By James Vassilopoulos
Thousands of jobs will be lost as a result of the federal budget. The public service will be savaged, with 16,500 jobs cut. Last year 11,200 public servants jobs were cut. This should put to rest claims by media commentators that the budget was neutral or one of "fine tuning".
Michael Raper, from the NSW Welfare Rights Centre, told Green Left Weekly it is a "death by a thousand cuts budget" which does nothing to create real jobs or alleviate the plight of the unemployed. To the contrary, it adds more people to the dole cavalcade, tightens the eligibility criteria for unemployment benefits and funds the work for the dole scheme.
The budget acknowledges that unemployment is here to stay, with unemployment projected to decrease slightly to 8% over the next 12 months. By the year 2000, unemployment is predicted still to be 7.5%.
Val Edwards, National Challenge candidate for the position of secretary in the Community and Public Sector Union, said that it is "outrageous for the Liberals to savage the public sector when the unemployment rate is still a massive 8.7%. As long as the Liberals think that they can get away with the cuts, because a docile union leadership will not lead the fight, they will continue to cut."
She said that the best way to solve the unemployment crisis is to "create real jobs, with real wages, by massively increasing spending on public infrastructure, funded by the corporate cowboys, who currently pay almost no tax".
The job cuts in the public service amount to 11% over the three years to 1999-2000. Information technology areas within departments will be badly hit, with a cut of 18% in funding and 3000 jobs to be out-sourced.
Currently there are 125,000 commonwealth public servants. According to the Australian on May 14, the government aims to cut the public service to 50,000.
Job losses extend beyond the public service. The cuts to housing will mean that at least 200 jobs will be lost in the NSW housing industry.
The figures for job losses do not include cuts in many of the government's business enterprises. For example, Telstra plans to slash 25,000 jobs over a three-year period.
Unemployed people will have it much tougher, according to Raper. Although there has not been a major change in the rules, the existing criteria will be applied more stringently.
"There will be a tightening up of waiting periods, so that the unemployed use up what little savings they have", Raper said. It will be harder to claim hardship and have the waiting period waived.
Last year's budget introduced the "dole diary", which meant that the unemployed had to prove that they were looking for work. It also halved the amount the unemployed could have in savings — from $5000 to $2500 — before they could begin receiving benefits. Unemployed people are treated like criminals for not filling in their dole diary correctly, being cut off for six weeks, Raper said.
The budget includes funding of the work for the dole scheme. Ten thousand unemployed will take part in the scheme, which will cost $22 million. The scheme includes rules for forcing the unemployed to work for the dole against their will.
A measure which will hinder the unemployed from finding work is the merging of the Commonwealth Employment Service, the Department of Social Security and Student Assistance Centres to create the Public Employment Placement Enterprise at a cost of $180 million. Thirty million dollars will be saved by abolishing training schemes.