I know this is going to make me look like a troll, and it’s probably only just us two here now, and I’m promising myself to leave the Uxxxxxclxxx issue alone, but you know I can’t let this “can’t afford” stuff go through to the keeper [yuck! sporting metaphor].

“Can’t afford” is such a rolled-up judgment – that is to say it masks a whole lot of variables. Can’t afford because there is not enough money (in whose pockets?)? Can’t afford because wanting to spend the money on something else? – lots of people think they can’t afford the opera but will readily spend more on a night out at the football. Then, since money has a time aspect, the same questions have to be asked as a question of credit rather than money. And don’t think that economists answers about these things, even though they are based on a view of systems rather than individuals, don’t still have assumptions about all of these things built into them.

Finally, I know in England everyone (especially from the right) likes to whinge about “UK labour’s mismanagement and dishonesty” but I’m not sure if “off balance sheet accounting” quite makes out that charge.

I am (still) not an underclass, I’m a free (wo)man!

Australia seems to be well ahead of Britain in terms of the affordability of the welfare state. The private provision of pensions through superannuation was tackled decades ago, with the result that you won’t have the pensions crisis the UK is facing in the next couple of decades when workers paying in National Insurance will each be supporting three pensioners. The medical system is financially more sustainable as patients are expected to contribute towards the cost of their care and the private insurance market actually works – whereas the NHS is still entirely free to patients, takes a big chunk out of GDP to sustain and private health care only covers private hospitals, not serious NHS care (other than dental). Australia also seems to have started their welfare reform measures earlier, eg. sending single mothers back to work a lot earlier, tightening unemployment eligibility and disability pension levels. UK Labour’s mismanagement and dishonesty (off balance sheet accounting means most of Blair’s much vaunted Public Private Partnerships – used to fund billions of infrastructure work – appear nowhere. Not in the public accounts or those of the private companies involved) meant the country was in debt BEFORE the financial sector bailout. Now the UK is so far in hock even the gilts have been downgraded. Not only can we not afford the benefits and pension system in its current form, we can’t actually afford the NHS or education system either.

Of course, we’re all individuals [cue Life of Brian] though across populations we’re probably less special than we like to think [cue: Avenue Q, if you've seen it].

I’ve already said that I think the out-group demonisation about welfare recipients is mostly huff and puff to gratify the working poor – a bit like tabloid law and order campaigns really. The state can’t possibly target all welfare recipients, it just isn’t worth it, but they want to make people think they do. For one thing, the only real way to contain welfare abuse is to internalise compliance in the subject population – that will get the averages down even though it won’t deter the bold, shameless, reckless or desperate. It’s pathetic it’s done and because it’s been given to the advertising wallahs to do its even more pathetic.

Yes, you can get indignant about it – I don’t like it either though I guess my response to it is less personal, but my starting point about whether you are part of an underclass doesn’t seem to me to be affected by the rightness or wrongness of such demonisation. I’m not even sure if I agree that we (leaving aside distinctions between the UK and Australia) have a welfare system that we cannot afford (on reflection, I think we have a welfare system which we don’t spend enough on), as opposed to a welfare system that taxpayers or national insurance contributors (really the same thing because the contribution is government mandated and compulsory) would like to pay less for.

I believe in classes but don’t think people are to be blamed for the class they are in whereas you seem to believe that members of an underclass are bad and want to say that you are not a member of an underclass because you are not bad.

No, what I’m saying is that being a member of an underclass is not proof in itself that you are “bad”, therefore demonisation on the basis of belonging to said underclass is wrong. I am NOT an underclass… I am an individual and you can’t make generalisations about my character, motives or behaviours simply because I’m on welfare. You can’t make them about anyone else on welfare either. My position is consistent.

Demonisation is a symptom of any ‘out-grouping’ process. Targets can be any class of people, not just those with less financial or social power. The bourgeois were successfully demonised in communist cultures because they had MORE financial and social power. German Jews were demonised in Nazi Germany despite being fully integrated throughout society at all levels. These two are examples of what can happen when casual out-grouping becomes institutionalised by the state.

Hence SL’s question: in what way is creating this out-group addressing the actual problem of having a welfare system we can’t afford to pay for?

