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Australian
Social Security
The Australian social security fails the farmers.
Welcome to our
article,
Dear readers, today we want to talk about the Australian social security system, the benefits that we gain from this system, and also its failure to help the people in need, when they need help. To do that we are going to publish several blog, some of this blogs, may sound a bit outdated, but this is the easiest way to explain, our idealistic poit of view that may or may not be achieved.
Anyhow, in this article about the “Australian Social Security”, we start by writing, why the Australian Social Security fails to help the farmers; then we will also discuss other things where they fail. But first let us discuss about the farmer, because as we have said in another article Farming Today Is Still a Risky Business, that we will publish here soon.
You see, today the
Australian Social Security system is helping lots of people, but it is not
helping the farmers, even though the farmers really need help from the
government. Therefore, we want to know why this is happening, and then, we can
suggest how to avoid this happening again. We believe that the Social Security
system in Australia must help anybody that needs help, at least the name itself
suggests that. So, we are going to investigate and talk about this issue, in
this article and the following articles.
Anyhow, our views
are based on what was happening in Australia, about farming and the
drought, so, the first question is; why the Australian Social Security system
has failed to help the farmers. We believe that the Australian Social Security
can do better than what it is doing now. So, let us see why the Australian
social security is failing to help the farmers.
Now, what we are
saying here is what we know, but, if you want to know more about the Australian
Social Security system, you should follow these links, Social security in
Australia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_security_in_Australia, Benefits and
Payments - Australia.gov.au, and other links that can be found on the
internet.
Anyhow, we believe
that the Australian Social Security system that we call Centrelink, has failed
to help the farmers, because it has not been planned to help them from the
beginning, as we will explain as we go on writing these articles. Anyhow, we
are talking about the drought and the farmers that are having a very hard time,
so, we were saying that all this hardship can be minimized, if aids from the
Social Security System was more readily available to the farmers, but it is
not, so, the only thing that we can think about this failure, is why the social
security has failed to help? Because it is not fair for the farmers, so, the
present Social Security System needs to be fixed.
So, why the social
security has failed to help? Once you ask that question and look for the
reasons, you realize that in Australia not everybody is treated the same, from
the current social security system. You see, people are treated different
because they belong to different categories; there are: the-have and
the-have-not; there are the workers that work for wages; there are the
self-employed; there are the farmers, which we could say are self-employed, and
others; anyhow, when people go to Centrelink the Social Security government
agencies for help, the agencies do what they can according to where these
groups of people belong, so, let us see some examples how this works.
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How the Social Security works.
Let us start from
the working people; when people that work for a wage, become unemployed and
they are not earning any money, they can go to Centrelink, where they can apply
to receive the unemployment benefit from the government; this means that the
government gives them some money, until they find another job to go to and can
earn their living. This system is called Social Security unemployment benefits,
or something like that, and it is good, it is like receiving a small wage to
help you survive, so, it helps the workers when they don’t have a job and need
financial help, which is good.
But the problem
with this system is that all categories are not treated the same, which is not
good. So, I believe that something needs to be done, to help anyone that needs
help. You see, some categories may not receive help because they belong to a
certain category, even if they earn no money and have no money, like the
farmers, when there ia a drought, this is the problem with the Social Security system.
You see, the
farmers cannot turn to the government for help, because they are self-employed,
and they are supposed to be rich, okay they are rich, because they own a lot of
land, so, the assets test will exclude them from any government help; in this
case there is no social security for the farmers. This is the reason why the
social security system is failing the farmers, it is not set to help those
people that cannot earn money even when they must work hard, in the hope they can
earn their living.
But I believe that
these people must be helped, because they are the backbone of the Australian
economy, therefore, we cannot afford to lose them, so, the Social Security
system needs to be adjusted to help them when they need help. They must be
helped from the government, until the day that something else can replace the
government help; like the collection of funds that we have suggested in our
last article. Here we need also to say, that today farming is not regulated
from the government, but some regulations may need to be placed; so that when
things don’t work out, the government will be more willing to help the farmers.
Anyhow, we have
worked out that today the farmers cannot be helped from Centrelink, because
they are self-employed, and because they have too much property as assets. You
see, the assets-test is the main problem here; but I believe that the
assets-test in special cases should not override the income test completely,
this suggestion does not apply only to the farmers, because the assets-test is
also making life miserable to pensioners that own properties, when those
properties cannot earn half the money the assets test believe they could.
So, in my views the
assets test needs to be modified. Anyhow, we are going into details later,
anyhow, it will become self-explained as we write more articles about it. We
want to say now that there are issues that need to be fixed from the federal
government. So, this farmer’s problem and the assets-test for pensioner, is
going to be a real problem for the politicians, if they want to help the people
that have voted for them at the elections.
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Let us look at the political reasons.
Anyhow, I want to point it out to you, that in our previous articles that we started to talk about assets-test and politics. Now, what is happening at the Australian federal government level is not right, they need to work better what the people need, and how the people are affected when they make their budgets, I believe that this is one of the reasons why Australia is having problems today, some of these political people that become treasurers are heartless and careless, they have made many mistakes that has affected the public adversely, some of these mistakes need to be fixed, the public is not going to forget easily what they have done, so, they are going to run the risk of losing their next elections, on this issue alone. But let us compare what is happening now to the past. I believe that in the past it was better, at least this is the way I have seen it happen.
Anyhow, in the past
as far as I know there was no assets test in the seventies, it was introduced
later to stop people that were abusing the system, also because the government
needed more money. Now, let us try to see and discuss some of the reasons that
apply today, which takes us to see that the federal government is greedy,
because they want more money. So, here we need to look at who are the people
that make these decisions.
Of course, they are
the politicians that we send to Canberra parliament to govern us, since the
government is formed from the political parties. Now it becomes evident that it
is what these political parties represent, believe and preach that are going to
make the future laws and budgets that parliament will pass, to govern
Australia.
In this group of articles that we are posting in this blog, we will have a blog called The Australian Political Parties, but our next blog will be, Farming today compared to the old way, to show our reader the importance of farming, and then follow with other blogs, like The Assets Test Problem.
This is all in this blog, to see more click on this link, Australian Social Security
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