Tony Abbott calls for crackdown, saying long-term dole cut if no move to unskilled jobs

A JOB for a few months is better than ongoing life on welfare, says Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott as he calls for changes to the welfare payments system.

Mr Abbott says long-term unemployed Australians should be required to move to where there is unskilled work or lose welfare payments and unemployment payments would be scrapped where unskilled jobs were available.

He also wants a compulsory work-for-the-dole system introduced for jobless people aged under 50.

"A job for a few months if it's there and available ... is much better than ongoing life on welfare," Mr Abbott told ABC Radio today.

"The employers ... are calling out for work."

Mr Abbott, who's long backed stricter welfare rules, is due to advance his ideas in a lunchtime address to the Queensland Chamber of Commerce in Brisbane today.

Mr Abbott also says people on the disability pension should join the workforce, saying 60 per cent of recipients had conditions that were not necessarily permanent and not incompatible with some kind of workforce participation.

"What I don't want to see is people who might be participants in the economy just parked forever on welfare when there is an alternative," he said.

Mr Abbott again called for welfare payments quarantining to be expanded across the country.

Half of all payments to every long-term unemployed Australian should be quarantined to basic necessities, such as food and medicine, he advocated.

"If it is right and proper for long-term beneficiaries in the (Northern) Territory to have their welfare income automatically quarantined, why isn't it right and proper for this to happen right around the country," Mr Abbott asked.

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