Once again, lefty blogger Jeremy Sear is guilty of the very thing he is supposed to be opposed to on his Pure Poison blog – intellectual dishonesty. Here is his interpretation of Tony Abbott’s column on getting more unemployed people into work:
The problem with the world these days is that poor people won’t come and restump my house for a fiver. Nor will they pick my fruit for 10c a basket. I have to pay working class people actual wages to do these things.
That’s why I’m voting for Tony Abbott.
In fact, at no stage did Abbott suggest that anyone should work for a pittance the article Jeremy links to makes only two mentions of the word “wage”, one of which is this:
Why should any reasonably fit person be on unemployment benefits in Karratha, for instance, when employers can’t find cleaners to work even at well-above-award wages?
Abbott wants people to work for above-award wages, rather than sit on passive welfare. Yet Jeremy’s intellectually dishonest interpretation is the exact opposite – that the unemployed should work for “fivers”.
We all support Jeremy’s struggle for intellectual honesty. But it’s time he practicsed what he preached.
Leon
thanks for the post
As I see it no one can object to any “work for the dole” scheme as long as participants are deemed to be working at the normal rate per hour so that they are not obliged to work for more hours than their dole would have earned them in an ordinary job. Where Jezza and his ilk go wrong is to assume that they would be obliged to work full time for the dole.