I think the biggest problem facing the welfare system is decades of the Australian public having the recipients demonized as dole bludgers by populist shitbags. Every time I point out to my father that we give far more money in corporate welfare than we invest into people who are down on their luck I get the same tired bootstraps rhetoric. Taking support for aged pensions and family tax supplements out of the equation the actual amount we offer as support to people who can’t get a job through disability or lack of opportunity is an insult. If we taxed corporate entities and people squatting on virtual dragon hordes of property correctly the landscape would change.

My suggestions off the top of my head:

• Abolish mutual obligations - it’s punitive, expensive, and causes significant harm to the most vulnerable while doing little to help people gain employment

• Raise the payment - there have been some very minor increases and fiddling around the edges but the payment is still well below the poverty line

• Bring back the CES - private job providers are worse than useless and have little ability or intention to help the most vulnerable.

-Her hospital doctors wrote four medical certificates to Centrelink, but all of them were rejected.

Would love to know who these people are, who are such experts in medicine that they can reject the written word of experienced medical professionals currently practising in the field.

I likely would not be an engineer today if it weren’t for welfare, and my position was already fairly good.

I don’t enjoy people lamenting taxes, I don’t ever lament my taxes, and I especially don’t lament my taxes going to people who need it to give them a fair go in life (I try not to think about all the ways we’re wasting our taxes on corporate welfare and tax loopholes when I’m paying my taxes haha)

The solutions to me are simple, hire enough people to work in the department so they can actually handle their case load without absolutely hating their jobs due to burnout, iron out stupid requirements by making feedback easier to give (and give workers in the department the ability to fix them), make the automated systems actually work and not require you to call or turn up in person to get anything bloody done (when I was in the system, it felt like they were allergic to providing customer service in writing. I wasted so much of my and the worker’s time in what could have been an email and supporting evidence…), and raise the amounts you receive in line with cost of living (and in particular average cost of housing).

1. Something makes me doubt it would cost all that much more money in the grand scheme of things
2. Stop legislating tax cuts for Christ’s sake
3. Implement wealth taxes for people with more than $10 m in assets, in a progressive nature (or some other number)
4. (Unpopular) bring back inheritance taxes above a certain amount, like, ffs people, do we really like intergenerational wealth?
5. Tax companies more in creative ways
6. Mining tax that we should have implemented like 50 years ago, it’s our resources
7. Brainstorming for fun: give a regulator or the central bank independent control over taxation rates in line with legislated guidelines so that inflation and unemployment can be managed in line with countercyclical fiscal policy, perhaps. (Could be a dumb idea)

So often you hear “what’s the solution to xyz?” and it so often is “maybe pay more”. It’s not always the solution and not usually the only problem, but these days, more often than not it is…

Stop voting ALP and LNP.