20 September 2012

What Ever Happened To... Jobline?

| EtFb
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Here’s one for Canberrans with longish memories.

Back in the 1980s and afterwards, there was a useful little service called Jobline. If you were unemployed or at university (but I repeat myself!) you could dial their number — I remember it, it was 477777 — and sign up to do odd jobs. Someone wants their windows cleaned, their babies sat, their computers de-virused, they call up too, and provided your aptitudes match up, you’d get a call from the nice people in the tiny first-floor office in Civic and you’d be off to earn a few quid.

I’ve long since left Canberra for Tassie, and here in the damp and underfunded badlands I think something like Jobline would be a good plan. But I’m nervous: on a whim, I dialed the old number and got a private home’s answering machine. Sometime between the late eighties and now, Jobline let that incredibly memorable phone number lapse, which suggests foul play. Was it draconian government legislation, insurance issues, a hit sponsored by Jim’s Assassins (a fully-owned franchisee of the Jim’s Empire) or something else? Who killed Jobline?

Does anybody know?

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Felix the Cat4:31 pm 21 Sep 12

Isn’t it called Community Service these days and performed by crims?

Think there would be more problems with this type of service now days. You would need to have police checks, security assessments etc. What if someone gets hurt/mugged/rbbed or worse? Who is libel is something goes wrong?

Mysteryman said :

EtFb said :

Because, to a Liberal politician, giving unemployed people a bit of extra cash doesn’t constitute a profit. Bastards.

That wouldn’t constitute a profit to anybody.

There is “profit” then there is benefit to society.

arescarti42 said :

Computers de-virused? I didn’t think anyone other than super-nerds and research institutions had computers in the 1980s. Furthermore, how the hell do you get a virus on your computer without internet access? Ordering dodgy floppy disks in the mail or something?

I didn’t have the ‘tubes hooked up at home until 1995, and some of my friends were entrenched well before that – while not eighties, it was before the jobline apparently met its demise.

Never heard of it but it sounds like a great idea.

You could even build an app for it.

There were computers, viruses and the internet in the eighties, there just wasn’t the www.

Computers de-virused? I didn’t think anyone other than super-nerds and research institutions had computers in the 1980s. Furthermore, how the hell do you get a virus on your computer without internet access? Ordering dodgy floppy disks in the mail or something?

Same way USB sticks are a major virus vector today.

(I’m looking at you library service)

EtFb said :

Because, to a Liberal politician, giving unemployed people a bit of extra cash doesn’t constitute a profit. Bastards.

That wouldn’t constitute a profit to anybody.

Answered my own question with a bit of trawling through Hansard. Kate Farr Carnell shut Jobline down in 1996 after determining that they couldn’t figure out a way to turn it into a profit-making business. Because, to a Liberal politician, giving unemployed people a bit of extra cash doesn’t constitute a profit. Bastards.

Still, it means there’s a chance that it could work again, provided the inevitable Liberal landslide next election doesn’t bury it before we can get started…

I’m trying to set it up and run it here, dumbo.

Get a haircut and get a real job. That aside try seek, or phone me ill give you an odd job 🙂

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