The nature of Abbott’s game
The government’s “green army” – further details of which were announced today – will:
… target indigenous Australians, people with disabilities, gap-year students, graduates and the unemployed.
Ignore the program, instead, it is the word “target” which is of some significance. It would suggest that the scheme is directly aimed at singling out these people.
But why?
The answer is simple: it’s electorally popular to “single out” certain groups and in particular Indigenous Australians, people on the Disability Support Pension and the unemployed. It would be electorally popular among the ‘perceptively astute’ millions of redneck or apathetic middle-class voters in our country to see lazy ‘Abos’, people ‘feigning a disability’ or dole bludgers actually being forced off their backsides to give something back to the hard-working, tax paying Australians they suck a livelihood from. The government will rack up a few points for this.
These groups are easy targets and Coalition governments have a history of targeting them or any other minority group they can entice the electorate to turn against.
I recall a Howard Minister once muttering to my department head that “Aboriginal bashing is good politics”. It is a tactic now skilfully employed by Tony Abbott. It was he who said, “There may not be a great job for them but whatever there is, they just have to do it, and if it’s picking up rubbish around the community, it just has to be done”. And it is he who thinks the racist and appalling Northern Territory Intervention didn’t go far enough.
Truly inspiring words for millions of blood-hungry voters to feast upon.
As for disability pensioners as political targets, Bernard Keane wrote that:
The Disability Support Pension is a particular fixation of policymakers, partly because it has been expanding rapidly for more than two decades; but also, one feels, because, when it comes to welfare clichés, someone fraudulently claiming disability is considered even worse than the stereotypical dole bludger or single mother.
And as Kaye Lee reminded us:
The Abbott government is preparing Australians for an overhaul of the welfare system, with Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews indicating too many depend on the government for their incomes. Mr Andrews said the review shows that more than five million Australians, or about one in five, now receive income support payments.
In his 2009 book, Battlelines, Mr Abbott wrote that one of the Howard government’s most significant achievements was “slowing the rise in the number of people claiming the disability pension”. Mr Andrews suggests that the difference in indexation between Newstart and pensions leads to a “perverse incentive for people to get onto the DSP”.
Parenting payments and the disability support pension were two areas of welfare that “would be sensible to review again”, Mr Andrews told the ABC.
Indeed, Tony Abbott publicly declared three years ago he was “ready to wield the stick” to appeal to “his John Howard base”. Howard himself attempted disability reforms in 2006 with his failed Welfare to Work policy. Failed or not, Tony Abbott wants to appeal to the same base. Remember that Abbott wrote one of the Howard government’s most significant achievements was “slowing the rise in the number of people claiming the disability pension”. It’s good to repeat this to the electorate, however, the facts show this was untrue. But nonetheless, it’s of absolute importance to tell everybody that the Coalition can get those lazy people off their arses, as he now proposes with his green army.
John Lord once wrote on this site that a political party has but two ambitions. One is to win government. The other is to stay in there. A successful tactic is of course to inspire the Howard base to “gang up” against those who have no electoral clout. Howard was the master and Abbott hasn’t forgotten his lessons.
You would remember that opinion polls in 2001 showed that the Howard Government was facing massive defeat. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 changed all that, but not enough to Howard’s satisfaction. He was able to terrorise the gullible rednecks into believing that terrorists were hopping onto any rickety old boat and heading to our shores with murderous intent. From 1996 to that point of time 221 boatloads of refugees sailed unhindered into Australian waters. Number 222 – just after the September 2001 attacks – ran into a bit of trouble and running to its aid was the Norwegian vessel the Tampa and running to Howard’s aid was an election. I’m sure that most readers here will have fresh in their mind the stench surrounding the politicisation of the Tampa incident and how it was the turning point for Howard’s fortunes. And as the average IQ of the electorate plummets we see the same tactic of demonisation being successfully administered by the current government. It’s the nature of the game.
Public servants are another easy target to win votes. They are, in the minds of most people who don’t know one, over-paid, lazy, and unimportant. And of course there are too many of them and are an unnecessary burden on the tax-payer. Abbott went into the election singling them out for punishment. The uneducated section of the electorate simply love to see anybody they don’t like being “bashed” by the government. Public servants sit in the same pool as Indigenous Australians, DSP recipients and the unemployed. Coalition governments have demonstrated, successfully, that it is good politics to convince the electorate that they need – to borrow Abbott’s words – the stick wielded at them.
