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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2019 20:41:59 GMT 7
I don't know why the sick politicians need Welfare Recipients to test drugs when I'm sure the politicians and bureaucrats have access to only the best. more evidence of other things going on. Office of Drug Control - www.odc.gov.au/Very interesting Denis-NFA.....never knew we had such an office. Makes me wonder how much more I don't know about. The mind boggles, cheers bear
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Post by rainyday on Sept 12, 2019 21:27:09 GMT 7
If the politicians really want to help the drug situation then put in place more rehabilitation programs. This would cast a wider net and also get help for those not on welfare that have drug addictions. They may need help and assistance also!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2019 6:16:11 GMT 7
If the politicians really want to help the drug situation then put in place more rehabilitation programs. This would cast a wider net and also get help for those not on welfare that have drug addictions. They may need help and assistance also! Well at least one does rainyday . Self confessed or just a ruse to excuse bad behaviour. Any number of media reports. Cheers bear thewest.com.au/politics/victorian-mp-quizzed-over-act-hotel-damage-ng-s-1957563
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2019 6:46:55 GMT 7
Newstart recipients to have payment cancelled if they refuse drug test
Dole recipients who are selected to take part in the Coalition's welfare drug test trial but refuse to take a drug test will have their payments cancelled, the Morrison government says. The Coalition introduced its bill to trial drug tests for welfare recipients to Parliament on Wednesday, arguing substance abuse is "not consistent with community expectations about receiving taxpayer-funded welfare payments".Social Services Minister Anne Ruston has stressed that people who fail the tests will not have their payments cut but rather be put on income management, which would see 80 per cent of their welfare payment not accessible in cash. "Not one cent will be taken from their welfare payments if they're identified or test positive to either the first test or the second test," Senator Ruston told ABC Radio on Wednesday. In explanatory notes accompanying the bill, the government clarifies that recipients who refuse to take the test - whether it's the first or subsequent tests - will have their payment cancelled. This will take effect from the day on which the refusal occurred, "unless a person has a reasonable excuse". The government also states: "suspension will not be an option". If people want to return to a welfare payment, they will still be part of the trial and need to undergo random drug testing. Scott Morrison reveals he's open to a further rollout of the cashless debit card and still wants to drug test welfare recipients. The notes also explain that if people want to dispute a positive result, they will need to repay the cost of a re-test if it is positive. "This can be done through a small percentage reduction of their fortnightly social security payment. Financial hardship provisions will ensure no one is adversely affected," the notes say. The trial would see 5000 new Newstart and Youth Allowance recipients randomly drug tested in Canterbury-Bankstown in NSW, Logan in Queensland and Mandurah in Western Australia. The trial will go for two years. Welfare recipients who test positive will have their welfare quarantined - with 80 per cent put on a cashless card, which prohibits spending on drugs, alcohol or gambling. Those who test positive will also have a second test within 25 working days. If they test positive again, they will be referred to a medical professional for assessment. They may be required to complete "treatment activities" as part of their job-seeking requirements. The drug trial idea was first introduced in the 2017 budget, but the Coalition has so far not been able to secure enough support in Parliament. Welfare experts have criticised the plan, saying it will stigmatise those on welfare. Doctors say it will not help those with addiction. The government now requires Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie's vote to pass the bill through the Senate. Senator Lambie says she is still in talks with the Coalition, but has previously signalled she wants to see drug testing for politicians and a boost to rehabilitation services. m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2457707027832650&id=1415019052101458
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Post by mspurple on Sept 13, 2019 11:13:06 GMT 7
My personal thoughts on the matter are that many people desperate for extra money to survive may choose to sell drugs or stolen goods to help bring in the extra finances needed to survive....no resume or experience needed to make money this way and in the process they may also become a user of the products they are selling. Most of the people I happen to know with serious drug addictions all have quite good jobs and are self employed. Not saying the stats are wrong this is just my own personal experience with those I know of who have illegal habits. If there were more jobs available maybe people desperate for money would not sell drugs or stolen goods to help keep their bills paid?