[Incidentally, when I drive it is a 1999 VW Golf hatchback. It is not in any way a vehicle for which I claim any kind of tax deduction or expense. At present the locks on both the front doors are broken and if I want to lock it I have to climb in through the boot to get back in. Just thought you might like to know.]

So I guess you must get a bit irritated when people generalise barristers as dishonest, overpaid, self indulgent people who give nothing back to society and have a serious ‘luxury brand’ fetish. (I once had a temp job in Ian Callinan’s chambers. Can you tell?) Hold that feeling, it’s making my point.

You don’t like it when it’s done to you. I don’t like it when it’s done to me. The difference is that while we’re both subject to this kind of “natural” demonisation in casual conversation between individuals (in the pub, say) there isn’t a co-ordinated campaign of political rhetoric and advertising designed to legitimise YOU as a target.

So why the hell should I have to put up with it?

1. There was an irony alert. I never said demonisation is fine. I just said that demonisation was a symptom of being an underclass. The difference between us is perhaps that I’m a Marxist without a belief in the inevitability of the progressive dialectic. I believe in classes but don’t think people are to be blamed for the class they are in whereas you seem to believe that members of an underclass are bad and want to say that you are not a member of an underclass because you are not bad.

2. First of all (I’m talking about Australia here but I doubt if the UK is much different), on the tax front, you have to submit a tax return. If you don’t, you will (eventually) be chased up for one and prosecuted for not submitting one. Once you have submitted one, or in some cases even if you don’t, the tax office can make an assessment – if that is done in the absence of a return you can bet that it will be pretty high, though usually the tax office prefers first to prosecute for not putting in a return. If the local tax office chooses to audit me on my return, then it can plough through my accounts because I will have to produce them, and so far as they are reliant on records derived from my personal bank accounts (well: I’m a sole trader, so they are just my bank accounts) I will have to cough up those records. If I don’t, any expenses I claim will fail. If it is a question of my receipts, then you are right, there isn’t an automatic licence to snoop without my knowing (at least, I don’t know of one), but there is an irresistible power to snoop should the state so choose.

There is a distinction, for what it is worth, in that in the case of tax the state is talking about taking money from me (albeit that I have an obligation to tell it the truth to enable it to do so) whereas in the case of welfare benefits the state is auditing the entitlement to money it has paid or is paying out.

3. I don’t think it is a question of what I would tolerate or am comfortable with or not: like you, I would be lumped with the law, whatever it was.

Funnily enough, people who wish to disguise receipts generally don’t bank them, but if the tax office decides to take an attitude to them, the surveillance can be and often is pretty comprehensive. The tax office also has other powers, such as making its own assessment of your income or GST [=VAT] liability, which will pretty soon oblige you to produce your private information if you think you can prove a lesser figure.

[Incidentally, when I drive it is a 1999 VW Golf hatchback. It is not in any way a vehicle for which I claim any kind of tax deduction or expense. At present the locks on both the front doors are broken and if I want to lock it I have to climb in through the boot to get back in. Just thought you might like to know.]

4. As to licences to snoop, you don’t need any licence or warrant to do quite a lot of surveillance of somebody in the manner suggested by the advertisements, and if there is a crime suspected, a warrant will generally be issued without your having any chance to oppose it. That’s the same for everyone.

5. I can remember the names of some of those Sydney barristers. There was Mr Archer, and Mr Stevens and Mr Cummins, and your links have helpfully reminded me of a few more. That’s why the tax office runs a slide rule over our tax returns. However, just to say there are other people who should be investigated (and of course, these people were investigated eventually – that’s how they got caught) isn’t really an answer to the question of whether welfare recipients need to be investigated.

6. However, I agree with SL (as you will see from the comment that seems never to have seen the light of day) that wholesale investigation of welfare recipients isn’t cost-effective.

7. An anecdotal aside: On the last occasion I went as duty barrister to the Downing Centre in Sydney (I do this 4 or 5 days a year; it’s a voluntary, ie unpaid, commitment) I represented a single mother who had understated her income to Centrelink and was consequently overpaid $7.5K or so over 2 years. She was only caught as a result of data matching with her bank account. You may or may not be happy to hear that although a conviction was recorded and an order made for reparation (I unsuccessfully resisted that on the grounds that the state has ample administrative powers to garnish her income and she has negligible assets) she was given a good behaviour bond and no other punishment.