I would readily conclude that policies and progress aren’t issues of importance for the Coalition. Vote winning is the only goal and on this principle the target groups are the apathetic middle-class or the bogan, redneck racists that have swelled dramatically in numbers since 2001 and unfortunately, possess an enormous amount of political clout.
And so it is with today’s announcement of some of the finer details of the green army. Political analysts have long been critical of this program and have condemned it as a farce and a potential failure. Would that matter? No, not to the government. It doesn’t have to succeed because it will be a vote winner purely because of the strength of its agenda. It targets groups that have no bearing on election results while cementing public opinion against those very groups. I would argue that the number of voters nodding that “it’s good that these lazy bastards are made to work” will far outnumber those that confess “it’s good to see some trees planted.”
That will be something to listen out for.
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Return to home pageIt is not even thinly veiled but hideously blatant…a true vote winner sadly!
There is an underlying theme of hate and vilification built an the need to engender fear in the populace.
Meanwhile the private sector get off scot free outsourcing, off-shoring, downsizing, workers working overtime for nothing, tax avoidance and minimization, overseas tax havens, increased inequality, control of the media and on and on it goes and a few poor tragic youth, aboriginals, unemployed, disabled and homeless people are the problem.
Are the doyens of industry and the corptocracy so incompetent that they cannot work towards looking after all Australians rather than their narcissistic selves?
How is reviling the marginalized going to create jobs and employment.
Wake up Australia this is a smoke screen to cover their incompetence and lack of a coherent plan.
Job creation, job creation, job creation is supposed to happen by shutting down manufacturing and victimizing the poor?
My God I am living in the land of divisive hate for those who can least help themselves.
What a dumbed down lot of uneducated and irrational fools we are.
Damn the logic when hate and vilification will do.
I would normally use the word hate with some reservation however the type of vilification of the unemployed, disabled, youth, the homeless, aboriginal people, single mothers is deplorable.
Just a brief visit to a right wing site will soon demonstrate that resentment, anger and hate are rife when considering those who are less fortunate.
Not all post for sure but enough to make me worry that the poor and marginalized are being blamed for circumstance often beyond their control.
Day by day I wonder where the hell this country is going.
I agree Michael, the aforementioned voters would agree to Newstart recipients cleaning out asbestos from Telstra pits, cracking rocks in chain gangs or picking up litter – so long as it was below minimum wage (Newstart) and not lead to gaining any work skills.
Ironically these same people are those who shriek about the pink batt installation scheme, noise from windfarms but not freeways and if they think about CO2 levels at all, believe it is good for all life on earth.
I always felt rather sorry for the USA after electing Bush Jnr. I actually believed that Australia would not elect someone so welded to corporate interests that he did not care about anyone beyond his own personal interests, I sure am wrong.
If anyone has had anything to do with Newstart, one would wonder how they couls make it any harsher. I believe that is impossible. Expecting anyone, on low wages to travel more than 90 minutes a day to work, is cruel. Is this government going to pay the cost of travel. It is clear no one in such a situation could afford to pay themselves.
People have more responsibilities to attend to, then going to work. How does one fit family responsibilities in, when away from home 12 hours or more a day. I am not even talking about time for leisure.
““There may not be a great job for them, but whatever there is, they just have to do it,”
I heard Gina’s dad say this many years ago, when defending the deaths that were occurring in his blue asbestos mines. Yes, the man said, asbestos is necessary in the industry, someone has to dig it out of the ground. No, he did not feel sorry. Words very much to that effect. It is an interview I have never forgot.
We now have a government that believes it is above the law of the land. Yes, IR, insurance, OH&S and workplace regulations do not apply to them.
We know they ignore and break all political and parliament regulations and conventions, but this is breaking laws in relation to the workplace.
Do they intend to revert back to the common law concepts of master and servant, of the 19 century, I think?
Is this what they mean by freeing up and opening Australia for business?
Michael, excellent post. The Liberals have always been adept at the politics of envy, although they often use this as an excuse for what was formerly known as Howard’s Handout aka upper and middle class welfare. The deserving wealthy, the women of ‘calibre’ versus the undeserving bloodsucking poor.
Michael, I thought you were making sense till I saw “Number 222 – just after the September 2011 attacks” then I began to wonder had I missed something in 2011? Other than that, well done!
Agreed Michael, as a former life long public servant and as someone who connected with Howard’s ridiculously failed ‘Work for the Dole’ it is indeed easy and seemingly successful to demonise these already marginalised groups. Appealing to the red necked public’s view of these groups is what conservatives do with the vigour of the zealots they are and it is so successful and capitalises on their votes, why would they not?
