exposing the cheats

A lot of hard-working Australians loathe and despise welfare cheats. The mob we used to call “dole bludgers”. Some Australians don’t. Because they ARE dole bludgers. They almost think it is a sport to rip off the Government, rip off other taxpayers and get paid not to work.

I would bet that there is hardly a family in this country which does not know a relative or a neighbour who is rorting the system. It costs the Government – which means it costs honest tax-paying Australians – hundreds of millions of dollars year – in fraudulent benefit payments.

It is such an epidemic of financial fraud that there was a figure in the news today that a new crackdown on welfare cheats could save taxpayers 43 million dollars a week. A week!.

I am not against legitimate pensions and support for people like single mothers. And I grew up in a time when single mothers got no government assistance.

But I am fiercely against the rorters and spongers who cheat and connive and think it is their right to get as much illegal money as they can from government agencies while taxpaying workers pay for their dishonest lifestyles.

We tackled the issue again and again when I was doing the HINCH current affairs programme on television. There was welfare fraud. There was Workcover fraud. It was endemic.

And what scares you is that the rorters think it is their right.

They are criminals. And it is in the news again today because Centrelink has launched a new policy of publicly identifying the worst welfare cheats. Like a woman who stole a dead child’s name from a grave stone to claim benefits.

And eighty workers at a Victorian meat packing company who were illegally claiming benefits. When they were busted it saved Centrelink more than half a million dollars a year.

Some people have personally pocketed more than half a million dollars in fraudulent pensions.

It fostered and fermented under the Labor Government. Hawke and Keating did not have the guts or gumption to crack down on the welfare cheats.

Now the screws are tightening. As they should. I remember, back in the 1980s exposing a welfare cheat with thirty aliases. He would fly from Melbourne to Brisbane once a fortnight to collect his dole cheques under all those names.

I remember another dole cheat who was basking on the beach in Greece and getting a dole cheque here in Australia.

The Centrelink Shame File is a good idea. And long overdue. These people are leeches.

Friday, September 30, 2005

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2005