At the moment there seems to be a huge school of thought out there that very low unemployment is good.

Granted, it feels great to be able to work in a job or profession you enjoy enabling you to live a certain lifestyle and meet interesting people. But spare a thought for the percentage of people out there who haven’t found a niche, haven’t felt good about a job, or just don’t know what they want to do. They are always going to exist, and they are an essential part of our society. Dave Hughes has made a lot of money based on his dole based past.

Let’s put aside the fact that unemployment figures are works of fiction, manufactured by born and bred politicians who don’t even have to drive themselves anywhere. Their figures include every paper route as a “job”, and re-classifying social security payments to pensions and schemes to take people off the dole or newstart figures. The Howard Government in particular has demonised the unemployed, single parents, the disabled, and the Arts.

Music and art wouldn’t be where they are today if it wasn’t for unemployed people. Also, many sportspeople cannot hold down a job and train to an elite level before it starts paying off, so they too often start out as “dole bludgers”..

Without Arts, we have no definable culture. To a degree, Sport is affected too, but as long as “Cricket Before Anything” John Howard is in power, and Aussies are mesmirised by bogons in tight clothes chasing balls and hairy back sheilas, most sports played by men are safe.

So back on track here, I argue that economic rationalism is destroying our culture and therefore Australian identity.

The arts are dying. Government funding for arts defies logic. Public pieces worth millions are commissioned without any public input, and general Arts budgets and grants are constantly decreasing. The ABC has to fight for funds, and SBS has just opted to increase advertising spots to subsidise their pitiful pocket money.

Imagine an Australia with zero unemployment and commercial only channels, setting into motion a giddy loop of reality TV and soapy stars evolving or devolving into Delta Ho-Hum, Shannon “Grassy” Noll and that idiot Axle “Skin Blemish” Whitehead.

Unemployment is necessary for a healthy Australian culture, or any culture for that matter. British art will bear the scars of Thatcherism for aeons to come.

British soft reggae poppers, UB40 (not my favourite band, but they do their “thang”), met at the dole office. Their name is taken from the old British unemployment form - Unemployment Benefits, Form 40. Eric Clapton is said to have had to practice pretty hard day and night for a long time to be able to play the way he does. And face it, there’s no way I am letting the guys from the Pogues serve me a burger, or anything edible for that matter. In the US its harder again, but Kurt Cobain was not a career guy.

Bong smelling, mould growing, stained carpeted loungerooms are fertile grounds for new music, performance art, and the occasional paranoid delusion, which in turn creates the opportunity for more creativity. Whilst not all Art requires genuine hardship, I think Jackson Pollock was having a hard time when he literally put his blood sweat and tears into his work. Don’t forget that we all (Australian’s) own a part of him in Blue Poles.

None of these people were an overnight success, and many suffered for their art. Not everyone can pull a Jet, or a Ken Done.

We love the end products: the hit single, the brilliant painting, the installation, the book, the poem, the sculpture etc., but the powers that be want to eradicate the environment that nurtures such talents.

# If you are still with me, I have a proposal: From this day forward, each Australian finishing (or dropping out of) High School should be required to fulfil a year of unemployment, like national service in Greece and Israel, in order to determine the creative capacity of our youth, thus assuring Australia with a fighting chance at a vibrant artistic future.