In May 1999, Tony Abbott responded to me directly in this newspaper. "Simon Castles should feel very angry indeed about being unemployed and idle for 18 months," he wrote, "and not having the opportunities that work for the dole provides."

At the time, Abbott was minister for employment services, and was responding to a piece I'd written a few days earlier in which I reflected on my own experience of unemployment and generally got stuck into him for his comments about the unemployed being "job snobs".

(By the way, Mr Abbott, if by chance you're reading this, I never said I was "idle", I said I was unemployed; these are not the same thing. They tend to be equated only in the minds of those who know nothing about unemployment beyond that story they saw on A Current Affair that time.)

Anyway, 15 years later and the employment services minister is now Prime Minister. And props where they're due, Mr Abbott, your career trajectory has certainly been more stellar than mine. But I have remained employed these 15 years, paying my taxes and, in so doing, giving something back I hope for the help I received when I was young and unemployed and needed it most.

The safety net, in other words, worked for me, just as it has worked for countless thousands of Australians for generations (including, interestingly, Clive Palmer, who last week defended the dole, saying it had helped him when he was an out-of-work teenager).