Centrelink, Australia's social security office will start
sending SMS messages to clients, reminding them to attend job interviews. Of course, the next logical progression from this (which the Liberal Party should love) would be to integrate this with mobile phone tracking/triangulation, to keep track of dole recipients; much like those bracelets they put on home-detention inmates, only the client pays for the technology. If they leave the 5km radius of their home or registered appointments, or enter an off-limits area during business hours, their benefits get cut off until they wait in queue, grovel and fill in forms. After all, dole recipients are parasites, the philosophy goes, and the experience of receiving welfare should be made as humiliating as possible.
And with
the government's new telecommunications intereception bill, giving a wide range of government agencies the power to intercept people's communications without a warrant in the name of Fighting Terrorism, this could be possible.
The weird thing is, lots of people I know who are unemployed (or even employed but on a low wage) can't get mobile phone contracts. Besides, how much money from their pathetic dole payments would they have left to spend on a mobile phones and such luxuries after paying for food and shelter?