Whatever the reason is- the whole system is broken and not working but they only ever seem to try to do things to make it work less or break more rather than fix it and actually address the problems rather than the symptoms of the problems.
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Post by highlander4000 on Sept 13, 2019 12:02:43 GMT 7
Im curious as to how drug testing is performed. Would it be the tongue thing they use for drivers, or is urine testing or needles?
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Post by rainyday on Sept 13, 2019 13:27:54 GMT 7
My personal thoughts on the matter are that many people desperate for extra money to survive may choose to sell drugs or stolen goods to help bring in the extra finances needed to survive....no resume or experience needed to make money this way and in the process they may also become a user of the products they are selling. Most of the people I happen to know with serious drug addictions all have quite good jobs and are self employed. Not saying the stats are wrong this is just my own personal experience with those I know of who have illegal habits. If there were more jobs available maybe people desperate for money would not sell drugs or stolen goods to help keep their bills paid? Whatever the reason is- the whole system is broken and not working but they only ever seem to try to do things to make it work less or break more rather than fix it and actually address the problems rather than the symptoms of the problems. What next? Will they be suggesting compulsory euthanasia for those the government see as being a "burden" on the taxpayers. What a greedy country they are developing whereby we are one of the richest countries in the world, and pay one on the highest taxes in the world, yet we can't look after our own. All I can say to those making these laws, it could be you next. I wonder if they have ever watched the movie, Trading Places with Eddie Murphy. Treat others as you would like to be treated is something this government is clearly not doing. They like to look good in the eyes of other countries and send billions over for foreign aid, yet will easily treat their own so shabbily.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2019 19:01:11 GMT 7
Addiction specialists warn welfare drug testing will do more harm than good.
The Morrison government’s plan to drug test welfare recipients could see users shift to more harmful substances and even commit crimes to fund their addiction, experts have warned.The proposed testing regime would be able to detect methamphetamine (ice), ecstasy, marijuana, cocaine and heroin. The government’s stated aim of the test is to get Australians receiving government assistance off drugs and into jobs. Addiction expert Dr Stephen Bright told The New Daily “it’s absolutely probable” that Newstart and Youth Allowance recipients using any of the five targeted drugs would move on other substances that are undetectable by the test. “The drugs people move to as a way of evading drug testing are often significantly more harmful than the drugs they’re testing for,” Dr Bright, senior lecturer at Edith Cowan University, said. “It means that people are engaging in much more significantly harmful behaviour than they would have had the drug testing not been implemented.” Federal parliament is debating whether to advance the Coalition’s bill to mandate random drug screening for 5000 people on unemployment benefits. Experts say drug testing welfare recipients could harm users. The initiative would be trialled for two years in Mandurah (Western Australia), Logan (Queensland) and Bankstown (New South Wales).In the first instance that they test positive for drugs, welfare recipients would have 80 per cent of their payment placed on a cashless debit card, meaning the money could only be used for essentials such as food, rent and bills. If, in 25 working days, they tested positive a second time, the recipient would need to see a medical professional to undergo an assessment to determine whether they required drug treatment, including rehabilitation. Newstart and Youth Allowance recipients will have their income support payments cancelled if they refuse to take part in a drug test. “There’s no evidence that compulsory treatment works,” Dr Bright said. Not only will people start using undetectable drugs, but “the most likely outcome” is they’ll turn to crime to get money for drugs, he added. Dangerous drug switchingDr Bright said there was anecdotal evidence that Queensland mine workers, who were routinely drug tested, began using a party drug known as “monkey dust” because it was undetected in urine analysis. “There’s also evidence that when they first introduced drug testing on mine sites, there was a move away from smoking cannabis – because it stays in the urine for a long period of time – to methamphetamine because it was excreted from the system much more quickly,” he said. In many cases, drug testing on mine sites did not prevent drug use. Photo: Getty Similar reports of drug switching to avoid detection have been reported among workers in the trucking industry, emergency consultant Dr David Caldicott said. “I have treated patients who