AAP General News (Australia)
08-20-2000
Fed: Job snob statement an important bit of shock therapy
CANBERRA, Aug 20 AAP - Accusing reluctant job seekers of being job snobs was important
shock therapy which fortunately applied only to a minority, Employment services Minister
Tony Abbott said today.
Mr Abbott said those who objected, which included the Labor Party and parts of the
Australian Council of Social Service, were denying the dignity of labour.
He said there were plenty of 43-year-old women who worked as fruit pickers.
"Fruit picking is not everyone's idea of a favourite job but it's still a necessary
job and to do it well it should be a source of pride," he said on the Ten Network.
"That phrase that I used (job snobs) was an important bit of shock therapy because
for too long people had been dealing in comforting euphemisms.
"I have never said people in that category were anything other than a minority of jobseekers."
Mr Abbott prompted outrage from some sectors last year when he said some unemployed
people were far too choosy about the type of work they would accept.
Labor leapt to the attack again today with opposition family and community services
spokesman Wayne Swan accusing Mr Abbott of reaffirming his job-snob line wrapped up in
new-age rhetoric about renewing the threads of kinship.
He said Family and Community Services Minister Jocelyn Newman was trying but failing
to rewrite the Coalition's cold-hearted history.
"Both Tony Abbott and Jocelyn Newman have tried to undergo a compassion facelift,"
he said in a statement."The problem is that everyone can see straight through it."
Speaking in the wake of last week's release of the McClure report on overhauling the
$50 billion welfare net, Mr Abbott said welfare reform was not about saving money but
about renewing the nation's social fabric.
"It's about investing in the future of the nation," he said.
Senator Newman today denied aged pensioners would be targeted for mutual obligation activities.
She said Mr Swan kept mentioning pensioners so aged pensioners believed mutual obligation
applied to them.
"So let aged pensioners be very clear about this. This has been about workforce-age
payments," Senator Newman told the Nine Network.
"It is not about aged pensioners at all."
Prime Minister John Howard last week ruled out forcing aged pensioners to do voluntary
work "at this stage".
Mr Swan attacked that as an ominous development which left the way open for aged pensioners
to be compelled to perform some work in return for their pensions.
But Senator Newman said Mr Howard probably meant the government had not yet responded
to the McClure report.
That report spells out a radical overhaul of the $50 billion welfare net. Recommendations
include return-to-work cash rewards, boosted payments, and potential tax credits to ease
the welfare-to-work transition, along with sanctions and expanded mutual obligation requirements
for sole parents, older unemployed and the mildly disabled.
AAP mb/md/de
KEYWORD: WELFARE NIGHTLEAD
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