from
www.crikey.com.au
This cartoon from Crikey is already out of date. This morning on ABC's Insiders TV show, Federal minister Kevin Andrews admitted that ANY work, under ANY conditions, will be COMPULSORY under the IR laws, no exceptions.
Centrelink will not pay you anything if you refuse or quit a job, even if that job is outrageously exploitative. This is blatant slavery, as John Clarke and Bruce Dawe pointed out this week.
"We believe that the best form of welfare that person can have is to have job and remembering this that when a person gets a job it is the best way of getting another job."
So slavery is the new welfare. You can't quit, and you won't get any meal breaks, weekends, holidays, or penalty rates for working at night. Oh, and your employer won't have to provide the tools for you to do your job, you can be forced to provide your own office space and phone. Oh, and they can put into your contract that if you somehow DO get a new job, that you are barred from working in the same field as your employer for the next decade.
If you go on strike, that will be treason under the new Anti-Terror laws, and carries a 7 year prison term.
If you somehow prefer to starve rather than be exploited, then the Government can force you to work with a Control order, which you will be forbidden to tell anyone about, or risk a 7 year prison term.
If you criticise the Government, that will also carry a 7 year prison term.
Yes, I have a copy of the Anti-Terror draft legislation, and I'm working my way through the whole thing. The Council for Civil Liberties has a consolidated version which makes it easier to see what is changed.
Just when these two new pieces of police state legislation are about to throw huge numbers of people into prison, the Bad Faith Regime has also announced that they want to disenfranchise prisoners. Prisoners should not be allowed to vote, according to Honest John Howard. Next will come anyone unfit to work, because if they're unfit to work, then they're surely unfit to vote, right?
All these new imprisonable offenses have a "good faith defense", but sadly the burden of evidence is now on the defendent, who isn't allowed to tell anyone and isn't allowed to even be told what the evidence against him is.
When the majority of the people unfit for work are thrown off the Disability Support Pension and into Centrelink's slavery scheme, they won't be able to comply with their Centrelink's work orders. As it is, the local Centrelink offices won't even speak to them. They won't be paid any Centrelink benefits, so its death from starvation or prison.
In this time of biggest economic growth ever, we are being told to tighten our belts and watch the Reichstag burn, and trust in Honest John's good faith. Democracy overboard!
