Abbott & stripping the young of their dignity

It's always easy to look at teh yoof of today and think that their dress and behaviour leaves them with little dignity to loose - until you cast your mind back to your own green days and recall the depth of feeling hidden beneath that mess of hair and suede shoes.
So 'Phoney Tony' Abbott's latest talk of visionary ideas about breaking "the youth welfare subculture" by supposedly supplying yoof with jobs in exchange for their voluntarily giving up welfare sounds a bit suss from a man who only months ago wanted to ship young people holus bolus across a continent to barren mining camps run by his free market mates.
Fer gawd's sake! The latest ABS figures show that total unemployment is still trending down, full-time and part-time employment is increasing and labour force participation has increased slightly.
When is comes to the Oz youngsters - the employment to population ratio of all 15 to 19 year olds in June 2010 was 47%.
Around 693,000 teens were in a job last month. A big slice of the rest are either still full-time students (over 1 million), overseas on their gap year, or actively looking for full-time work in this country (about 69,000).
Fact is that the percentage of unemployed yoof is less in June 2010 than it was in May 2009 and last year 84% of Oz teenagers 15 and over were either studying full-time or working full-time, according to the Foundation for Young Australians.
Doesn't sound like much of a welfare subculture to me.

Tones track record on respecting the young.