Australia's Buggy Automated System Suspended 1 Million Welfare Payments This Year (theguardian.com) 90
An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian's report on last year's update to Australia's automated system for welfare benefits:
Welfare advocates say the consequences have been disastrous... In 12 months, welfare payments were stopped an extra 1 million times... [A] recipient's money is cut off automatically until they satisfy their job agency consultant that they are committed to looking for work... Consultants have less discretion when a welfare recipient does not turn up to an appointment or misses another compulsory activity. They enter a code into a system that automatically triggers a payment suspension. The same goes when the welfare recipient fails to report their income or confirm they met their job search requirements via digital channels. Money is stopped first, and questions are asked later. The idea is that this will encourage people to follow the rules.
"In some cases it's left single parents without money for food for their children over a weekend because they haven't logged in and reported their attendance," says Adrianne Walters, a senior lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre. "And so the computer says, 'No payments'. And then that person is left without anywhere to turn until their employment service provider opens up again on the Monday...."
Since the new policies were introduced, about 50,000 suspension notifications now go out to welfare recipients across the country each week... analysis of government statistics by the Guardian shows about 75% of the time, benefits recipients who had their payments suspended under the new system were not at fault... Meanwhile, across a controversial welfare-to-work program for single parents with children under five, 85% had their payments suspended automatically but were later cleared of wrongdoing. The overwhelming majority were single mothers.
"In some cases it's left single parents without money for food for their children over a weekend because they haven't logged in and reported their attendance," says Adrianne Walters, a senior lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre. "And so the computer says, 'No payments'. And then that person is left without anywhere to turn until their employment service provider opens up again on the Monday...."
Since the new policies were introduced, about 50,000 suspension notifications now go out to welfare recipients across the country each week... analysis of government statistics by the Guardian shows about 75% of the time, benefits recipients who had their payments suspended under the new system were not at fault... Meanwhile, across a controversial welfare-to-work program for single parents with children under five, 85% had their payments suspended automatically but were later cleared of wrongdoing. The overwhelming majority were single mothers.
how is that buggy? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's "buggy" in the same way that posing a fake story on Facebook is "hacking."
Re:how is that buggy? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a "bug" because it's not doing what it's intended do, it's doing what it's programmed to do. A buggy program is still just doing what you told it to do.
The story points out that 75-85% of the time, the unemployed person turns out to be in the right. They then get their full payment restored. So it's not doing what the government wants it to do. You have to deal face-to-face with government employees to fix this, which costs more money for the bureaucracy, and they haven't in fact saved any money on payments.
Re:how is that buggy? (Score:4, Informative)
Point being: just because a computer algorithm kicked you off payments because someone entered a code into a computer doesn't mean you're off payments. There is legislation that needs to be followed, so when you complain, they restore your payments, because that is what the *law as written* says they must do. The computer did an action that wasn't actual legal according to the written laws about this. Yes, so it's buggy since it enacts illegal actions.
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Entering a code for lack of verification and cutting off on a weekend instead of entering a warning period is just mean.
The 80% wrong observation was the other issue of forcing repayments if you can't justify what you were doing every week 7 years ago.
Following rules is abhorrent! (Score:3)
Instead of following what's right!
But some people haven't matured to a point where they understand that there is a difference.
The kind who believe gassing or electrocuting people is legitimate, as long as somebody wrote it down and called it a law.
Hint: Humans don't let other humans suffer. Period.
You can call it "revenge" or "punishment" all day, bit even if we believe they are horrible Adolf Fritzl Blankfeins, we get that treating them like they treated others, only makes us one of them.
Re:Following rules is abhorrent! (Score:4, Insightful)
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It is, because it's not following the legislation. which is why they usually just restore the full payment for the recipients. The bug is that it's not following the actual rules-as-written / legal rules. sure, that's not a "bug" from the perspective of the coder I guess. But then you could argue *all* bugs are just features.
Re: Following rules is abhorrent! (Score:1)
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However, it's not following official policy. You go in and almost always, the government employees overturn what the computer did.
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... unless you want to possibly argue that the government "policy" is to randomly through people off welfare, in breach of the actual written law, in an attempt to annoy them into getting a job. that's quite possible.
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However, there's another point. Almost always, they restore the payments. Because the computer kicked you off, but the law-as-written says they shouldn't have. That's the buggy part.
Re:how is that buggy? (Score:5, Informative)
Centerlink's system is buggy in the "It doesn't work properly" sense.
