People receiving unemployment benefits should make a good attempt at getting a job. Putting an arbitrary number on the number of jobs they would have to apply for, however, has created a potential nightmare – for employers and jobseekers alike.

Requiring people on the dole to apply for 40 jobs per months might well be feasible in the metropolitan areas, where there is employment. However, forcing them to do it here in an employment-challenged region would be impractical, something Gilmore MP Ann Sudmalis concedes.

For local businesses, it would result in a flood of applications that would create major headaches for employers. In some weeks there are only a handful of jobs advertised in this part of the world so it would be an almost insurmountable challenge to find 40 jobs to apply for. Fearing a tsunami of irrelevant applications, employers would probably stop advertising, relying instead on word of mouth.

A one-size-fits-all approach is loaded with peril. 

Also troubling in the proposed new arrangements is the prospect of young people on the Work for the Dole program being forced to work alongside offenders fulfilling court ordered community service obligations. What parent would want their impressionable child spending the day with people who have found themselves on the wrong side of the law?

Mrs Sudmalis has undertaken to take these concerns back to Canberra so that the new arrangements can be fine-tuned. We hope the government listens to her so that the Shoalhaven isn’t lumbered with a well-meaning system that ends up doing more harm than good.