The Government’s proposed reforms to the Work For The Dole scheme, which will require job seekers to apply for 40 jobs a month as well as performing 25 hours of community service a week, have been roundly pilloried in the Australian media since they were announced at the end of July.
Now, a plucky programmer is attempting to make things easier for jobless Australians with the help of SpamBludger, a web-based system that will automatically generate and email job applications to potential employers, while cc’ing in Senator Eric Abetz, the brains behind the changes to the scheme.
SpamBludger is currently in development, and you can read all the details over on the project’s Pozible page. Programmer Bill Malkin is seeking $30,000 to complete it, although currently, only $130 has been raised. While it rides a very fine line between pisstake and actual thing, Malkin himself is entirely genuine in his outrage at unwieldiness of the new welfare reforms.
SpamBludger will work by scanning online business directories containing key words entered by job seekers. It will then generate and email an appropriate application based on the job requirements and the job seeker’s resume, gender, age and a variety of other increasingly facetious metrics including “blood group, sexual prederence, political and football club affiliations and shoe size.”
“The number of job applications generated and sent every weekday will default to two (in order to achieve the target of forty per month) but can be set up to a maximum daily limit of 10,000 … All emailed job applications will be cc’d to Senator Eric Abetz, the brains behind the forty job application requirement, so that he can marvel at the success of his scheme.”
“I would like to be able to demonstrate to the Australian Government the power of science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” he said of the project, “and what happens to politicians when they have no knowledge of, or respect for, these disciplines or of the abilities and power of the Australian unemployed.”
Malkin, a 35-year IT veteram, says that he will not spend any money on the project until the proposal becomes law, but is accepting donations to demonstrate its viability, and the “stupidity” of the government’s policy. Should the Australian government fail to implement the policy or rescind it, all unused money will be refunded. A more detailed breakdown of the funding goals can be found at Pozible.
As a motto for SpamBlugder, Malkin proposes: “We have the technology. Let us do your government-mandated spamming for you.” Ladies and gentlemen, this is classic Aussie ingenuity at work.
Image via Pozible