The thing got me and sent me notice that I owed $7K from 2008 because it claimed I was recieving an income at a time when I was on an unemployment benefit. I wasn't. I brought in bank account statements, a full copy of my reciepts , the whole lot and after a month of fighting them they finally admitted the system had failed and reversed it. The problem was the system didn't recognize unemploymen caused by a company closing its doors.
Unfortunately at the time I got this notice I was again unemployed for about 6 weeks due to a mass retrenchment at the government job I was in, and for a month I had zero income at all while I fought this thing as the computer had decided because it thought I owed money I wasn't eligible for incme support. I ended up having to live off my credit card during that time.
If I didnt have that credit card I would have had to find income some other way. selling all my things, or even just becoming homeless.
I know a number of people who had the same thing happen to them. The worst part is they've known the system is broken for years but refuse to fix it.
Re: how is that buggy? (Score:2)
Always the low-hanging fruit. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Always the low-hanging fruit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not everybody wants this because not everybody is scum. But typical authoritarians are also typically cowards and, at the same time, have a deep desire to apply violence (in whatever form) to somebody outside of the in-group to asset their superiority. That is, for example, how you get so many violent and rapist cops, that is why the "authorities" in whatever country do the most evil crap to the weakest members of society, that is why all those "tough on crime" politicians always makes sure to only target what is actually petty crime (that then often gets blown all out of proportion).
Re:Always the low-hanging fruit. (Score:5, Insightful)
60 years of "war on poverty" and we have more 'poverty' than ever before.
We've had 40 years of "trickle down economics" and have a wider economic gap than ever before. Only it's not real economics, it's fake economics where those at the top get the money. It's obviously not working, but according to dipshits like you, doing the same thing over and over will make it work. You fascists keep blaming the working people who get tired of having half their paycheck stolen to fund those who the government chooses, and the politicians who cynically attain power by promising even more free money to the one percenters.
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Nobody is poor and starving. Actual statistics show average health and wealth are better than ever before. The poor are the fattest segment of society.
"Income gap", always an irrelevant red herring throwback to class warfare rhetoric, is thus a fraudulent argument in search or a non-existent problem.
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Uhuh, that's the reason that adult median wealth in Australia is triple the average median wealth in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Fact is, the welfare system helps float all boats. Places without a welfare safety net also have a bleeding poor middle-class. The existence of welfare raises the bargaining power of all employees, it's not *taking* money out of the pockets of the workers.
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Over the past few decades, while the US median income was higher, the US was really bad at investing or saving. Australia's median household saving rate was 11% of income when the US's was 3%. After a few decades of this, it adds up.
None of this has to do with a welfare system.
Re: Always the low-hanging fruit. (Score:2)
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"War on poverty" is different from "war on the poor". You cannot win one by fighting the other.
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Working and not paying tax while getting welfare.
Paying tax while working and still getting welfare.
Working with another ID and getting welfare under a different name.
Getting a lot more welfare under a few different names.
Setting up different bank accounts to have a lot of extra welfare payments look like normal per person payments.
Using fake wage and ID to try and get bank loans while on welfare..
Not looking for work when they
Re: Always the low-hanging fruit. (Score:1, Troll)
There always seems to be a desire to "stick it" to weakest and most defenseless members of society,
Stop it. The entire purpose of this program is to provide assistance to those in need. The system asks no more of the participants than that they confirm they continue to need the assistance. That is, in no way, an example of "sticking it" to the weakest members of society, period.
Blaming the unemployed (Score:5, Informative)
The welfare system in Australia was put in place long ago, and the current conservative government hates it. They look lovingly to the USA for social welfare and health solutions.
But they cannot just kill the system off because the average punter does not like the idea of seeing people starve in Australia. Some punters also have a vague awareness that if things go badly they could also end up at the bottom of the heap.
So instead the government white ants it bit by bit. Let inflation eat into benefits. And impose more and more rules. Make arbitrary computer decisions. And make it very difficult for people to contact the department, let alone get a resolution to issues.
The latest was the "robo debt", where they would use dubious heuristics to decide that some people might have been over paid. The unemployed then had to go back as many as seven years to prove that all the very complex rules were satisfied. And without any backup from the department, and no clear statement of what the department thought that the issue actually was.
Could you prove which weeks you were working seven years ago? And remember that the unemployed are generally not the brightest in the land, and often have no permanent place of abode.
So a very nasty system put in place by a very nasty government.
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People in the US aren't starving, quite the opposite. The problem Australia has is that, like the US and the EU, it can't keep up with providing welfare while society is aging on one end and reducing their participation in the workforce voluntarily on the other end because their parents are providing for them.
