Prime minister says that 'the days of doing nothing on the taxpayer are over'

Tony Abbott has portrayed his government as the “best friend that the workers of Australia have ever had” as he used a speech to defend key budget policies, including tough proposals targeting unemployed youth.



The prime minister rejected suggestions that the soon to be revived work-for-the-dole program was “demeaning” and declared that “the days of doing nothing on the taxpayer are over”.

Abbott's speech to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia follows criticism from Labor, the Greens, Palmer United, welfare groups and unions regarding the government's plan to strip people aged under 30 of income support for six months if they are not “earning or learning”.

The changes to Newstart – denounced by the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, as “the single most heartless measure in this brutal budget” – may be blocked by the Senate.

In defending the budget measures on Tuesday, Abbott spoke of the importance of work in empowering people and argued that there was “no compassion in having people start their adult lives on unemployment benefits”. Further, he said it was “a disaster for young people” to be out of work.

“Fit young people should be working, preferably for a wage but, if not, for the dole,” he said.

Abbott said he had spent a lot of time with people in work-for-the-dole projects when he was employment minister in the Howard government and “never saw anyone demeaned by it”. He argued most unemployed people were “yearning to show the world what they can do”.

“Being an adult means taking responsibility for the choices you make and making the best possible choices in the circumstances you face. Only after six months will young job seekers receive income support and then there will be a requirement to participate in at least 25 hours a week of work for the dole,” Abbott said.

“Work-for-the-dole is giving as well as receiving; that's why there's a dignity to work for the dole that's not there for people who simply receive unemployment benefits, especially long-term recipients.

“Given a choice between being useful in the community or taxpayer-funded idleness, governments, parents and society at large should prefer purposeful activity every time.”

Abbott argued that “almost everything” the government did was designed to ensure more people had jobs, through “lower tax, less red and green tape, and freer trade”.

He said more government spending “might boost employment in the short term but in the long term more government spending usually makes it harder to sustain the profitable private businesses that are the real engines of jobs growth”.

The government needed “to make it easier for young people, for older people and for women to enter or to re-enter the workforce” because lifting participation among these three groups would help offset the pressures of an ageing population.

“I want more Australians to be workers; I want our people to be more productive because, that way, our country will be stronger and our citizens will be more fulfilled,” he said.

“I want this government to be the best friend that the workers of Australia have ever had and making it more likely that more Australians will join the workforce is part of that.”

The government faces difficulty getting a range of welfare changes through the Senate, with a committee not due to report on a first tranche of social services legislation until September. But the removal of income support for young people for six months at a time is included in a second bill, with those changes not due to take effect until July next year.

Shorten used his budget reply speech to argue that the government's changes to Newstart were “sentencing young people to a potentially endless cycle of poverty when they should be getting a hand to find a job”.

The Greens argued that work-for-the-dole programs failed in the past and described the budget as “an ideologically driven attack on our most vulnerable”, while the Palmer United leader, Clive Palmer, asked whether the government was seeking to drive unemployed young people to crime. A Fairfax-Nielsen poll published on Monday showed just one-third of respondents believed the budget was “fair”.