Ben Fordham Is Shitting On “Dole Bludgers” Instead Of Acknowledging Our Awful Welfare System
Just say you hate the poor and be done with it.
2GB radio host Ben Fordham presented an absolute trainwreck of a segment on his radio show on Monday morning, in which he interviewed a self-confessed JobSeeker dobber and shit on welfare recipients for seven and a half minutes straight.
Welfare has been a hot topic recently, as the COVID-19 pandemic pushed millions of Australians to the brink of poverty. But instead of advocating for a liveable welfare rate amid skyrocketing inflation, or quizzing the government on its extremely flawed JobKeeper programme that lined the pockets of the likes of Gerry Harvey, Ben Fordham used his national breakfast radio slot this morning to — you guessed it — hate on the poor.
“Every day Graham Wynn tries to put people into a job. Some are thankful, others are dole bludgers,” Fordham said, introducing the Director of Superior People Recruitment.
“There are almost 900,000 Aussies on JobSeeker payments, it costs the economy $27 billion a year. And Centrelink is soft.
“You’re required to apply for 20 jobs a month, but Graham tells us people deliberately send in dodgy resumes to make sure they miss out on a job.”
In an incredible self-own, Wynn — whose business profits off the so-called “dole bludgers” who use his service to find work — announced that he has dobbed in almost 2000 people in the last two months alone as part of the government’s new Employer Reporting Line (AKA DobSeeker).
“Graham Wynn reckons he’s dobbed in almost 2000 dole bludgers in the past two months. 2000 of them,” said Fordham.
But if we’re going to talk about a waste of tax payer money, which was the crux of Fordham’s argument in the segment, we must address the fact that this dobbing hotline cost the government a staggering $2.5 million to establish.
Wynn asserts that roughly 20 percent of the job seekers he deals with are lodging fake or incomplete applications in an attempt to rort the system. However, Wynn’s recruitment company is one of many and these figures have not been cross-referenced with other agencies or recruiters.
“Based on his analysis, four out of five want a job, twenty percent want to stay on the dole,” said Fordham.
While it’s unsurprising to see the media punching down on welfare recipients once again, with the assertion that people living below the poverty line would even have the power or means to exploit anyone — let alone the Australian Government — it’s disappointing to see Fordham push this agenda rather than covering any of the very real issues facing welfare recipients.
Throughout his segment, Fordham neglected to mention any of the plethora of issues that plague job seekers when looking for work, from exploitative bosses, wage theft, insecure work, or the casualisation of the workforce.
Instead of further victimising some of Australia’s most vulnerable people, Fordham could’ve addressed one of the real stories here — like the fact that more than 20 percent of people on unemployment payments are actually employed but are unable to escape welfare due to the insecure nature of their work.