This demonising appeals to the lowest common denominator element who choose to think that anyone can have great success in life if only they work really hard, if only there was a modicum of truth in that. As for the demonisation of the Public Service, it seems to have gained sporting status. The only people who seems to think poorly of the Public Service seem to be people who have never worked in it, I would guess that working in Parliament House at the moment would not be a joyful experience for those with even a ounce of social conscience. We seem to forget that public servants include politicians.
I read an article today that espouses in relation to the March in March movement that we shouldn’t march but wait to protest at the ballot box, for most and in particular these ‘targeted’ groups that will be way too late.
I know who s suckng up a livelihood off the taxpayer, we call them politicians with rorts, rorts and more rorts, ring a bell tone the tosser ????
I am looking forward to the day, when Abbott begins to place legislation before the house. I believe Labor and everyone else is going to have a field day.
I cannot imagine any that is of a standard, that deserves to past any house of parliament.
I expect most, if passed, as is likely wirgourt due review, to end up in the courts of the land.
I say this, as they ignore all advice.
Like the image of Abbott and Joyce learning a skill there. Something they could actually get right… With a lot of training, of course!
Demonising creates a layer of potential dynamite underneath the society that sucks up their labor and pays them almost nothing. One day the dynamite will explode, as the masses of unemployed and hard-done-by, who never had a chance to win anything within the system, bring together their collective wits.
Thanks Dave. A silly typo. 😳
MONGREL ABBOTT IS AT IT AGAIN –
Tony Abbott is going through with his plan to incorporate Cenrelink into the Post Office. I was talking to someone the other day who went into the Deception Bay Centrelink. Had to line up twice, in the second line there was an Australian Post worker being taught by a Centrelink worker the Centrelink job. HOW THE HELL IS THE POST OFFICE GOING TO DO THE CENTRELINK WORK, THERE ARE ALREADY BIG LINES AT EVERY POST OFFICE. IF SLEAZY, SLY TONY HAS HIS WAY ALL THE POOR AND UNEMPLOYED WILL DIE BECAUSE THERE WILL BE NO JOBS AND IT WILL BE VERY EASY FOR THEM TO BE CUT OFF. Please repost this to spread the word. I don’t know what we can do, does anybody have any ideas?
How can one link Centrelink into the Post Office. Have they not noticed, most PO are franchised.
Do they not know, much of Centrelink, work is done online.
Maybe Medicare might be a chance, but I cannot see what one would gain.
What disappoints me more than the performance of Abbott’s irresponsible divisive and vandalous government is the deafening silence from the financially and socially secure – so called “eminent upstanding pillars” of our society.
The same group of people, who whenever the nation’s security has been at threat, expect and benefit most from the selfless courageous sacrifices of the lower/middle strata of society – whose living standards they now are so silently complicit in destroying.
They are all apparently choosing to look the other way – when its the rich getting richer they have no concern.
Yeah, that constant amoral grasping for the populist vote really sucks. Thank goodness Labor hasn’t been tempted in any way. Ah oh… wait a minute…
http://www.northweststar.com.au/story/1669327/labor-mulls-boot-camp-for-young-job-seekers/
The double edged sword of Review of DSP. The ridiculous thing is that when the Howard Govt. brought in work for the dole , that is when serious review of people receiving the DSP was introduced but there was a “Grandpa” clause with it, anyone that had been on the DSP for more than 10 years did Not have to participate in the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Review to “Assess” your capacity for fitness to work, only people that had been granted the DSP since July 2000 had to be reviewed. I personally knew a woman that was on the DSP and there was nothing preventing her from resuming the work that she had done before her pension was granted but the Grandpa clause meant she did not have to work or be reassessed for the pension.
As a new pension recipient in 2001 my life was made hell by this Review and Assessment board.
I had contracted Menningococal Septicemia in October 2000. I was lucky to survive and with all my limbs in tact, my brain however did not fare so well, I have brain damage and NO short term memory. Whilst recuperating from this (It took 3 years for me to “get over it” as much as I was going to, I had a crippling back injury, blowing out 2 lumbar discs (that have never healed completely) and developing an inoperable cyst on my lower spine. I can move my legs, I just cant stand on them or walk for more than a minute or 2 with crutches, outside the house I am in a wheel chair. I had to stop driving. I had 4 children under 10 at the time. My oldest Daughter became my carer in 2007.
