Crikey, you make some very good points. Retraining is a good thing as long as people are being retrained for jobs that actually exist.

One of the problems has been that the only ones who benefit is the third party involved, not the workers or the government but the mobs who provide the retraining.

It can be very isolating being unemployed, i think a lot of the time especially for older people, people in their 40's and older. Often they have been working in the same trade/job for many, many years and all of a sudden tossed out like nothing and expected to somehow get another job, which in most cases simply doesn't exist.

Remember the old job centre's (i can't remember the name), but every available job going was in there, up on boards. They were run by the govt and worked really well. What we have now is a whole new privately owned and run industry that stands between the employer (in a lot of cases) and the job seeker. If you want a job you have to go through them first, they do bugger all to actually help anyone get an actual job but they get an awful lot of money doing it.

 How about large employers are obliged to take on more apprentices, so people can learn trades. I know quite a few tradies who have lost there jobs and the hoops some had to jump through to get another job were ridiculous, silly meaningless puzzles etc. Can't imagine my hubby ever managing, he has been in the same job in heavy industry for 32 years.

Remember the old job centre's (i can't remember the name), but every available job going was in there, up on boards.

Department of Social Security ??   From memory, I think the jobs centres worked well.

The armed forces one year training was called the Gap Year Scheme or something like that.  Ironically, I think it has been drastically pruned back.  I think it is a better idea than conscription because it's better to have volunteers, rather than people who don't want to join the military.  This is not a time when the armed forces have to take anyone and everyone - it's better if they take people who actually want to join, as the time and money needed to train personnel is considerable.

I've never been on the dole but if I ever was I would hope that the work I was assigned would be something I had the skills and interest to do.  I don't subscribe to the belief that any job is OK.  If they really want people off the dole then the work has to engage the person.  I doubt unskilled community work would lead to permanent employment, and that's really what working for the dole should be striving for.

Interesting article about the attacks on welfare recipients

http://nofibs.com.au/2014/01/28/abbotts-undeserving-poor-e2mq173-comments/

Dr John Falzon, CEO of St Vincent de Paul Society National Council, says that work for the dole had limited success and “blaming the poor for their poverty’” should have no place in framing government policy. 

Unfortunately, it appears that once again welfare policy is being driven by ideology, rather than evidence.

If indeed Abbott’s brand of conservative politics has its ideological roots in the conservative Christian tradition of the United States, then the ‘undeserving poor’ will rapidly join ‘asylum seekers’ as scapegoats in the trending toxic themes of conservative government in Australia.

good article freakiThe whole idea of work for the dole makes me cross, because it implies that unemployment is the unemployed's fault.

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@boris1gary wrote:

good article freakiThe whole idea of work for the dole makes me cross, because it implies that unemployment is the unemployed's fault.

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I'm particularly against financial penalties for newstart recipients. 

They don't get enough to cut payments for any reason.  They're got to be able to survive and get to interviews or temp work. They need appropriate clothing to wear. They need phones to either apply with or be contacted on.

The dole barely covers the above as it is without effectively fining people at the whim of a job network provider.

That job find is a rort, unemployed people forced to attend - then forced to sit around using slow computer's to apply for jobs that often don't exist, or even worse - forced to trudge around town going into shop's that aren't employing to ask for a job to be told, oh you have to apply online and i don't think we are taking on anyone at the moment. How humiliating.

Welfare payments need to be increased, can't see it happening.