Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says a Coalition policy to pay long-term unemployed young people who find a job up to $15,500 is "a sensible investment".
Mr Abbott has released a policy, similar to one he took to the 2010 election, to pay a bonus to those under 30 years old who have been on unemployment benefits for more than a year and then find work.
If the employee stays in a job for 12 months, they would receive an initial $2,000 bonus; if they stay in the job for two years, a Coalition government would pay them another $4,500.
There would also be $6,000 for job seekers who relocate from cities to regional areas for work, and $3,000 for those who move to a metropolitan area.
Families with dependent children would receive an additional $3,000 to help with the costs of moving.
Mr Abbott described the measure as "a sensible investment by an incoming Coalition government in trying to give every Australian the working future that all of us want".
"The best form of welfare is work," he said.
Mr Abbott pointed to forecasts in the latest budget figures that unemployment was set to rise to 6.25 per cent this year.
"It's very important that we focus on unemployment because under this government unemployment is heading up," he said.
"This is a specific targeted measure to try to ensure that we reverse the rise in unemployment."
The Federal Government already has a relocation allowance in place for jobseekers, which Mr Abbott says has only been used by 400 people.
But he says the value of the policy is not in how many people it affects.
"It was originally conceived as something that would be particularly useful for Indigenous people in remote areas who were moving to places where they might get sustainable employment," he said today.
"The success of this policy is in changed lives. That is the success of this policy, and whether 500 people take advantage of it or 5,000 people take advantage of it, if any people take advantage of it, that will be to the great benefit of our country and those individuals."
Mr Abbott says the policy has been costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office at $75 million over the forward estimates.
Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten has criticised the Coalition's jobs bonus plan, saying it has the focus wrong.
"They're looking at how they can hand out dessert to the long-term unemployed, I think we need to look at what's the entree and what's the main course," he said.
"The entree is skills, the main course is working with employers to hire people.
"So as usual the Coalition's just got a band-aid to deal with a much bigger issue."
I think this scheme has merit as obviously there needs to be some method or methods employed to increase the amout of money spent, or money borrowed in Australia. The property investment community has really let us all down on that score. They were given huge incentives like negitive gearing and rental tennancy laws to make them feel comfortable about taking on the debt we need to keep the nation moving forward.
We have home prices that are much lower than the years before, much lower interest rates, but they stubbornly refuse to buy homes like they did in the lead up to the gfc. All I hear on tv and around forums like this is how great property is, blah blah blah, but the national statistics speak for themselves. Look at Perth, Boom boom the bulls say yet sales have all but dried up. Personally I think it's about time the property investment community put it's equity where it's mouth is and started to reflate the bubble.
Shadow was hopelessly wrong about the Gold Bull Market. What else is he wrong about?
the 15K may be covered within 12 months from income tax and getting them off the dole saves X amount each year. It does seem pathetic that it has to come to this but it might work quite well.
This is the sensible, grass-roots policy that we have surely been missing for the past 7 years. Bravo Mr. Abbott, pleas remove these pie in the sky, fantasy projects at the expense of the tax-payer labor politicians as quickly as possible.
Young people who have been out of work for a year or more will be paid up to $15,500 by an Abbott government if they get and keep a job, in an attempt to cut long-term unemployment. However, experts say the money would be better spent helping businesses to take on long-term job seekers.
The Coalition will give those aged 18 to 30 who have been unemployed for 12 months or more a $2500 ''bonus'' if they find a job and remain off welfare for a year. A further $4000 will be paid to the job seeker if they stay in work for 24 months.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott also announced a relocation allowance of $6000 for long-term unemployed job seekers who move to a regional area to take up work. If the job seeker has a family with dependent children, they will receive a further $3000.
Mr Abbott said the $75 million scheme was a ''sensible investment'' that aimed to ''produce a stronger and more productive economy for a stronger and more cohesive society''.
The number of long-term unemployed has risen from about 300,000 to about 500,000 since the global financial crisis. But labour market experts were sceptical about the effectiveness of the Coalition's proposed bonuses because they did nothing to increase demand from firms to employ the long-term jobless.
The coalition mentality is to presume that the reason for unemployment is because the unemployed aren't looking hard enough. Usually a precursor for welfare cuts and work for the dole schemes. The number of available jobs is a fraction of the number of unemployed. Their money would be much better spent on training/skills for the unemployed or job creation policies.
Their money would be much better spent on training/skills for the unemployed or job creation policies.
They tried this, it led to the creation of 'pink batt' style training organisations, with the most basic courses possible, and teachers who lead their pupils, offering answers rather than teaching.
We have outstanding universities, but they're more focussed on international students.
It would be better to increase austudy to a point the students don't have to work while they study, so that more people would do training on their own. Currently, austudy is less than newstart, a disincentive to take up study. Think of it as an investment, rather than a cost.
There should also be a limit to how many courses you can do whilst on austudy, so we don't get career students.
I've also always thought, we should be trying to emulate countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in their welfare for citizens (but perhaps without the sharia law). Foreign nationals are taxed differently and have different wages. Citizenship is much more difficult to get. Their governments own and manage the oil fields, an enormous income for them.
We instead, sold our fields of resources to multinationals who take the product and the profit offshore, all the while, employing foreign nationals (457's, though not as many) and whilst we're not nearly as impoverished as nations like Nigeria, who also have enormous resource deposits, we are losing out on the profits and any profits we do get, seem to be funneled into property investments rather than more productive business enterprise.
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