| Monday, August 20, 2012 10:49 AM

My faith in the fact this is a pretty fair robust and sensible country full of people with a decent amount of common sense was reaffirmed Friday night on Close Up.

There is an expectation that the Government will announce this week drug testing for beneficiaries looking for work. This has already been signalled but the detail is coming allegedly this week, so we have a debate and a poll on the programme.

It strikes me that the fundamental premise that if the state is going to support you financially while you wait for your next job to crop up, the least you can do is be ready for the new work. Personally I’d like to think not only would you be ready but that maybe you've helped yourself out a bit by training or looking at options outside of what it was you were doing before. Things that make you broadly speaking more employable. Sadly the Government sets no such requirements. All they ask is that when something roughly in your field pops up, you need to be set to go.

One of the hurdles they’ve encountered is that when asked if you would pass a drug test, alarming numbers are saying no. This to my mind is a fundamental breach of the agreement you have with the Government and therefore needs fixing. The fixing will come in the form of your benefit being cut.

Now on Friday night we lined up Helen Kelly from the CTU. Helen doesn't like drug testing. She thinks it’s unfair, it’s a waste of money, it targets the wrong people. What was so reassuring is that the vast majority of us don't think like her. The poll showed 90% think it’s more than fair for your benefit to be cut if you fail or refuse a test.

By the way what happens when we do polls like that is we guess what the outcome will be. I had 50 cents with the cameraman. I said the result would be 80%, he thought 70%. So not only did I win, I was pleased I was on the low side of the result.

The lesson in all of this is you’ll hear a lot from the Helen Kellys of this world because they get about as much airtime as anyone else with an agenda to push. But it doesn’t mean they are remotely representative of the wider populous. There is a sense that just because you can line up two opposing views, that those views somehow cover off the bulk of us in an even handed half and half kind of way. In this case it wasn’t even close and it goes some way to explaining why the Government broadly remains popular because when they announce drug testing for beneficiaries, the media will find an array of those who oppose it. You might well end up with the impression that given all the noise they make, they might represent a largish group of people. But as the poll in this case showed us, they don’t.

Common sense is a wonderful thing and 90% shows there still plenty of it about.

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