Making work, not the dole, the easier option

Catch a suburban train to the city before 6.30 am on a weekday and the carriages are full of blue collar heroes. These people get up before dawn to commute from the outer-suburbs to work in the relatively low-paid service industry jobs that help keep the CBD open for business.

Contrast the work ethic of these people with those who can't be bothered to get out bed. Take, for example, the 40 year old, unemployed woman who said this in the Sunday Telegraph in February: 'Some of the jobs I've looked at, you get just as much when you're on the dole. Why would you want to drag yourself up at 5 am for that?'

Dragging herself up would earn her, at best, a marginally larger income compared to the dole. Deciding not to work sounds like a rational decision, as taking a job would entail much more pain for comparatively little gain.

But it is immoral for the unemployed to say it's easier to loaf on the dole than to work and to rely on those who work and pay tax to support them. This is especially unfair to those working low-paid jobs, as the destructive message it sends is that this is a mug's game. This makes it harder to foster a pro-work culture throughout the community in which the expectation to work and support yourself is the norm.

Experts have long acknowledged that the relatively small difference between a low wage and unemployment benefits can deter the unemployed from wanting to work. This problem has defied solution, mainly because the answer is politically unacceptable – cut the value of (or place time limits on) unemployment benefits to increase the financial incentive to work.

The alternative is to narrow the gap between the effort required to work and the lack of effort required to remain unemployed. This is the logic behind necessarily onerous mutual obligation requirements – that the work-shy need to be hassled into working by taking up as much of their free time as possible with job search requirements and with earning their benefits by participating in the work for the dole scheme.

The Abbott government's plan to ramp up the mutual obligation regime by requiring the jobless to fill out 40 job applications a month and perform up to 25 hours of community service has been described as 'punishing' the unemployed. This is not correct. What it will actually do is make the system fairer for working Australians who rightfully resent having to support those who unreasonably prefer to bludge on the dole.

If we want to uphold the moral principle that those who can work should work, we cannot afford to make life on the dole the easier option. Reasonable measures that make it harder for the unemployed to say no to dragging themselves out of bed at 5am are justified and deserving of support.

Dr Jeremy Sammut is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.