have overdosed on drugs from those industries who have said they have turned to novel psychotropic drugs to avoid detection,” Dr Caldicott, who is also clinical senior lecturer at the Australian National University, said. There are “new drugs popping up all the time to bypass detection”, he added. Dr Caldicott said the alternate drugs were invariably “more dangerous than the ones I’ve grown up learning about”. “We do not want to be in a situation where we are driving the market away from drugs that we know and understand into far more dangerous drugs, which we have no familiarity with and which may end up being lethal,” he said. Increased risksDr Nicole Lee, professor at Curtin University’s National Drug Research Institute, said the proposed drug tests would “increase the risks and harms associated with drug use rather than help people”. “People who want to use drugs will find a way to use drugs and they will circumvent whatever laws are put in place by using things that aren’t on the testing schedule,” Dr Lee said. “Often those drugs that are not on the testing schedule are new drugs or highly dangerous drugs or drugs that we don’t know a lot about,” she said. Dr Lee said simply taking away an addict’s finances did not mean they would stop depending on drugs. “So they’ve got to find someway to acquire the drugs, either potentially through illegal activity or sometime people will trade things including sex for drugs,” she said. thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2019/09/12/welfare-drug-test-warning/30Comments View Comments
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Post by Denis-NFA on Sept 13, 2019 20:28:29 GMT 7
I am firmly convinced that all drugs should be produced under license and available to whomever.
I am firmly convinced that school kids should be taught about drugs, the up-side and the down-side.
I am firmly convinced that it would be better to stop the war on drugs rather than have sleazy viscous criminals control the distribution.
I am firmly convinced that ALL politicians, police and bureaucrats open their bank accounts for inspection.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2019 6:27:45 GMT 7
Just let the unemployed get wasted if they want
The proposed drug testing regimen for those on Newstart and Youth Allowance will not just pick up those in need of treatment but anyone who uses illicit substances. Of all the points raised by the federal government in its latest bid to drug test welfare recipients, no one seems willing to say the obvious: just let the unemployed get wasted if they want.
Maybe Morrison should also try shouting 'how good are homes' at the homeless Honestly, if you’re not going to provide any jobs (there was one job for every 15 jobseekers in December last year according to ABS figures) and you’re also going to subject the unemployed to well-below poverty line incomes and a cruel bureaucracy that cuts off their dole if they breathe irregularly, then — at the very ing least — let the poor bastards pull a few cones to cope. If anyone deserves to get wasted, it is the unemployed, who are forced to deal with a cruel dystopian system. Plus, who are they hurting if somehow, out of their poverty pay, they actually manage to score a pinga or two? Yet no one, even opponents of drug testing welfare recipients, seems willing to raise this point. The focus is entirely on "people who are addicted need help, not punishment". And yes, the resources for people who need treatment for problematic drug use are severely lacking. This is a scandal and an example of the government’s hypocrisy. But there is another fact no one wants to talk about: most people who use drugs — legal or illicit — do not have a “problem” that needs treating. They just like to escape reality from time to time, and why not, seeing as we are rapidly heading towards an ecoholocaust? Anyone who doesn’t need to escape this reality in some way is probably a psychopath directly profiting from the destruction — and they surely have access to some pure, high quality narcotics to abuse to their shrivelled, black hearts’ content. The proposed drug testing regimen for those on Newstart and Youth Allowance will not just pick up those in need of treatment, but anyone who uses illicit substances. Under the proposal, to be rolled out in three trial areas, if you fail a first test, you’ll be tested again within 25 days, and if you fail that test, you’ll not just have to undergo mandatory treatment, you’ll even have to pay for the cost of the tests. You know, out of all your taxpayer-funded riches. Yet cannabis, for instance, stays in the system for as long as two months. Failing two tests doesn’t even prove ongoing use, even leaving aside the fact that forcing anyone who has smoked a couple of joints to undergo mandatory treatment is neither fair nor a wise use of resources. The poor, it seems, are not allowed to have fun, or escape the nightmare other, more powerful people, have built for them. The best they get is to be “victims”, poor “addicts” who need saving. Underpinning this entire discussion is a rarely raised hypocrisy: Whether your poison is a legal and socially acceptable drug or not. My personal preference