Paltry JobSeeker stops people finding work

Mutual obligation
The federal government adds a few dollars to the dole while heaping more “mutual obligations” on the unemployed. Funny how it doesn’t mention its own obligation to make sure there are enough jobs to go around.
PJ Bear, Mitcham

The work is available, if they don’t rely on taxpayers
I am sick of people crying poor. Trying to get someone to employ domestically is challenging – there are jobs, it is just that the “entitled generation” does not want to do them while there is a chance of easy money. Harsh I know, but when I know people who will do anything for work (and do have it in spades) it is frustrating that others cry poor. There need to be incentives for people to work and not to rely on taxpayer assistance.
R Wilson, Seaforth, NSW

Farmer jobs offer inadequate wages
Living costs are very high in Australia, especially for housing, and in recent years electricity and gas prices have increased substantially, yet unemployment benefits have remained stagnant and totally inadequate. Farmers often talk of the inability to find workers when needed but they have largely created that deficiency by offering inadequate wages and working conditions that only poverty-stricken foreign workers are in general willing to accept.
Andreas Bimba, Box Hill

Who’d cool their heels on a hotline?
The Employment Minister is urging employers to dob in anyone who turns down an offer of a job. Does Michaelia Cash seriously believe there are people who want to be on Centrelink and sit around doing nothing with their lives?
Chris Burgess, Port Melbourne

Plenty more to report
Will the government also establish a hotline for job-seekers to report employers who offer jobs at below the minimum wage, with unreasonable conditions attached, or in unsafe workplaces?
Jenny Herbert, Metung

Money for jets
The government has announced a $50 per fortnight increase to JobSeeker one month after the supplement finishes as well as more stringent eligibility requirements, yet at the height of the pandemic the same government could afford a private jet for a senator to seek work overseas (“Scott Morrison defends taxpayer-funded private jet for Mathias Cormann’s OECD bid”, The Age, 25/11/20). Go figure.
Doug Springall, Yarragon

THE FORUM

Aggression weakens sport
The Victorian Coroner is calling for fresh research into the effects on the brain of blows to the head in sport (“Coroner calls for more CTE research”, The Age, 24/2). I welcome the research, but it isn’t rocket science to understand why concussions and brain injuries are so common in many sports. When a TV station promotes a sport, it rarely, if ever, shows the skill. Instead we see, ad nauseam, sportspeople aggressively manhandling each other much to the commentators’, and I suspect, the viewers’ delight. Even in a non-contact sport such as tennis, all the promotion ads show players in an aggressive mood.

Australian rules is a skilled game and it is a pleasure to watch players demonstrating their skills. But it is not a pleasure to see a talented footballer brought down by a player whose only skill is nothing short of thuggery. Perhaps I am in the minority here, but surely it is time to remove the ugly aggression from our great game. Maybe one day we should try an AFL game played by some of the best players, with minimal or zero aggressive play, and see how it is appreciated by the spectators and the TV audience.
John Cummings, Anglesea

Protection pays
When is the AFL going to provide head protection for players? It will be cheaper in the long run.
Barry Revill, Moorabbin

Crown inquiry
Daniel Andrews has called a royal commission into Crown Casino, assuring the Victorian public, “This is about making sure that those who hold a casino licence in Victoria uphold the highest standards of probity and integrity – and they are accountable for their actions”. I hope it upholds more probity, integrity and people being held accountable for their actions than Andrews’ last commissioned inquiry, into hotel quarantine.
Geraldine O’Sullivan, Hawthorn

Investigation gap
So, the Crown royal commission will look specifically at whether Crown is fit to continue to hold its licence and specifically not at what the gambling regulator knew or should have known about Crown’s illegal behaviour.
Peter Randles, Pascoe Vale South

Afraid of findings?
The exclusion of any reference and examination of the regulatory body responsible on behalf of the Victorian Parliament and the people of this state to ensure conduct of the highest standards of Crown casino is not just a gross exclusion but a failure to ensure that the Victorian Commission for Gambling is brought to account for its dismal performance in its task as regulator. Is the exclusion a statement that a stringent examination of its role would name others who also need to be brought to account?
Ray Cleary, Camberwell

Skip the process
If the NSW government, based on evidence drawn from Crown’s Melbourne operations, denied the gambling behemoth a licence to operate its Sydney casino, why is it necessary for the Victorian government to hold a royal commission into the same company to ascertain whether it’s fit and proper to hold the gambling licence upon which the NSW government drew its adverse conclusion?
John Mosig, Kew

Who’s in charge?
Scott Morrison states that, “As the government has led Australia through the worst situation we’ve seen since the Second World War, we will continue to do so undistracted”. It wasn’t Morrison’s government that led us, but the premiers of the individual states who did (and still do) the hard work.
Margaret Collings, Anglesea

Respected leaders
I am happy that Victorian MP Peta Murphy received a slightly earlier vaccine than she could have otherwise expected as she has an underlying health issue (“Why a Labor backbencher got the vaccine”, The Age, 24/2). But Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese and Adam Bandt should have waited their turn. Senior citizens such as John Howard, Paul Keating and Michael Caton could have been used for publicity instead.
Alan Inchley, Frankston

Challenge Kelly with ideas
Regardless of Craig Kelly’s evidence-free opinions on climate science and COVID-19 treatments, he has shown some degree of courage to stick with his beliefs and go solo as an independent (“Kelly could be bigger thorn in PM’s side,” The Age, 24/2). The competition of persuasive ideas at the next election will determine his fate. Hopefully he will be competing against others who can challenge his misinformed ideas with those that are reasoned and evidence based. Here’s hoping that the other candidates don’t regress into a cheap competition of misinformed ideas just to pander to Kelly’s base of supporters.
Paul Miller, Box Hill South

Shelve personal views
Federal MP Craig Kelly says: “With new policies that come along, I’ll be voting on my conscience.” A seat in Parliament is not a platform for a member to voice and vote according to their own personal views, opinions and ideologies. The member is elected to be the voice of their electorate. If there is a clear conflict of interest between the two, the member abstains.
Wendy Brennan, Bendigo

Suffering in silence
While much is being said about the shocking alleged abuse of female parliamentary staff, and inquiries have been called, what is not being said or done also speaks volumes. As Margaret King points out, “This ‘culture’ is widespread through our entire nation as many women can verify throughout the decades” (Letters, 22/2).

