An Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report says Australia now has 580,000 young people who fall under the classification which stands for "not in employment, education or training".
An army of young Australians "unwilling to work" spends the day sleeping, watching TV or playing computer games — meet the NEETs.
The Daily Telegraph interviewed two NEETs from Mt Druitt - remember Struggle Street? - who'd rather spend their days "chilling at maccas" and taking their old Holden Barina on "off-road tracks" than look for a job.
One of them told The Daily Telegraph she would never get a job. "I don’t want to work my whole life and just die ... I want more than that", she said from the car park of the Mt Druitt Centrelink office. "I would tell you it’s hard to get a job but to be honest I don’t even try. Centrelink pays my rent and that’s all I need".
What next? An annual Honours List for the 'Longest Unemployeds'? Am I an optimist when it comes to the future of this country? No, sorry, I don't know the first thing about making eyeglasses.
P.S. With such huge social challenges to be solved, our politicians fritter their time away in bitter and heated debates about same-sex marriage and whether or not we should spend $75 million having a plebiscite about it - a non-binding plebiscite at that whose outcome would still need to be approved by Parliament anyway! Like Oscar Wilde, I have no objection to anyone’s sex life as long as they don’t practice it in the street and frighten the horses. If those people want to get married and be as miserable as the rest of us, let them! Already, schools in Sydney allow boys to wear girls' uniforms and use the girls' toilets - see here. So who cares if lesbians like to do it with women? I like to do it with women! Maybe I'm a lesbian, too? ☺