I was called for an assessment in my home town 500 meters from my house , I had to get a taxi. Then I was called for an assessment in a major town an hour away, to which I was supposed to catch a bus, I could not walk to the bus stop & I explained that but they would not accept it and they kept at it arranging another 2 appointments for physical tests for my fitness to work, I could not attend any of them & was threatened with cessation of my DSP, eventually I had my doctor contact them with my current medical status of which they were clearly aware. It took them 3 months to get off my back. I did resent the fact that my friend did not have to endure the process even though she was capable of working. It is not the recent recipients that are the questionable ones, it is some recipients that were granted pensions before 2000.
Fear, generated in the the people that have no social conscience, by the people that are lacking one, that people like me are draining the public wealth from the coffers, then fear generated in people like me that the only means of income that I have could be gone at the whim of a politician with an axe to grind.
1/ The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
2/ Henry Giroux
Neoliberalism is merely the extension of NAZISM. Von Hayek was a fascist. Abbott is a Catholic feudalist with nasty intentions. And still there are no protests on the streets. The masses submit willingly to their subjugation.
What a pathetic, sorrowful, bunch of losers.
Pink Batts MK II
What happens if you refuse to become part of the GREEN ARMY , and many won’t ‘join’, will this lead to a coalition version of national [green ] service ? Will all those unused refugee detention facilities be put back into service ? What happens if you are FIRED from the Green Army . …..how will that look on your ‘ centrelink file .’A version of conscription , no less ! A redneck’s wet dream .’ serves them dole-bludgers right ‘
What a piece of crap article. I an not even an LNP voter and this is just blatant left leaning drivel
Just when you think the LNP have hit rock bottom, they just keep digging!
A scapegoat must be found.
Thanks Rohan, love it, it is a left leaning website in case you hadn’t noticed, call it drivel if you want. Personally, I like the word dribble when I troll. Its a fine art form but taste should not conflict redundancy.
I have blurted this out quite a number of times but I’ve got to do it again, sorry for those who already know but there are areas the public service is in fact vastly more efficient, equitable and cost effective and the stand out public servant success story is Medicare.
Not perfect but its a god send compared to the for profit Private Health Insurers, Bupa being the undisputed lowest of all. Medicare is roughly 3 times cheaper to run than any of the private firms due to the kafka paper trail fraud maze that private insurers rely on to cheat people from their claims and dump liability premiums, not to mention pre-existing conditions, all of this is not in Medicare’s admin whatsoever.
Then you have the profit going to the stock exchange, the members of the board, and then you have the multi million dollar marketing campaigns. But the most ominous cloud hanging over all of this is Bupa are set to move in on Medicare all kept mostly top secret, just like what happened with Bupa and the NHS in the UK.
This has got to stop or we will have a health system that will wind up like the US, who are ironically in a battle with these Insurer thugs, useless financial sector investment banker clones they are, and we need to stop them before they become too entrenched, the US have endured these bastards FOR DECADES simply because they couldn’t get rid of them. Their power is beginning to hold, again it must stop.
This says it all, easy 15 pages very well laid out:
http://cpd.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/CPD_DP_Menadue_McAuley_PHI_2012.pdf
Now you know why abbort loves downtown abbey
One more post, this time an excellent blog form the UK, AAV, this one on the dark side of the Welfare Which hunt, cheers:
http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/iain-duncan-smith-profound-moral-mission.html
I get a little sad when excellent pieces alerting Australians to the terror that is the Abbott government continually raise Asylum issues. There are far more Australians supportive of Abbotts stance than not, I regard this never ending story a free kick to the Abbott gov by distracting Australians from the very serious issues that will impact them directly.
These stories (Asylum) take all the oxygen from important issues and I cannot support pieces that support the Abbott Govt.
I voted for 27,000 Asylum arrivals, Australia said an emphatic No and I have to accept it.
The asylum issue went for day after day (hour after hour) during the Labor Govt & simply got Abbott elected.
Why not separate this issue from very important issues that will affect Australians, particularly the young and the disabled and the poor.
I might seem harsh, but I am a realist.
