Taxpayer works for 14 years to pay welfare bill of just ONE dole bludger

EXCLUSIVE: THE average taxpayer has to work for 14 years to pay the welfare bill of just one bludger who refuses to get a job under work for the dole schemes.

THE average taxpayer has to work for 14 years to pay the welfare bill of just one bludger who refuses to get a job under work for the dole schemes.

Social Services Minister Christian Porter has released extensive modelling on how much it costs Australians to pay for the 100,000 welfare bludgers who routinely fail to take part in work for the dole schemes, ahead of introducing welfare reform legislation to parliament today.

“If you are part of that group of 100,00 people who persistently don’t turn up to job interviews, you stay on welfare for much longer,” Mr Porter told The Daily Telegraph.

“An average person on an average wage is going to work for a great number of years to support someone in the welfare system who isn’t doing the right thing.”

Under the new laws, the government will trial drug testing of 5000 welfare recipients over two years and will introduce a drivers licence-style demerit scheme where bludgers who fail to attend job interviews repeatedly, with no excuse, will be stripped of their payments.

Mr Porter said welfare recipients would only lose their payments after two positive drug tests if they refused to take part in a mandatory treatment program.

“We know inside the system there’s been a massive increase in the number of people using drug and alcohol use as an excuse for not turning up to job interviews,” he said.

“It seemed to us that not enough was being done to identify people who have a drug or alcohol problem which is creating a barrier to their employment and then trying to devise a plan to treat that underlying problem.”

Mr Porter said the three drug-testing trials would be in areas where the use of drugs such as ice is prevalent and unemployment is also high.

Modelling undertaken for the government by PricewaterhouseCoopers, shows there are 93,327 people who repeatedly skip job appointments without a valid reason. Of these, 66 per cent were male, 73 per cent were aged under 35 and 39 per cent were under 25.