All those welfare systems were setup after WW2 with a work ethic to rebuild and work hard with death coming soon afterwards but since the 1950s, touching those welfare benefits has been political suici
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People in the US aren't starving, quite the opposite. The problem Australia has is that, like the US and the EU, it can't keep up with providing welfare while society is aging on one end and reducing their participation in the workforce voluntarily on the other end because their parents are providing for them.
All those welfare systems were setup after WW2 with a work ethic to rebuild and work hard with death coming soon afterwards but since the 1950s, touching those welfare benefits has been political suicide and expansion has been an easy vote to sell.
We have to face the facts that we can't keep running our governments as if they're limitless money pits. Taxing the rich isn't going to help, that would contribute less than 10% of the needs of these systems and taxing everyone is leading to revolution.
Bingo!. so few people seem to understand how completely unsustainable the current system is. over a 3rd of all taxes are spent on social security now and that is before medicare. this percentage is gradually rising as the population ages as well. A complete tax and social security (and especially aged pension and care) are urgently needed. But I doubt anything real will happen in Australia till it goes tits up as too many people think the government is cruel if they try to fix it or the pollies are too scar
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But I doubt anything real will happen in Australia till it goes tits up as too many people think the government is cruel if they try to fix it or the pollies are too scared of the negative press so we keep barrelling along towards the cliff edge.
Australian pollies have proven time and again that they're not scared of negative press. If they're not patting themselves on the back and giving themselves pay rises, while simultaneously reducing old age pensions, they're getting their media assistants pregnant and casting aside their wives and children.
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That's a nice overly simplistic rant but ultimately it's just that, an overly simplistic rant. We don't need to abolish welfare to fix the system, just fine tune some of the truly wasteful things we do.
As for the money pit, did you not read the papers last month? The government budget was balanced for last financial year. That despite sending billions to France for some new undewater war machines.
In fact if you point back to the 50s the government has had no problem balancing its books many times while main
Re: Blaming the unemployed (Score:2)
So a very nasty system put in place by a very nasty government.
Working as designed, not buggy.
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Could you prove which weeks you were working seven years ago?
Yes, because as an Australian I am legally obligated to keep that information for 7 years in case of any government audit, and employers are legally required to provide that information to you so you can keep it. You get redress in case of disaster such as fire, if you can prove you were affected by it.
And remember that the unemployed are generally not the brightest in the land, and often have no permanent place of abode.
Not knowing the speed limit is no defense for speeding. Just like the ATO and Centrelink will not give you an inch if all you're capable of doing is sitting there picking your nose saying "I didn't know". 7 Y
Re: Always the low-hanging fruit. (Score:3)
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You must have missed the part where the people did all that as requjred and their kids still went to bed hungry.
We missed it because its not true.
"Consultants have less discretion when a welfare recipient does not turn up to an appointment or misses another compulsory activity. They enter a code into a system that automatically triggers a payment suspension. The same goes when the welfare recipient fails to report their income or confirm they met their job search requirements via digital channels."
In every case mentioned, the recipient failed to do something that was required. The requirement isnt just to look
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And in any case, all this shows is they need a warning period to put up or get cut off. Yet people are arguing at the conceptual level about the wisdom of it as policy.
This observation is assuming, perhaps unjustifiably, that that doesn't exist already and that the person with kids cut off hadn't finally run out their seven weeks of warnings.
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You are evidently too stupid to figure out that this sentence indicates that not all of these cases fall into that category, or there wouldn't be times when they have more discretion. DOH!
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"You now have 20 seconds to put your hands up."
"They are up."
"You now have 10 seconds to put your hands up."
That explains it (Score:2, Funny)
I never got my check this month.
They should become shareholders! (Score:1, Flamebait)
Or board members!
Hardest job of all!
You tell somebody else to work for you! When he's done, you tell another person to sell the result for "what the victims, err, market can bear". Then you throw your wage slaves a few peanuts. And when things go south, you blame and fire them, and justify giving them even less. Or you demand it to be socialized via corporate welfare (bailouts).
The error those 1 million people were making, is that they were willing to work! You can't get wealthy on a salary! Ever! To get we
Follow the rules (Score:1, Insightful)
This is pretty simple.
Follow.
The.
Rules.
I was on the Canadian version, called Employment Insurance last year due to being laid off. It is the same thing here. You need to login weekly to state "I have been looking for a job, here is where I applied" and if you made any money doing odd jobs, how much you made.
