I was rather shocked too find out just how much the government spends on welfare payments, from the Commonwealth Budget for 2007-2008 we learn the government receives $119,560 million in income tax and pays $96,450 million in "Social security and welfare". Gee so, %80 of income tax goes to welfare payments. According to the ABS the average weekly income for full time employees is $1,103.60 as of August last year. Using this figure, the cost to maintain the welfare system costs the equivalent of 87 ($96,450 / $1,103.60) million weeks of work a year. From the 2006 census we find that the employed labour force consists of about 9.1 (9.6 total labour force - 0.5 unemployed) million people. Therefore to maintain the welfare system each and every employed person is doing the equivalent of 9.5 (87 million / 9.1 million) weeks of basically forced, unpaid labour* for people who either can't or won't get a job, or you spend %18 of your life on this.
* There is no moral or practical difference between taking a week's wages and forcing someone to do a week's work without pay. Therefore taxation is the equivalent of forced, unpaid labour, which is sometimes know as slavery. This doesn't apply if your actually receiving something for the work or the money, such as say roads or police protection, but that's a discussion for another time.
