I am just not so sure that these constant attacks on tax avoiders or welfare cheats are constructive. They may improve newspaper sales and low grade current affairs ratings, but seem to me neither socially or economically sound. Better to bury the stick and provide a bunch of carrots, as this bully boy stuff, is more about exclusion and blame games.

And back to my main point…. i believe, we are wasting vast amounts of money and energy, chasing down demons, when the return is far less.

For the record i've never alerted Centrelink about any confession clients have made because, frankly, thats the least of my concerns when someone is experiencing severe abuse or rape, a life threatening(terminal)illness, or processing the sexual abuse of a child. I will always, however, encourage people to make considered and ethically integrated choices that are life affirming and empowering, so i ain't condoning choices to defraud the system, but i do understand the context in which it occurs.

I suspect that the amount of money spent on tracking down this fraud is actually huge, compared to the problem. It just does not seem very economically rational.
And just makes people, who are often doing it very tough, feel like they cannot be trusted.

That’s an interesting point that provides food for thought. However the question which persists is why the programs would go all the way to Nimbin and Byron to find such people when basic laws of probability suggest that there will be many more of them closer to home in suburban Sydney (or whichever metropolis the show is produced in). Also, why would the program only interview (in one instance) the surfies and a bloviating Akerman when there are both other (and better informed) viewpoints to be heard, and many other bona fide welfare clients to be interviewed whose circumstances and attitude are quite different.

I”m not so sure some of the people that allow themselves to be featured on these shows think through the issues that clearly.

A little touch of fame and notoriety in ‘beating the system’ can win kudos in some circles.

You may be surprised to know how flagrant people are in working the system if you worked on the ground in welfare, health, community or theraputic services. My response to these many disclosures (sometimes motivated by bravado, guilt or stupidity) is ” why do you want me to know that? ITs an interesting question, and it seems sometimes the motivating desire is an attempt at a strange sort of confession, and a projection of complicity upon me - i then have the moral quandry to process around the disclosing of their behaviour to the right channels, while they feel absolved in having told ’someone’ in authority, but taking a calculated risk that i probably won’t breach confidentiality and push the issue.

I too visited England some time ago, and couldn’t believe the tabloids. I asked an English friend, “Why is it that so much trash is printed in your newspapers?”.

His reply: “Your mistake is to think they are ‘newspapers’.”

In Australia, I believe a similar error is to think that those TV shows “cover current affairs” in some sense.

I have often thought that the defamation laws, and other media laws, need to include provisions for media outlets and operatives to be required by courts to make full and frank confessions, of similar length and in similar timeslots (or equivalent) to the original defamatory publication, of how and why they came to make claims which they either knew to be untrue, or would have found to be untrue had they exercised due diligence in their research and reporting.

I like that, but I’d also like to see a regulatory body that can receive complaints, conduct investigations, impose fines and put a show off the air for a period of time. I have in mind something like Ch 7 having to fill its TT timeslot for a few weeks with a notice that it is unable to broadcast its usual crap as a penalty for having breached media rules.

That would be a huge deterrent for Ch7 and have the additional benefit of sparing viewers the brain-deadening impact of watching TT.