FED: Govt snubs work for the dole bid by Syd Oly organisers

AAP General News (Australia)
08-08-1999
FED: Govt snubs work for the dole bid by Syd Oly organisers

CANBERRA, Aug 8 AAP - The federal government has snubbed a bid by Sydney Olympic organisers
to use work for the dole participants to ease an expected labour shortage during the Games.

Employment Services Minister Tony Abbott said he believed the vacancies could be filled by
ordinary job seekers.

"I have seen some of the reports that various employment agencies are concerned that they
won't fill those jobs," he told the Nine Network.

"I think they are worrying prematurely. The fact is there is something like 100,000
unemployed people in the Sydney metropolitan area, and there are tens of thousands more within
90 minutes travel time," he said.

"If we can't fill the 30,000 jobs, most of them entry-level jobs, with Australians,
something is wrong either with our system, or with the people we would like to put into our
system."

SOCOG chief Sandy Hollway has approached Mr Abbott to use work for the dole participants to
fill positions including catering, waste management, housekeeping and transportation.

But Mr Abbott said work for the dole was no substitute for real work.

"My answer to Sandy Hollway is that I think we can get jobseekers into real jobs for the
Olympics," he said.

"If we happen to have people on work for the dole who could do things like meet and greet,
well fine let's look at that.

"But at the moment, my priority is trying to ensure that the Job Network works with SOCOG
so all those paid jobs get filled by Australians."

Mr Abbott's comments were also a reference to a proposal to provide special visas to
thousands of overseas workers to fill vacancies in the lead-up to the Olympics.

Recruitment agencies and the Tourism Council of Australia (TCA) have called for additional
short-term visas to be issued to fill up to 8,000 job vacancies in the tourism and hospitality
industries.

Mr Abbott meanwhile continued his criticism of jobless people, whom he has previously
branded job snobs, too fussy about the sort of work they will do.

He has also come under fire for describing them as being on a culture of welfare
dependency.

"The cruellest thing you can do for people is to put them on welfare and leave them there,"
he said.

"What I am on about ... is ending a situation where people could go onto welfare, disappear
into the system, only to emerge years later as the problem of inter-generational welfare
dependency," he said.

"If parents indulge their kids, that's not the kid's fault, that is the parent's fault, now
I think we have been a bit soft-headed about some of these things."

He acknowledged he had never suffered serious unemployment himself.

"But guilt is not a good basis for building policy, and we have got to look at the
situation as it really is and frankly we do need to be tough to be fair," he said.

AAP rmm/adh/de

KEYWORD: OLY JOBS (CARRIED EARLIER)

1999 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.