, so the rich deserve their wealth.
http://mattbruenig.com/2012/02/19/unemployment-is-โa-structural-problem-in-capitalism/
When Labor eventually get back.................you surrender so easily aps!!
A lil' blue birdie tells me we will not have to wait too long LOL
