
Here you make some valid points, but allow me to elaborate a little.The businesses screaming for workers are also the same ones which fought against minimum wage increases funnily enough. Lift the wage & people will want to work for you. Reminds me of all those farmers crying over the lack of Backpackers during COVID unable to work & be molested by them for less than minimum wage. Seem to recall them wondering why they cant find workers despite unemployment being high.... perhaps it was because no reasonable person was going to move their entire family out to the middle of bum-duck to work for below minimum wage doing hard labour, for one season? duh
From my experience there was more scammers in Pensioners trying to claim the pension & companies incorrectly claiming job keeper than actual welfare cheats.
The biggest fraudsters of Govt funds has always been big business, corporates , big earners & pensioners who move assets and shares around to get payments they do not deserve, avoid paying the correct taxes etc. Stats say Welfare fraud sits about 0.04% of all who claim it.
It might be hard to believe, but the poorest people in society are not the ones stealing all the money![]()
I've just spent over 30 years working for the largest government departments - Centrelink (Field Officer) and the ATO (Auditor), a contrast of each other.
When you have been speaking of pensioners in the context of welfare rorts you're implying Age Pensioners. Let me tell you the biggest rort on the welfare system is Sole Parent Pension.
Correctly introduced by the Whitlam government as a "Deserted Mothers Pension", designed to assist those women whose husbands shot through and left the woman trying to raise children, it evolved into the "Sole Parent Pension". Meaning that you didn't have to have previously had kids and be deserted, instead all you had to do was HAVE a kid, be partnerless and you qualify. And if you want a pay rise, go out on the weekend, find some dumb campaigner, spread your legs and bingo - a pay rise. Guess who has been exploiting this one pal - not the baby boomers!
On top of this, a major rort was a couple with kids would claim to be separated and the woman would claim Sole Parent Pension whilst hubby brings home a wage and happily comes home every night to a nice hot meal. Have another guess as to which generation is the main culprit. Wrong if you said baby boomers.
On Job Keeper. The notion behind the payment was valid, however, allowed to be rorted by our pathetic governments. To qualify a business had to have a drop in turnover of over 30% in March 2020 as compared to March 2019. If you proved this your business qualified for $750pw for each employee.
I can tell you (I won't mention the name) but a considerably large business in Newcastle qualified. Their sales improved in April 2020 and by May 2020 their sales were better than the previous year. But, they qualified and continued to receive over $1M per month in Job Keeper for 6 months. Effectively subsidising their profits. And they weren't alone. Absolutely mind blowing. Do you think the legislation was amended to recover this? No. Pathetic government.
Big business and corporates.
If the Australian government collected even 10% of taxation revenue from these legitimised criminals, personal income tax could be halved and the country's coffers will be full. Instead, the laws allow them to move monies overseas and to tax havens. Why, because no campaigner in government is prepared to stand up to these massive multi-nationals and change our laws in conjunction with other countries.
So why don't we? Because places like the ATO have fallen victim to the woke brigade were it's more important to have 50% of women in managerial positions; celebrate peoples sexual preferences; give preference to people of whom English is not their first language; etc. etc. - all this ahead of putting the best people regardless the above in positions of power to actually do something about this disgrace we are allowing to take place.
And all along we are distracted by secondary issues like gay marriage, climate change, refugees, etc. to take our minds of the real issues. And it's the generations below the baby boomers that are buying all this crap as they sit in their rented houses, contemplating how many hours they will be getting tomorrow from their casual jobs, and whether or not they can afford to turn the heater on.