Etching
This Government in all its stupendous and magnificent stupidity has decided to blind- test welfare recipients for alcohol and drugs. It will do so through compulsory blood tests. Can you believe this? Anyone tested positive will be black-listed and only receive half their welfare entitlement. Subsequent further positive results will deny them 100% of their welfare payments.
They will try and enhance their chances of catching those addicts by testing sewer effluence. It is hoped that the Government’s welfare officers (police) get greater accuracy in pin-pointing the residential areas where those unfortunate souls might be living.
Our treasurer, Mr Scott Morrison was salivating when announcing this latest compulsory random blood-testing ‘innovation’ as part of his latest budget. His face all religious and with devout evil intent.
It is hoped this will bolster a much needed revenue bonus for the Government who are desperately finding ways to give the promised 50 Billion tax cuts to the big Australian businesses.
Can you believe this? Despite all that’s known about addiction, this government is ignoring the world’s best advice; punishing is never the answer. It will make things a lot worse. Experts know that it is help that is needed, not punishment. Punishment only works in making it reverse and worse. Has this Australian Government ever heard the word ‘rehabilitation?’
Yet it is rehabilitation that is in such short supply. The few re-habs that are available do this by charging enormous fees and are run on profit first and rehabilitation last. They take advantage of desperate parents forking out thousands in the hope the children will come back. This story rings a bell, doesn’t it? So it is with most Government ‘services’ all run for profit. The few free facilities’ are run by well meaning but totally untrained personnel. It relies on outdated methods, are woefully underfunded. They are so few in numbers with so many in a queue that it requires for addicts to hang on for months and months, just waiting. Many give up even trying. It is a misconception that help is available. By and large it is not.
But when it gets to punishing, oh there is plenty and more in the pipe-line, much more. You just watch! The dreaded inspector is snooping under beds and around sewage and toilets now. Sniffer dogs well trained. Catching addicts in the hollow of the night, screaming, muffled sounds, strapped down for compulsory blood test. No more welfare. Thrown on the heap. The desperation thickening.
The crowbar taken out. Your place is next!
Tags: Alcohol, Drugs, Morrison, Rehabilitation, Treasurer
Oosterman Treats Blog 
May 11, 2017 at 6:27 pm |
Have you no bill of rights in Australia? New Zealand (like the US) has a guarantee against unreasonable search or seizure, whether of the person, property, or correspondence, or otherwise (Section 21)
This makes it illegal to search someone (or take a blood test) without a warrant. Besides which a blood test someone doesn’t consent to is battery. Surely this new law will be struck down by the Australian courts.
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May 12, 2017 at 1:38 am |
Australia has no Bill of Rights. A former PM insisted that we don’t need one, as we have the Common Law.
Common Law requires that one has to go to court to fight for one’s rights. That requires money which poorer people don;t have.
Our government is literally going through the sewer to find the drug takers. It is disgusting.
Cutting off drug users from welfare won’t help anyone. As the penniless people will turn to crime.
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May 12, 2017 at 3:52 am
No bill of rights? Amazing.
It’s no wonder we are the world’s largest users of ice.
We need money spent on well run rehabilitation units instead of spending money on chasing them around the place.
Where does this urge to humiliate and punish them come from?
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May 12, 2017 at 4:07 am
Hi, Gerard. you are asking “where the urge to humiliate and punish” comes from? They learnt that in the private schools. Bastardisation and bullying seem to be part of the curriculum; as is debating. Here you learn to tell big whoppers and act like you believe it. The private schools are the breeding ground for our politicians on the conservative site of politics.
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May 12, 2017 at 5:32 am
Yes, Berlioz.
Private schools offer the foundations for future tormentors.
The English system of Duxes and Masters using their power to lord over others. Debating often is an excuse to sharpen sledging. ‘Good sledge’, the teacher will say to the ones who masters the art.
But the recipients might harbor secret suicide options on their walk home from school.
Did I hear right that Australia has one of the highest suicides amongst the very young?
Our PM now reckons the urine/blood,saliva testing of 1500 welfare recipients is an ‘act of love.’
http://www.abc.net.au/news/story-streams/federal-budget-2017/2017-05-12/federal-budget-2017-pm-says-welfare-drug-test-plan-based-on-love/8520564
He was beaming when he said that.
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May 12, 2017 at 12:21 am |
A bill of rights? Australia seems to thump its nose to any form of ‘rights’. Human rights for refugees are forever being breached by Australia as pointed out repeatedly by the UNHCR, the UN and others.