8. (This is more at SL) I actually don’t think it is possible to come up with a welfare system which eliminates the category “cheat” even though I think that there is an argument that it is about as meaningful as “queue jumper” in refugee law. For one thing, the welfare system is always so mean that some people have little choice but to cheat (if they can) if they are caught in its toils on a long-term basis. If you are long-term unemployed and a private tenant, you simply cannot live other than quite miserably – ie, in a rooming house full of schizophrenics and alcoholics – on what the welfare state allows you – at least that’s the case in Sydney. That sounds an awful lot like being a member of an underclass to me.

Welfare recipients, however, are entitled to welfare by reason of their private circumstances, so necessarily there must be some investigation of them.

If I could just point out that doing this in the case of welfare recipients often finishes up costing as much or more than making the actual welfare payments. As Tim commented aways up the thread, it is in all our interests to come up with a welfare system that eliminates the category ‘cheat’; vast bureaucratic oversight doesn’t do that very well, alas. This is how we reach the absurd situation where countries with universal, non means-tested welfare (France, Sweden) finish up with lower welfare bills than countries that means-test (like Britain). Yes both Sweden and France have scaled back the welfare state — no-one can afford to keep paying this much at current levels with the Boomers going through the pipe — but the evidence is that universal provision is much cheaper.

Also, on people dodging tax: benefits recipients in this country would be able to get away with something similar for six months, tops.

Well, there you are, DEM. I think we are really in agreement about demonisation of welfare recipients once the hackle-raising has been overcome.

I don’t see how, Marcellous. You seem to be saying “demonisation is fine – that’s how you know you’re an underclass love”. I’m saying it’s offensive, unjustified and unacceptable and in becoming an established part of public policy risks undermining the basic legal precept of everyone being equal before the law [yes, that's exactly the direction we've also gone with anti-terror legislation but I think that's wrong also]. It would mean having different laws for different classes of people which is supposed to be impossible in our system.

The subject matter, it is true, is rarely the barrister’s private life, but that is inherent in the source of the complaint and the nature of the regulation. Welfare recipients, however, are entitled to welfare by reason of their private circumstances, so necessarily there must be some investigation of them.

I was thinking more in terms of a complaint about your financial life, Marcellous. Barristers are self-employed and presumably subject to all those small business regulations and tax schedules (VAT in the UK etc) like any sole trader. Your tax return will be more complex than most and more like a negotiation with the Inland Revenue, but it is also based on your personal circumstances – how much you worked, where you spent the money and how much tax you pay and/or are refunded.

Are you really comfortable with the local tax office having the power to paw through your PERSONAL bank accounts, household utility and credit card bills on the sole basis of an anonymous phone call alleging that you’ve been fudging your VAT to pay for a Porche? I doubt it. You’d expect anyone who is seizing your financial records to have justified their case in front of a magistrate or another legal authority and acquired a warrant before they even ring your bank.

I agree that there is generally little likelihood of covert surveillance of a barrister as a result of an anonymous complaint, but that’s because there is little call for one. It’s not the state’s interests which come into play at this point generally, though if in fact the matter were a criminal one there could well be covert surveillance.

My point is, that you wouldn’t tolerate for a second being subject to the kind of unfettered intrusion that I’m potentially subject to as a benefits claimant. We’re not talking about proper criminal investigation – that’s an entirely different issue with carefully controlled powers and procedures, PACE et al – we’re talking about a licence to snoop on the flimsiest pretexts (like a database match that shows two claimants in different parts of the country have the same name – yes it might be one person claiming twice… OR it’s just two people with the same name. That one came up in Saints and Sinners).

To requote from my post:

… in fact benefit fraud is estimated by the Department for Work and Pensions to cost £800m a year, while personal tax avoidance was thought to be running at £13bn.

Am trying to remember the name of those Sydney barristers who got prosecuted for not paying tax AT ALL for years…

No, not much call for anti-fraud measures tackling tax avoidance at all.