Rip off the system, it’s the Aussie way

If this finds you anxious, worried about house prices or not getting ahead in life by achieving financial security, just relax. This is the land of vast opportunity.

Be assured that in this country there are easy ways to make a lot of money very quickly. But don’t listen to the Prime Minister’s naive musings about nimble innovation and market disruption. The riskiest thing anyone in this country can do is work hard, invent something and create a start-up company that competes in the open market. There are safer alternatives, proven methods of wealth creation that are based on the time-honoured practice of government-sanctioned rorting and fraud. People are far better off following those.

In Australia, the quickest way to riches is via ownership of a business that leeches off the public teat. The first example that comes to mind is the adult training and education sector. Consider opening a college or training facility that hands out dodgy degrees (Certificate IV in stamp licking and so on) and milk the system until you have squirrelled away $300 million into a Swiss bank account. There is about $1.6 billion a year of easy money up for grabs. All but the dimmest entrepreneur is guaranteed to make off with a staggering fortune.

The training sector is a sure-fire thing because, generally speaking, Australians are obsessed with education. Along with alcohol, drugs and the heavy involvement of government in their lives, Australians see education as a gateway to a better existence. This could be because our summers are hot and people think a degree will get them a job where they can work in airconditioned comfort.

Whatever the motivation, parents regularly send their little darlings to university to secure obscure and overpriced qualifications that don’t result in employment, and employers routinely receive government funds to train employees to perform jobs they are already doing and give them little pieces of paper to prove it.

While education is a national obsession, hard work is not. Where there are jobs that aren’t performed in airconditioning, it is very hard to find workers. Consequently, tradespeople are rare and highly sought after — I pay my plumber more than I pay my doctor — and, despite our high rates of welfare dependence, we have to import people from other countries to pick the fruit on our farms.

An education business offers a risk-free, long-term run at serious money-making. Our authorities are pretty hopeless and fraudsters can be confident they will never be held to account. Though the government has known about industry rorting for many years, its only actions are regularly to leak the gory details to the media and announce crackdowns in the distant future, instead of brutally cutting off funding overnight or simply arresting people and throwing them in the slammer.

Apart from the financial rewards, owning an adult education business will drape one in the finest cloak of moral superiority. Just think: you would be helping the most disadvantaged. When not paying cash for houses in Toorak or buying the 15th Ferrari, you can grandstand at glitzy social occasions, making out you are a really good person — “Oh daaaaaaahling, we assist vulnerable people from compromised communities who are victims of entrenched, systemic inequality and social injustice navigate pathways to enhanced employment outcomes and climb the ladder of social mobility … it is just soooooo rewarding.”

In many Australian social circles of extreme privilege, no one will ever accuse an education business owner of making their money from ripping off the taxpayer by claiming government payments for conning poor people into buying useless things that will never help them and destroying their lives by locking them into hideous debt they have no hope of repaying. This is because most of the people around them will have made their money in surprisingly similar ways.

In any case, if adult education isn’t really your thing, the next best bet would be to start a daycare facility. In 2014, the Department of Human Services announced it had discovered 575 people receiving government payments for looking after children while claiming welfare for being infirm or unemployed. As most Australians are descendants of convicts, the ability to recognise a thieving opportunity is in our DNA. Since that announcement, the sector has boomed, with growth of 61 per cent.

At the time of writing, the government has just admitted that more than $1bn allegedly has been defrauded from the daycare sector just in the past two years.

However, a pioneer in the field allegedly has taken the business model to the next level. It appears he may have claimed more than $1m in government funds for looking after children that do not exist. This visionary, a refugee, has overcome shocking adversity and can recognise a bunch of mugs with too much money when he sees them. For the next Australian of the Year, please, someone, quick, nominate him.