I don’t understand how they can force a blood test on anyone, Stuart.
Perhaps by threatening withholding welfare payments?
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May 12, 2017 at 6:32 am |
And then what? Theft and aggravated burglary will rise, rough sleepers and beggars will appear on all the streets… how else are they to live? Are they then going to be herded into camps?
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May 12, 2017 at 10:51 pm |
Yes Hilary. You are right.
If one looks at countries that concentrate on rehabilitation more than on punishment you soon get the picture that rehabilitation works better. Norway has 65 prisoners per 100.000 people, the US has close to 700 that are incarcerated per 100.000.
Herding them into camps (prisons) does not work.
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May 12, 2017 at 5:30 pm |
if you receive a benefit from the taxpayers they have the right to dictate terms. remember you are getting money for free from hard workers who many themselves cannot even get what welfare recipents receive (well in america dont know about austrailia) you have no expectation of privacy and most do not want to subsidized drug but of course many gov programs aer always started on the backs of right and proper or noble causes when in fact they are about something different entirly, hiding the real beneficiaries of gov programs (and jsut a hint it is not the recipients or the taxpayer) ,
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May 13, 2017 at 12:47 am |
Welcome Roberta,
So what to do with the drug addicts, including the cigarette addicts, the alcoholics? The medicine addicts? So many addicts now, Roberta. Would you not look after the nicotine addict on his last lung collapsed breath lying in a hospital bed? Why also not look after the ice addicts? Help, not punishment.
What to do with food addicts, the morbidly overweight? What to do with the elderly. Those who did not became ‘life’s winners?’ The sick, the frail, the hungry?
A well functioning society takes care, shows compassion and tries and look after all the best it can.
Such a society is a just society, a progressive society, benevolent and caring.
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May 20, 2017 at 10:10 pm
not against compassion but it is sad when people are forced to care for those who make bad decisions and knowingly damage themselves and expect others to carry them when they cant carry themselves anymore. it is already known by medical professionals that alcoholics, cig addicts can stop if they want to. if they dont you reap what you sow. if they want medical care should they pay for it themsleves (after all alcohol and cigerettes and drugs are very expensive) so making bad decisions is not the same as being a victim of crime or disease you had little control to deal with or avoid. so the best way to show compassion is to withdraw help from those still in position to stop using to show example for others to not even get started. you cant help those who wont help themselves. finding this balance between helping someone get onto their own feet and carrying them for life is a fine line. what about compassion for those who did the right things made right decisions despite the hardship of it and having to pay for those who dont? one can always use their own money to show compassion to people, there are charities and shelters etc for such thing this is good as it is voluntary.
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May 12, 2017 at 6:28 pm |
A terrible state of affairs.
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May 12, 2017 at 11:01 pm |
Yet, Kayti,
Yet it is this Prime Minster who so often talks about how ‘free’ Australia is. Yes, but when it come to blood testing apparently he can enforce this on welfare recipients.
We used to get a part age pension. Many might think it is welfare. Can I expect to be tested soon? Will I get advance warning or will they storm in, strap me in some kind of restraining device with a beefy policeman kneeling on my chest and another one taking my precious blood.
Is this then an expression of how our PM Turnbull loves me.?
Should I cower underneath my bed, fearful of what might happen next?
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May 14, 2017 at 7:38 am |
I guess they’ll have a lot of fun checking the sewers of Lord Wafflealot Trumble’s electorate then.
Why aren’t they chasing those multinationals who don’t pay tax, instead of some poor bugger for a few dollars. Be asking too much for this abomination of a government
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May 17, 2017 at 11:58 pm |
Yes, can you believe Government inspectors with caps on, taking samples of sewers, lifting those heavy cast-iron lids, scooping up effluence.
The laboratory scientists pensively peering into vials, shaking them and then try and find the culprits sitting on a toilet miles away having a quiet ablution.
Unbelievable.
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May 17, 2017 at 10:58 pm |
No one has mentioned the enormous cost of performing and managing these tests. It will cost millions to save thousands. Idiotic and meaningless.
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May 18, 2017 at 12:04 am |
I don’t understand why we are so peaceful about all this. We seem to take it all on the chin.
I see people protesting in other parts of the world.
Where are the students or their professors? Are they not seething with discontent?
The terrible plight of so many.
Anyway, I want a normal day today.
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