is to soak my liver in non-medically recommended ways. But alcohol is hardly a “better” drug, it is just socially acceptable and legal as a result of pure historical chance. I work in the area of harm reduction for people who use drugs, not in the sense of “poor souls to be saved”, but rather with colleagues who are often frequent users, occasional users or former users of drugs such as ice or heroin. And the difference I’ve found between this and working with people who frequently or occasionally drink too much is ... nothing. Our society is riddled with unthinking hypocrisy about intoxicants. In the end, if you are unemployed, you are demonised. If you use the “wrong” drugs, you are demonised and face potential legal consequences. And if you do both, you are pretty much screwed. For ’s sake, just let the poor get wasted. If only because, whatever else, without this coping mechanism, they will probably get quite angry. And, frankly, so they should. www.greenleft.org.au/content/just-let-unemployed-get-wasted-if-they-wantm.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2459062364363783&id=1415019052101458
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Post by nomadic on Sept 14, 2019 7:24:48 GMT 7
Im curious as to how drug testing is performed. Would it be the tongue thing they use for drivers, or is urine testing or needles? My cynical guess would be whatever the people doing them can make the most profit from. Seems like another Indue situation to me. Someone will get rich from it.
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Post by Denis-NFA on Sept 14, 2019 15:21:39 GMT 7
Just out of idle curiosity and only if a forum member has overheard an unknown someone mention it but how much is marijuana these days.
For instance, in Canberra back in the 1990's older folk could have up to 5 plants and the going rate was $200 per 'ounce'. I have no idea what the situation is now.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2019 15:45:03 GMT 7
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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2019 6:44:07 GMT 7
Australian government pushes drug testing for welfare recipients
The Liberal-National Coalition government is pressing ahead with a plan to introduce mandatory drug-testing for around 5,000 recipients of the Newstart and Youth Allowance welfare payments in working class areas of Sydney, Queensland and Western Australia.The measure, contained in legislation the government has reintroduced to parliament, is aimed at expanding “welfare quarantining” and further punishing the unemployed and the poor. In a clear indication that the government’s laws are only the first step in a broader onslaught, a meeting of the Nationals’ Federal Council on the weekend passed a motion calling for all recipients of parenting and unemployment welfare under the age of 35 to be paid through cashless debit cards that can only be used in certain stores. Under the government laws, two year drug-testing trials would begin in the Queensland regional city of Logan, along with Bankstown, a suburb in Sydney’s south-west and Mandurah, a coastal city in Western Australia. The targeted areas have all been hit by the decades-long assault on manufacturing and industry, spearheaded by Labor and the unions, which has resulted in rising poverty, unemployment and complex social problems. In Bankstown, unemployment rates for 18–24 year-olds have been estimated at up to 30 percent. Under the scheme, welfare recipients in the trial areas would be subjected to “random” drug testing. Anyone who tests positive for an illicit substance would have 80 percent of their welfare payment quarantined for the next two years. Those who test positive twice within a 25 day period will be “referred to a medical professional” and could be forced into rehabilitation programs. Refusal to take a test would result in the immediate cancellation of all payments. The government has sought to justify the policy by claiming that it is responding to “community expectations.” It has also stated that a testing regime will reduce rates of drug use. These assertions have been rejected by welfare groups, which have noted that the government claims are not based on any evidence. In reality, the measure is aimed at stigmatising welfare recipients, scapegoating them for social issues caused by job destruction and government funding cuts, and forcing the unemployed off any government benefits. This is of a piece with the government’s broader pro-business agenda, including the introduction of sweeping tax cuts and legislation aimed at creating the conditions for workers who organise industrially and politically. The drug-testing legislation has previously been blocked twice in the parliament, as a result of widespread public opposition. Right-wing populist MPs, however, including representatives of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and the Centre Alliance, have signalled that they will back the measure this time around. The position of these right-wing MPs underscores the fraudulent character of their occasional populist rhetoric. For their part, Labor MPs have made tepid criticisms of the welfare measures. Labor