Why does someone like our PM want to punish those who are poor downtrodden without support, mentally or physically ill and find it hard to cope with life? Abbott has lots of money -lives in posh areas and now has all the wealth granted to a PM. He actually trained to be a priest ! You would think that this would make him tolerant and kind seeing he is supposed to believe in a god-now that everything has become more expensive and rents are rising and are now very high-in Sydney -A lot of people cannot afford to pay-so what do they do? Camp out ? like they did in the years of the great depression? No they will now be jailed for that! or fined by local rangers who have to raise revenue for local councils anyway they can. So what do homeless people do? refuge houses are few and are often run by religious groups who always have to preach to the desperate poor..Read ”Down and Out in Paris and London” to know what George Orwell thought of religious places for the poor. He begged and slept on the streets rather than enter those horror houses.At the end of his book he says ”I shall never think again that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when i give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, not subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill,nor enjoy a meal at a smart restuarant.T hat is the beginning.” perhaps Abbott should go out into the world of the poor?? MM
“Graduates” are equated with “Dole Bludgers”, as though university education is simply a haven for the work-shy.
They really are aiming to please the (borderline retard) One Nation demographic.
I don’t think it is such a bad idea to get the young unemployed working if it gives them a sense of self achievement, it may help in preventing the cycle of family unemployment. However, I also feel that the retirement age should be left at 60-65 as the current retirement at 67-70 means that there are less and less jobs for the young.
Here we have a guy who has only worked for 6 months for a private company and couldn’t hack it, chucked in his job and became a Lieberal office lackey, through brown nosing and back stabbing made it to lead the Coalition with the help of Gredlin and friends, being owned by Stubert Turdoch, Gina Mineonlyhart in company with the IPA, this guy cried poor when Howard lost the election, cried poor because his salary dropped to a $140,000, didn’t know how to make ends meet, so took out a mortgage against his house to the tune of $750,000 to get by. Now this bloke who has no understanding on how to live on what welfare pays one, saying it is too much, a bloke who couldn’t survive on a $140,000, wants everyone off the dole and DSP. Firstly where are the jobs, since coming into power more businesses and companies have closed down raising the unemployment level, promise to deliver 1 million new jobs but doesn’t say where or have any plans on how to achieve this than throw money at big companies hoping for Hockeys trickle down economics to work. It now seems clear the plan is for all DSP people to drive the green army, in real terms a cut in allowance as they will now receive just above Newstart payments and doesn’t take into account travel to jobs sites, which may require special vehicles and also physical limitations and medication, not just the taking but costs as well, I can’t wait till the day this policy backfires, when the World sees it for what it is, slave labour of the most vulnerable and he is held accountable by the courts.
Great post margaret Miller.
We are all people of Australia whether we vote Liberal or Labor or the Jelly Babies. That being said, we should all be standing together in fighting to enact a law to make it mandatory for the the coffers to be opened to all of the Australian people at the end of every financial year and then all the people will be able to vote a government in on the basis of what their own eyes have seen to which is the most honest of the two parties thus letting you know who is really for the people and who is more for the lining of their own selfish pockets. Politicians are only as powerful as WE THE PEOPLE WHO VOTE THEM IN MAKE THEM. They are supposed to be for us, not the other way around, so instead of blaming either party for debt incurred we should all stand up for the right to examine the coffers.
For all the people who bag out people with disabilities, no-one asks for a disability. I myself am one of those people with a disability, but am proud to say I spent quite a few years in the workforce contributing to our society. We are all people and life’s circumstances are not predictable. The richest person in the world may become the poorest because they had to sell up all their assets to pay for a sick loved one thus rendering them homeless. You never know when you may become just like the person you have judged. Life is about compassion and understanding. When people have that in their lives they have more chance of returning to the workforce than if they’re pressured by the judgements of people who make a conscious decision to not think outside the box thus being blinded by their own black and white. A sad way to live and a sure recipe for arthritis with such rigid thinking.
l wish we would have a revolution and make the Liberals and Billionaiers like Gina Reinhart pick up dog poo and rubbish in the park in green armies and pay them $250 a week.
Grab a listen to Kev Carmody folks. “Pillars of society” is a song that sums up today in the Lucky Country.
Abbott is dog of war and is running an undeclared war on Australia’s working society including the unemployed, underemployed and unions.
Never worry about the Affluent Effluent looking after your best interests unless you are part of the Affluent Effluent.
blah blah blah politics blah blah blah, I look forward to the day when we all realise we don’t need hateful men in suits telling us what to do and charging us for the privilege of being enslaved. We can grow our own food, build our own houses, make our own clothes, look after our own children work together as fellow human beings and share what we have so no one is without. I hope we get there before all nature is destroyed by these wicked and debased human beings.