Where are the inquiries to hear from the women who work in offices, shops, factories, schools, hospitals and elsewhere and who, when experiencing abuse, also have to “choose between [their] job and justice”, in Jacqueline Maley’s words? (Comment, 21/2)?

How many have had to suffer in silence, or been driven to quit their jobs while the perpetrator(s) kept theirs, or were made “redundant” after reporting abuse? We don’t even know as the question has never been asked, and that is the most revealing fact of all.
Barbara Chapman, Hawthorn

Career nodders
Corrado Tavella asks (Letters, 23/2) about job prospects for those who stand nodding while political figures are interviewed. Erasmus, in his In Praise of Folly, speaks of assentators, whose job is to reinforce the self-importance of their employers. I think of them often when watching such public announcements. This book was printed in 1511, so the job prospects appear to be ongoing.
Chris Watson, Ivanhoe

Bring Iran back
An excellent editorial on the Iran nuclear deal (“Biden’s balancing act to turn back the clock on Iran,” The Age, 24/2). Iran was compliant with the terms of the 2015 agreement ratified by America and five world powers, until president Trump unilaterally withdrew and reimposed devastating economic sanctions on Iran in 2018 in an attempt to cripple the economy and foster a civilian uprising.

Trump’s treachery was not rewarded. Iran’s citizens have suffered hideously but the Mullahs remain in power. Had the US honoured the deal it had signed, Iran may have had confidence to participate in further agreements to limit its missile development and more nefarious activities in the region. Hopefully a president with integrity can convince Iran to trust the West in the future.
Peter Barry, Marysville

‘Genocide’ not used lightly
Following on Britain’s trenchant critique of the Chinese government’s treatment of its Uighur population in Xinjiang province, the unanimous decision by the Canadian House of Commons, (“China blasted on ‘industrial scale’ abuses,” The Age, 24/2), to describe the Asian super-power’s behaviour as constituting “genocide” is significant. Even those understandably wary of standard facile Nazi Germany parallels are not holding back.

The former UK chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks stated last year in response to film footage out of China, “as a Jew, knowing our history, the sight of people being shaven-headed, lined up, boarded into trains, and sent to concentration camps, is particularly harrowing”. Unlike the late 1930s, when credible reports of similar atrocities deep within the Nazi Reich were reaching the White House and being ignored, the international community in 2021 appears to be mobilising against the erasing of a subject people.
Jon McMillan, Mount Eliza

Social distancing replaced
Would someone remind Metro that the COVID-19 virus has not been defeated and that as yet, no one in Victoria has immunity against it. On a replacement bus from Dandenong to Pakenham on Tuesday afternoon, as every seat in the bus was taken, more than half a dozen passengers stood and social distancing was non-existent for the one-hour journey. If any one of the passengers on that bus had the virus, Metro would not be able to provide any details of the passengers to contract tracers as myki cards were not scanned as passengers got on or off.
Graeme Frith, Gembrook

Dignity for older people
Sarah Russell’s call for a new aged care act (“Focus on people, not provider profits”, The Age, 24/3) hits exactly the right target. The Australian public rightly expects quality and safe care that protects older people’s dignity wherever they live.

There is an urgent need for more transparency around expenditure so we can better understand why not all residents are getting the care they need. This can only happen with greater public disclosure mechanisms. As a national, independent research institute, the National Ageing Research Institute supports the call for evidence to underpin decision-making in aged care.

Dr Joan Ostaszkiewicz, Associate Professor Frances Batchelor, Dr Andrew Gilbert, National Ageing Research Institute

AND ANOTHER THING…

JobSeeker
Scott Morrison’s update of JobSeeker now gives us three categories: lifters, leaners and dobbers.
Joan Segrave, Healesville

Scott Morrison has likened the $50 increase in JobSeeker to a change of gears. If only he hadn’t selected the lowest gear, as the recipients won’t be able to move forward.
Alan Inchley, Frankston

Why do Liberals always claim that if they raise the dole too much, people won’t look for jobs? Because it’s easier than admitting that an economy they’re in charge of isn’t strong enough to provide enough jobs for everyone.
Benjamin Levy, Caulfield North

Liberal leadership
If the Liberals sack Michael O’Brien, does that mean lobster is back on the menu?
Andrew McFarland, Templestowe

Poor Michael O’Brien. Can someone please send him a ″⁣letter of comfort″⁣ to help him through the stress of the looming May performance review?
Gary Sayer, Warrnambool

It’s a shame that the best potential leader of the state opposition lost his seat at the last election.
Les Aisen, Elsternwick

Craig Kelly
Craig Kelly was voted in as a Liberal and has now decided he is an independent. He should resign and let the voters make the decision at a byelection.
Geoff Oliver, East Malvern

Is “outspoken” now the politically correct term for “off the planet”?
Bernd Rieve, Brighton

Furthermore
Almost 900,000 Americans just signed up for government unemployment benefits yet Biden introduces legislation legalising 11,000,000 illegal aliens. How will this help Americans looking for work?
Jack Sonnemann, Lucaston TAS

Why do we have casinos and why do governments want them? Because of the great amount of money the government receives from them.
Dennis Fitzgerald, Box Hill