leader Anthony Albanese has, since the party’s federal election debacle in May, spearheaded a shift even further to the right, including by backing the government’s tax cuts. The Murdoch-owned Australian newspaper has labelled the welfare legislation the latest “test” for Albanese to demonstrate his pro-business credentials. Even before the latest measures, Australia has one of the most punitive welfare regimes in the developed world. Article continues below the form Successive federal governments, Labor and Coalition alike, have effectively frozen the payment rate for the Newstart unemployment benefit since 1994. The result is that the payment is the equivalent of less than $40 a day for a since adult. This has led to a poverty rate of at least 55 percent among all Newstart recipients. A paper released this month by the Australian National University’s centre for social research found that on average, households that depended on government welfare as their main source of income were forced to live at $124 a week below the poverty line in 2017. The gap increased by 389 percent from 1993 to 2017. In 1993, the figure was $25, in 2003 $55 and in 2009 $98. The paper identified the refusal of governments to raise welfare payments as being the cause of growing poverty, amid a rapidly rising cost of living and soaring housing costs. It stated: “The driver of this increase is the lack of real income growth for these households.” A separate report, prepared by Monash University academics last month, pointed to the social consequences of this grinding poverty. It found that Newstart recipients were 6.8 times more likely to describe their health as “poor” than those in the workforce. Almost half of Newstart recipients reported that they had experienced “mental or behavioural problems.” A series of interviews by the Guardian last month documented the immense hardships confronting the unemployed. Lisa Carberry, a 48-year-old Newstart recipient in Geelong, explained that after housing costs and outstanding bills, she had been left with just $10 for the next fortnight. “I have to either not pay a bill or access charities for food and things in order to continue to tread water,” said Carberry. “That’s really what it is. It’s treading water. It’s not swimming.” Other interviewees were suffering homelessness as a result of not being able to pay the rent. The poverty-level of the Newstart payment is one aspect of a protracted assault on welfare. In 2012, for instance, the Gillard Labor government kicked 100,000 single parents off their benefits and onto Newstart, slashing their income by an average of more than $100 per week. Successive Coalition governments have similarly sought to impose sweeping cuts to welfare. A key turning point was the introduction of “income management” for welfare recipients in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities by the Howard Coalition government in 2007. The measure, backed by the Labor opposition, was part of the police-military takeover of Aboriginal community under the banner of the Northern Territory (NT) intervention. The blatantly discriminatory “income management” regime has intensified social problems in the region, and has created immense hardships for welfare recipients, who are only able to use their cashless debit card at a handful of select stores. The renewed push for welfare quarantining underscores the warnings made by the WSWS since 2007, that the measures associated with the NT intervention were a test case for broader attacks on the entire working class. www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/09/16/welf-s16.html?fbclid=IwAR2CqP8_fCdndsLgTYM-dnOlT_hqRZ3MxM87zEPvlzyZiCem4a3Ng3Yuxt0
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Post by leanne on Sept 18, 2019 12:38:27 GMT 7
The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison is, at the very least, a man one could never accuse of a fresh idea. This week, he’s wandered out to the ol’ conservative graveyard with his policy shovel again, trying to resurrect the somewhat wormy corpse of a plan to drug test welfare recipients. No one should be surprised that the Liberals are desperate for a bit of Grand Guignol theatrics to distract the masses. After scraping back into government on the insistent myth of their superior economic management, the Liberals share in our national misfortune of being forced to live with its results. It was this week we learned that six years of the Liberals have just delivered Australia its worst financial year since the recession of 1990-91. And that on top of “miserable” productivity growth and rising unemployment, the culmination of the ongoing policy disaster in the Murray-Darling is that crops are failing and farmers are warning the price of our food will go up. Of course the government have dug out the props and costumes to stage a culture war. One wonders if the unemployed were picked as villains because the Sri Lankan family from Biloela reminded everyone too much of their favourite neighbours for a “be scared of refugees” theme to work. Not to mention there’s no dramatic irony quite as powerful as punishing your victims for the proof they provide of your cruelty.
