Centrelink & Employability: A Victim Blaming Descent into A Kafkaesque Nightmare

Centrelink is built from the ground up on the idea – a wrong idea – that unemployment is not a result from an economic system that is designed to exclude people by judging there worth on extreme hierarchies or that there is a simple lack of jobs and thus unless there is public intervention there will ALWAYS be a significant number of people (generally those at the bottom of the aforementioned social hierarchies). No, Centrelink and the thrust of the centre and right wing think-tanks/political-parties that engender this culture believe that unemployment is merely a ‘mistake’. A ‘mistake’ on the part of the job seeker.

Apparently, we the unemployed have merely forgotten to search for jobs. We are just fools (or worse ‘lazy’) who are missing out on the ‘infinite opportunities’ by failing to ‘market ourselves’ properly in the ‘jobs market’. Never mind that you have to search for jobs to get Newstart in the first place; or the failure of the federal government to direct state investment to contribute to employment or sustainable industry (particularly in the regional areas); or the employers themselves who rely on labour hire companies who create a precariat through casualisation and fail to give their workers decent pay or a decent salary. The conclusion of this thinking is that rather than create a universal job guarantee we need to be zapped like monkeys in an unethical experiment or as they would put it ‘incentivised’.

They humiliate incentivise these marginalised people by paying people so low they cannot afford anywhere to stay let alone eat. And when this marginalised person is unable to complete their ‘mutual obligation requirements’ (there is nothing mutual about them) they dock this person’s pay so that in there near death experience starvation they will somehow find strength. Instead of being deeply traumatised they will realise that they were just a fool who had forgotten to apply for a job and all will become miraculously employed and unemployment will be solved forever.

Now inherent in this fantasy is contempt and classism. By saying that unemployment is purely the job seekers fault it posits that the unemployed are all idiots. This is a disgusting generalisation of the working class and view that inherently privileges the Reinhardt/Palmer bunyip aristocracy real estate class who live off their capital gains as ‘very stable geniuses’ despite the fact that all their gains come from favourable council zoning i.e the government(there is also a growing 1.3 billion dollar ‘unemployed services industry’ that leeches off government funds).

Furthermore, this view also ignores the systemic factors particularly the discriminatory ones that lead to people being unemployed. Take sexism for example, numerous sources show that there is major discrimination against mothers in the workplace. Being fired because you have become a mother is bad enough but then having to deal with victim blaming of Centrelink only serves to further reinforce sexism in our society (at the intersection of classism). A decent welfare policy on employment would understand these systemic factors and through a process force their old employer to rehire them or get them a new job and mandate equal dignified pay.

Thus, an ideal welfare system would seek to force employers to employ people. It would utilise its budget and power to create force fair employment. It would tinker with the machine to accommodate the people rather than abuse ‘tinker’ with the people to accommodate the machine (the idea that someone should be unemployed because of the formatting of their resume is inhumane).

What completes the class-war assault on the unemployed is the illegal ‘Robo-Debt’ which seeks to attack the poor and working classes for daring to attempt to access social services. But this campaign of fear (which we must end) is a topic for another article.

In an industrialised country, in a wealthy country NO ONE SHOULD BE IN POVERTY. Poverty is ARTIFICIAL and is manufactured by a system that creates a wealthy elite who hoard resources and in doing so destroy our planet making it impossible for us to live. Do not buy there lies. The destruction of the Australian welfare system hurts us all. It drives down wages, dehumanises, increases inequality, reinforces discrimination, debases our society and ultimately makes us poorer as citizens and as a nation.

Give solidarity to your fellow job seekers and demand a universal job guarantee and a raise to Newstart.

I wish you Liberation, Peace and Joy