The front page on this day in 1993 let Canberrans know that "unemployment can kill you". Or at least that was the message delivered by experts at the Australia Medical Association forum in Canberra the previous day. The medical experts stressed the importance of employment, and said unemployment was no less serious than road accidents, alcohol abuse and AIDS.
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Many of them valued employment above other highly-valued institutions - the keynote speaker said it was more important than politics or religion, due to it giving people a "sense of place and self-esteem". The negative effects of unemployment were reported to be smoking and drinking more, lower self-esteem and significantly worse mental health issues than those employed.
They referred to a Walter Greenwood quote in Love on the Dole - that being unemployed was like being a living corpse, "nothing to do with time; nothing to spend; nothing to do tomorrow nor the day after... a unit of the spectral army of three million lost men."