If you don't, you get cut off. It literally takes 5 minutes once a week to meet your obligation.
The system is working as intended and is. It the slightest bit buggy
Not sure about Canada or Australia (Score:1, Troll)
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I worked for a company that did 3 write ups (Score:2)
About a month after we got to the new site there were ride sharing flyers everywhere and we couldn't figure out why. Turns out they'd told the labor board they shouldn't have to pay because there was a ride sha
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Re: Not sure about Canada or Australia (Score:2)
but in the United States it's nearly impossible to get unemployment insurance payouts unless the company in question folds completely.
That is a staggeringly stupid statement - MILLIONS of Americans collect one or more unemployment check each year.
At any point in time there are about 2 million people collecting unemployment - somehow, they all figured out the system. The only impediment is if you are fired 'for cause'.
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> Basically miss 1 appointment and you're shot.
No matter what the reason for missing the appointment.
Many people have been kicked off their benefits for missing an appointment with a "job search agency" due to:
Re:Follow the rules (Score:4, Insightful)
This is pretty simple.
Follow.
The.
Rules.
What rules exactly the 75% of the benefits recipients, who had their payments suspended under the new system but were not at fault, should have followed? Or the 85% of the participants in the welfare-to-work program, who had their payments suspended automatically but were later cleared of wrongdoing, for that matter?
Re: Follow the rules (Score:2)
They should have checked in, they should have made it to their appointments, they should have registered that they were still working.
It's very simple, 75% of the people that had assistance suspended failed to do what everyone else collecting assistance did.
The stay is not that 75% of people on, say, unemployment were suspended, it was that 75% of those suspended could have avoided suspension if they simply did what was required.
If you are unemployed and collecting unemployment, ensuring you meet your requi
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That may be true, but more onerous rules are typically a result of people not following the rules in the first place. Welfare systems are notoriously easy to abuse and thus are largely abused. The fact that 25% of people kicked off didn't get reinstated is the biggest proof of that.
The rules were encoded into law, don't like it, vote for change or become a politician. The alternative is no rules because you can't selectively apply rules, if you do, you get places like NY or CA where "hardship" makes it you
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If you have rules of a system in which 75% of the people who are automatically kicked off the system are found not to be at fault, then it could be the rules that are the problem, or that actually following the rules is unduly onerous.
They failed to comply with reporting requirements. If they need the assistance, they'll make the effort to comply.
About that 75% figure, it's a bit unclear because we don't know how many people are involved - I need numbers, not percentages:
How many participants are in the program?
How many participants fail to qualify for assistance in any given period?
How many participants were found to have otherwise met the requirements for assistance, yet failed to report on time?
Simply discussing percentages hides the
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No, look: 75% of the cases were overturned on the grounds that the recipient *was not at fault*. Not "they had a good excuse" or "we gave them a break". "Not at fault" implies that they did nothing wrong and WERE following the rules.
Also, if you read the article (you did that, right?) the very first story is about a guy that has a bunch of mental health issues that make it hard for him to do things, especially if he doesn’t get his medication. After the money gets cut off, he has an even harder time s
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Not only that, but there was the article about the woman who had her benefit canceled because she was appearing before the senate hearing in to robodebts https://www.theguardian.com/au... [theguardian.com]
Then the article about the literal death toll this policy has https://linux.slashdot.org/sto... [slashdot.org]
Any correlation research, I wonder... (Score:4, Interesting)
I would be super interested to know if they saw a spike in other social ills with implementation of this system.
Like, for instance, has there been an increase in violent crime? Unlicensed prostitution? Suicide? How about child abandonment or children put up for adoption?
Seems like a hateful policy to me (75-85% of people who lose benefits are reinstated or found not to be at fault), so I don't want to sound like the suffering doesn't matter, but this does seem like a big opportunity for social researchers.
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You tell 'em Tex, those lazy slackers need to pull themselves up by their boot straps!
Except in this case, they are actively out there looking for work and this system suspends their payments with no warning, taking away the money they thought was coming and literarily does make them starve -- specifically causing the unemployed single mother AND HER KIDS to go hungry for days while they wait to get to a case worker just to show they've been in compliance
But hey -- don't let that stop you from being a root
Re: How the hell is this a disaster? (Score:1)
specifically causing the unemployed single mother AND HER KIDS to go hungry for days while they wait to get to a case worker just to show they've been in compliance
Or, the single mom with children that depend on her could have simply taken the five minutes required to meet the requirements to get her assistance.