But what is surprising – for some – is the Liberals choosing to revive this particular ghastly play. It was the Abbott iteration of this same government that mooted drug tests for welfare recipients in 2014. Condemned by medical experts, addiction specialists and the evidence of the policy’s disastrous failure in both Florida and New Zealand, Australians were treated to the sight of Kevin Andrews being informed that Abbott had dropped the policy during the very ABC live interview into which he’d been sent to defend it. My message to those shocked by the event is that they really should know by now that this is a government that never met a mistake they couldn’t make twice. Cannabis prohibition doesn't work anywhere. It's New Zealand's turn to legalise it
This being said, I’ll admit that Morrison’s pursuit of drug-testing surprised me. Not because I don’t think he’s a calcified, uncaring relic who mouths crudely cribbed biblical conservatism in lieu of both policy depth and a human conscience, delivering a prime ministerial performance that to date amounts to little more than impersonating John Howard at an interminable political improv night – because I do, he is, he does and it probably always will. It’s that – as the New Zealand experiment revealed – for the statistically very small number of welfare recipients who do use drugs, smoking cannabis is fiscally responsible fun ... and I thought he’d admire its Protestant thrift.
Consistency of virtue, of course, is not a defining characteristic of Morrison, who prays to baby Jesus in a manger as he personally dispatches helpless kids to Christmas Island, just as it isn’t of the “free speech” crowd around him who painted Israel Folau as a martyr while they remain silent on the union delegate ratted out then fired for sharing a Downfall meme in a group chat. It’s those people who will spruik this stupid policy without imagining, for even one second, what life is like on $489.70 a fortnight (or around $35 per day), who are the danger here. Leaving aside that Morrison and his comrades get more than twice as much a day just as a meal allowance when they visit Canberra, the precise distance of certain Liberal party cheerleaders from the lived economy of Australians on welfare can be measured in the insistence of the “new” bill’s advocates that cocaine be added to the testing remit. Politely, I suggest that anyone who believes one can sustain a coke habit in Australia on an income of less than $300 a week is so far removed from a knowledge of how maths works that they should never be let near a costings paper again. Either that, or they’re subject to a wilful optimism so powerful it could only be chemical. Perhaps when one is broke on Newstart, failing to get a job and trapped in one’s home on an income that doesn’t afford luxuries as indulgently costly as going to a movie, dinner with friends or drinks, bargain pleasures – like small amounts of a drug that’s relatively cheap to buy, easy to grow and lasts for a few hours – might just be a cost-effective alternative entertainment. I say this as a person whose loathing of drugs is a matter of record, but who maintains a passionate, lifelong habit of observing reality. Morrison’s party of government arguably has an infamous internal drinking culture, recording broken parliamentary tables, questionable conduct of a sexual nature and insults to foreign dignitaries in its expression. It is churlish to punish those whose chemical behaviours have zero sovereign repercussions just because they are cheaper. If such people wish to discourage drug consumption among a small number of welfare recipients, there’s an easy way to perform virtue, and that’s to join the growing demand for raising the rate of Newstart. Otherwise, participating in this nonsense is sound and fury on a stage, a convenient prop to a government that doesn’t want anyone to follow the plot too closely. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/06/the-recycled-drug-testing-plan-is-just-one-more-cruel-and-pointless-diversion
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