Social justice advocates have hit again at Ben Fordham over his stoush with unemployed Melburnian Jez Heywood, accusing the 2GB host of “bullying” and “scapegoating” the much less lucky.
Fordham final week informed the 47-year-old to “get a job”, after the graphic designer’s feedback to The Australian sad in regards to the $20-a-week Jobseeker enhance went viral.
A public disagreement ensued earlier than Fordham invited Mr Heywood on his radio program on Wednesday morning saying he wished to “find Jez a job”, with the pair clashing on air.
Despite Fordham later saying he had been inundated with job gives, Mr Heywood dismissed the interview as a “cheap publicity stunt” and refused to seem once more on Thursday.
On Twitter, numerous customers agreed with Mr Heywood’s stance.
“If only Fordham spent this much time, energy and focus on the multinationals and corporates and billionaires that pay little to no tax despite billions in profits,” wrote social justice advocate Kerry Anne.
“This is the nastiest and laziest kind of bullying possible, the media need to do better.”
Another person agreed, “It’s bad enough to zero in on and hassle one person — but every other welfare recipient has to watch as the media vilifies them all and whips up community contempt.”
Dr Blair Williams, a lecturer in Australian politics at Monash University, informed news.com.au it was an “an age-old tactic of the culture war of blaming those who are most vulnerable in our society for these issues that are actually systemic”.
“It diverts our attention from the other things that are happening — let’s attack the poor instead of focusing on the billion-dollar corporations that are not paying tax, literally stealing from Australians,” she mentioned.
“Often the ‘dole bludger’ is the scapegoat.”
Dr Williams mentioned the “massive problem is that a lot of people on Jobseeker can’t work because they’re disabled and they’re sick but they can’t access the Disability Support Pension because they don’t qualify, because the requirements have been getting stricter and stricter over the last decade or so”.
“You seen a lot of stories come out over the years of people with terminal cancer who don’t qualify for the DSP,” she added.
Figures from the Department of Social Services in June final yr confirmed 43 per cent of these on Jobseeker, or 358,000 individuals, had a partial capability to work, which means 15 to 30 hours per week.
That determine was up from 25 per cent in 2014.
Of the 358,000, 41 per cent, or 150,000, had a psychological well being situation and 31 per cent, or 111,000, had a musculoskeletal or connective tissue situation.
Dr Williams mentioned these individuals must be allowed the pliability to “work sometimes” however as a substitute had been “essentially being forced to look for jobs they can’t do”.
On Thursday, Chris Lucas, proprietor of high-end eating places together with Chin Chin, mentioned he had practically 200 positions vacant in Melbourne and Sydney and he was “struggling” to search out employees.
“We’ve got plenty of opportunities for anyone who wants to pull their finger out and get on with life and get a real job,” Mr Lucas informed Fordham.
But Dr Williams identified that “not everyone can work in a restaurant”, which was a taxing business that always didn’t pay nicely and had been plagued with wage theft points.
“People looking for jobs might be looking for jobs they can physically and mentally do,” she mentioned.
She added that the widespread chorus that welfare recipients ought to go and choose fruit “completely overlooks the fact that not everyone is mobile”.
“People have community ties, they can’t just up and leave for something that’s seasonal,” she mentioned.
“Fruit picking is not forever, and not everyone can move to the regions — moving home is expensive, let alone uprooting yourself from community, family, kids.”
The authorities had been below stress to extend the Jobseeker fee from $49.50 a day to round $1000 a fortnight, or about $68 a day — 90 per cent of the Age Pension.
Labor mentioned the $24 billion value to the finances was one thing it couldn’t afford, however agreed to a a lot smaller across-the-board enhance of $2.85 a day, or about $20 per week.
Dr Williams argued that each one funds, together with Jobseeker, Youth Allowance and the DSP, must be raised to “well above the Henderson Poverty Line”.
The benchmark, calculated quarterly since 1973 by the University of Melbourne’s Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, represents the “disposable income required to support the basic needs of a family of two adults and two dependent children”.
The most up-to-date publication for the December 2022 quarter put the determine at $1132.10 per week.
That would work out to greater than thrice the present price of Jobseeker — however solely about 60 per cent of common weekly earnings.
“What’s really annoying [about the welfare debate] is it literally ignores the fact that our economic system is dependent on about 5 per cent unemployment,” Dr Williams mentioned.
“If it gets higher or lower there are fears of inflation. We depend on unemployment, so whoever’s on it needs to be on a liveable income — not only because it’s important that humans don’t starve, but also it helps them get a job.”
Business Council of Australia (BCA) chief govt Jennifer Westacott, chatting with ABC Radio final week, additionally welcomed the rise to Jobseeker however questioned what the federal government was doing to get long-term dole recipients into work.
“You’ve got to fix this system because it’s not working,” she informed RN Breakfast.
“There are nearly 40,000 people on Jobseeker who have been on it for 10 years. That tells you the system is not working, something is wrong there. We need to invest in skills, we need to get people that are targeted for jobs that they can get. We need to stop sending people to jobs that they have no chance of getting.”
Ms Westacott mentioned the finances’s basis abilities bundle must be focused to “very disadvantaged job seekers” or individuals who had been on welfare for a very long time.
“Over time, we need to get Jobseeker at 90 per cent of the Age Pension, which I think we all agree on,” she mentioned.
“We’ve got to do that in a staged way timed with proper reforms to the way the job services system works. For example, why are we giving providers payments after someone has just been in a job for four weeks when they should be in a job for 26 weeks and it shows that they’ll be in the job for longer? Why aren’t we giving long-term unemployed people a training guarantee so they can upgrade their digital skills and get into the workforce?”
Appearing on the identical program, Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president Michele O’Neil mentioned “more needs to be done to lift people out of poverty”.
“Because one of the things with that payment being so low, is that you don’t have the money to be able to pay rent, you don’t have secure housing, you’re missing meals, you can’t get the data on your phone to be able to look for a job, you can’t pay for the transport to go to job interviews,” she mentioned.
Asked whether or not the additional $40 a fortnight made these issues extra achievable, Ms Wood mentioned it was “a start, but it’s not enough”.
Labor MP Julian Hill, chair of parliament’s Select Committee on Workforce Australia Employment Services, mentioned in a press release on Tuesday that it was “a myth that all unemployed people are ready to work or able to do the jobs available”.
“In fact, the data shows a giant mismatch between what employers are seeking and the enormously complex caseload of unemployed people including skills gaps, disabilities and illness,” he mentioned.
“There is strong evidence that the current system has failed to invest in people and is not adapted to their diverse needs, backgrounds, and circumstances. Trotting out stereotypes of ‘dole bludgers’ who should just ‘get a job’ will get a headline but won’t actually change anything. Long-term unemployment won’t be reduced without understanding the actual experiences of people.”
Data launched on Thursday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics confirmed Australia’s unemployment price jumped from 3.5 per cent to three.7 per cent in April, because the nation shed 27,100 full-time jobs.
“The small fall in employment followed an average monthly increase of around 39,000 people during the first quarter of this year,” mentioned ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis.
frank.chung@news.com.au
Source: www.news.com.au
