The negative attitude toward those on benefits, persistently propagated by the media, works as a smokescreen to conceal the fact that welfare payments are simply too low.

In its current form, far from helping the unemployed remove themselves from welfare, Work for the Dole and related programs actually cause participants to spend a longer time collecting benefits, owing to a combination of a reduction in the hours available to search for paying work, and what Jeff Borland of the University of Melbourne calls the ‘scarring effect’ created by the program.

I once worked in a call centre where a few of the interviewers would be regularly rostered to do phone surveys about female incontinence products. Asking strangers whether they lost a teaspoon, a tablespoon or more in volume per occasion is a tough gig.