Essentially the system is set up to require them to repeatedly ask for their assistance, by simply re-confirming they meet the requirements and need the assistance.
Buggy rules (Score:3)
Re: Buggy rules (Score:2)
I doubt it is as you say in Canada.
In America, when on unemployment and you get a low-paying or part-time job, you don't automatically lose your benefits...
Made up numbers to make the math easy:
Qualify for unemployment inAmerica, you get an 'account' with26 weeks of benefits.
Let's say benefit is $500/week.
You get a part-time job working a couple shifts at a local store, so you earn $250/week.
You report your earnings - $250 - And unemployment does a calculation that exempts the first $150 you earn, it looks
this is what happens (Score:1)
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I didn't vote for the current crop of arseholes. I voted AGAINST them. We're still stuck with them.
Re: this is what happens (Score:2)
As President Obama famously said:
"Elections have consequences"
You should have worked harder to ensure your candidate won.
The system worked as designed (Score:2)
The same goes when the welfare recipient fails to report their income or confirm they met their job search requirements via digital channels. Money is stopped first, and questions are asked later.
Makes perfect sense - if you fail to check in, fail to record you met the requirements for the benefit, the benefit is suspended.
But why would they do this?
The idea is that this will encourage people to follow the rules.
Oh. Again, a perfectly reasonable motivation.
If a single-parent fails to check-in/record their compliance, they will find their benefits suspended until corrected.
The real question is why are these recipients failing to take care of these things, what are they doing that they value more than their assistance benefits.
If an unemployed person fails to comp
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It definitely works as expected.
The current government required it to reduce the number of people on welfare.
Step 1. Kick people off welfare.
Step 2. Cut the number of call centre staff able to receive calls from welfare recipients (or non-recipients as they now are) meaning they can't actually get through and "check in". This also limits the time they have to search for a job.
Step 3. Gubberment profit.
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Every point you raise is made up.
The article were discussing supports none of your claims.
What a cruel system (Score:1)
Re: What a cruel system (Score:2)
Let's pretend the purpose of the welfare system wasn't to simply mail checks to any Australian that ever demonstrated a need.
The things that caused these people to have their benefits suspended were easy to do - show up for an appointment, make a call when required, go online to complete a survey. I'd be curious what activity seemed more important to these people than complying with the requirements to ensure they got their assistance?
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Funnily enough, having to attend an actual job interview is a very common reason for people to be "breached" (kicked off their benefits) for failing to attend a job search appointment. And when I say "funnily enough", I mean that the government must find it fucking hilarious because nobody else does.
as is having to work at their part-time job (legit and declared and kn
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You know when your unemployment interview/appointment is, don't schedule a job interview at the same time!
If these kinds of basic logical choices elude the applicant, maybe they should forgo the job interview, not waste the interviewers time.
Job interviews and benefit appointments are scheduled - manage your damn schedule. When an employer says I want you to come by for an interview at the same time as your benefits appt, tell them that won't work for you - it isn't that hard,
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are you fucking stupid? or just another vindictive cunt indulging in some victim blaming?
a job candidate can't afford to be fussy about when they get an interview, and doesn't always get much advance notice of one either.
Job interviews and benefit appointments are scheduled
Sometimes they're scheduled days in advance, and sometimes they aren't.
Sometimes they were scheduled, and sometimes the employer
Re: What a cruel system (Score:2)
When "on the dole" your first job is to ensure you continue to collect needed assistance, period.
Very few employers make unreasonable demands on applicants - if you are offered an interview at the same time you have a required meeting with some assistance agency, you tell the employer the situation and ask for a different time.
It's interesting how you work so hard to make potential employer demands "you must appear at this time and place to be considered for a position, or we will not consider you" seem rea
It's true! (Score:3)
Everything in Australia is trying to kill you.
Australia's fucked anyways (Score:1)
The grand experiment in fascism is at the end stage. A country of drunk sleepwalkers has handed over their rights and freedoms, and now gets to experience the joys of a 100% controlled internet routed through a state-run Net Nanny with un-appealable secret blacklists.
The welfare system could just be incompetence (seems par for the course for Australian government) but it could be working exactly as planned - to destroy the middle and lower classes to the point where revolution is impossible. Of course in
The one thing I know about Aus gov (Score:2)
The current Aus government would happily spend $2 to stop a single welfare recipient getting an extra $1.
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^^ THIS
Our current Prime Minister is a follower of a "Prosperity Gospel" church. He actively hates the poor and disenfranchised!
its not a bug (Score:1)