Mal, stop waffling and fix the bludgers

PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull needs to do more than have a beer with a local in an outback pub if he wants to connect to the voting public.

Piers Akerman: Malcolm Turnbull needs to do more than have a beer with a local in an outback pub.

PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull needs to do more than have a beer with a local in an outback pub if he wants to connect to the voting public.

He needs to get a handle on issues that count in the real world instead of responding with lawyerly sophistry or esoteric Canberran mumbo jumbo that might set them chuckling on Empire Circuit but only leave the pub crowd wondering how grounded he is.

He may be nimble and agile in his own mind — and the minds of his inner-Beltway ­advisers — but he can’t get out of his own way when he is pressed on issues that need short and sharp answers.

Take the nonsensical welfare situation we have.

The ordinary punter knows that it just doesn’t make sense to give people more in welfare — that is, when they’re not working — than they would get in a minimum-wage job.

Why work when the government is prepared to take money from someone with a job and pay you more than you might get if you’re in a job?

You don’t have to steal — the government’s doing it for you. Further, more than 43,000 Australians are getting $45,000 tax-free from welfare while the minimum take-home pay on the average wage is $39,500.

When Turnbull was asked about this on Friday by Melbourne broadcaster Neil Mitchell, he waffled. “Well, this is what Christian Porter the Soc-ial Services Minister is looking at very closely,” he said.

“We have to ensure the welfare system provides a generous safety net, that is a critical ele­ment in our fair society. But it also needs to work in a way that encourages people and provides incentives not disincentives for people to work.

“You know, we’re dealing with people’s lives here. We have to ensure that we’re providing the right level of support, we are doing so in a fair and compassionate way but equally that Australia’s welfare system is providing incentives for people to work because the best form of social welfare is a job.”

All he needed to acknowledge was that the situation was out of control and that it was wrong for people to be paid more not to work than to work.

Forget the nonsense about incentives and disincentives. Workers paying taxes that go to provide dole payments for young and healthy bludgers know they’re being ripped off.

Tough love is needed. The best welfare is a job. That ­applies to all Australians.

There are plenty of jobs begging in Australia. We have to import workers on 457 visas to fill positions. We give backpackers tax breaks to encourage them to pick fruit, work in hospitality, work in the bush, move around this great country to where the work is ­because too many Australians don’t want to or won’t because it is too easy to get on the government tit and stay on it.

Tough love is needed. The best welfare is a job. That ­applies to all Australians.

The Labor Party is behol-den to historically corrupt union bosses whose organisations have amassed so many millions that fining their officers is a meaningless gesture, and the Opposition leader Bill Shorten thinks nothing of nominating shady lady Kimberley Kitching, who was slammed by the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, to fill a Senate vacancy.

A sneering opportunist, presiding over a front bench of proven failures from the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments, Shorten offers nothing.

Meanwhile, Turnbull, who should be dominating the ­debate, offers little but patronising platitudes such as his babble about what a successful multicultural society we enjoy in this country. Australia successfully absorbed record numbers of migrants before the word multicultural was invented and it did so because those coming here wanted to be part of a great vibrant ­society where they could enjoy freedoms they were largely denied in their own former homelands.

Being Australian meant you were invited to be part of the country that was being built here from the time of the First Fleet. If you had something worthwhile to contribute you were welcome — it was open to individuals to decide whether they were going to be lifters or leaners. Now we have ghettos of ­unemployed recent arrivals where women are spat on if they’re not wearing top-to-toe mattress covers — that’s what this wonderful multiculturalism has wrought. We have a Middle Eastern Crime Squad. We have a Grand Mufti who won’t speak English.

So, let Gillian Triggs take issue with me under Section 18C of the Anti-Discrimination Act if she thinks dole bludgers shouldn’t be referred to as such, or get her highly paid Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane to add me to his list of offensive Australians and punish me with process because I think a prerequisite for Australian citizenship should be an ability to speak the English language.

The blokes (that’s a gratuitous reference to keep the Australian of the Year, David Morrison, gyrating) around the surf club refer to Soutphommasane as Soup Spoon — in an amiable and inoffensive manner of course, but they can’t understand how they permitted politicians from both sides of the House to let Australia became such a nanny state.

Canberra insiders may muse on the popularity of a Donald Trump or a Pauline Hanson, but for all their worldliness they wouldn’t have a clue about the anger seething in hardworking Australians when they read about freeloaders on welfare, about multiculturalism and the blind eye turned toward polygamous marriages, or the explosion in public service numbers.

The natives are getting very restless. The lack of authentic leadership is reflected in the polls. Hard decisions need to be made or the taxpayers will call time on this farce.