Mapping NSW's welfare blackspots where families survive on the borderline WESTERN Sydney and the NSW north coast are a welfare wasteland where one in five residents survives on social security handouts. A new analysis of government welfare data by The Daily Telegraph spotlights NSW as the nation's unemployment black spot - hosting four of the top 10 electorates most reliant on welfare. And Mission Australia has blown the whistle on dole-dependent parents who criticise their own kids for doing well at school or getting a job. "Teenagers are being mocked by their own family for going to school - it's quite common," chief executive Toby Hall said yesterday. "They are saying, in essence, 'Do you think you're better than us because you're going to school or you've got a job?"' Based on figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, welfare spending under Labor has been higher than it has been ever before. Under the current Labor government, we are now spending more than one third of our tax revenue on welfare. Since 2007 - not taking into account inflation - welfare spending has increased by $26 billion. Mr Hall called on the next federal government to reward families with bonus welfare payments for sending their kids to school - and slap them with fines for truancy. He said government intervention to date had been inconsistent and underfunded. "It's not been enough to make a difference," he said. There need to be some carrots and some sticks ... we need to have an environment where we encourage everyone to work. Otherwise we'll see a continuous cycle of generation after generation living in poverty. For many people, their postcode is their destiny. The Coffs Harbor-based seat of Cowper, held by the National Party, has 27,945 working-age residents receiving the dole, disability allowance, parenting payment or sickness, carer or widow pensions. The figure does not include aged pensions or family benefits. The analysis shows working-age welfare payments go to one in every 4.8 Cowper residents, including children and the elderly. In the neighbouring Labor-held seat of Page - which takes in Lismore and Grafton - 26,736 working-age residents are on welfare, or one in five of all residents. In Sydney's outer west, 30,303 working-age residents live on welfare in the Labor seat of Fowler, which takes in Cabramatta and Liverpool. The figure includes 8137 residents on the Newstart unemployment benefit, 7620 disability pensioners and 8080 on the carer allowance, which is paid to those who cannot work because they need to look after a disabled or elderly person. Another 4766 Fowler voters receive the parenting pension, which is paid at a higher rate than Newstart. In the adjoining ALP seat of Blaxland - once held by former "boy from Bankstown" Labor prime minister Paul Keating - 30,547 voters rely on welfare benefits. They include 8625 on the dole, 7787 disability pensioners, 7696 on the carer allowance and 5584 on the parenting pension. In the Port Macquarie-based electorate of Lyne - held by retiring independent MP Robert Oakeshott - 23,874 residents of working age are on welfare. They include 6691 on the dole, 8268 disability pensioners, 5600 on the carer allowance and 2849 on the parenting payment. Mr Hall said some parents who had spent all their lives on welfare were jealous of their children getting ahead. "There can be immense pressure to conform to what everyone else is doing," he said. Kids are growing up in communities where mums and dads and aunts and uncles don't work. Often dad didn't do well at school, so they don't do well at school, and you see the cycle repeated again and again and again. Poverty is just endemic in those communities. Other NSW welfare black spots are Richmond, near Tweed Heads (24,344 working-age residents on social security), the Blacktown and Mt Druitt-based seat of Chifley (28,477), and the Fairfield-based seat of McMahon (22,851). The outback NSW electorate of Parkes - which takes in Dubbo, Bourke and several remote Aboriginal communities - has 24,057 welfare recipients, including 8020 disability pensioners. And 22,950 residents are on welfare in New England, the Armidale-based seat to be vacated by retiring Independent MP Tony Windsor. The analysis is based on Department of Human Services and Australian Bureau of Statistics data, showing the number of payments for Newstart and its equivalent for the under-21s, Youth Allowance (other), plus the disability pension, carer allowance, parenting payments, sickness allowance and special benefit. It also includes the wife pension (paid to female partners of disability pensioners) and the widow allowance, paid to women over the age of 58 who became widowed, divorced or separated after turning 40. Mr Hall said intergenerational unemployment - where grandparents, parents and children are all out of work - was creating "ongoing poverty" " (Children) don't have a home where you wake up to an alarm clock, get up and go to work," he said. Often their parents don't encourage them to go to school. Parents often don't even know how to parent - when they have never had an adult play or read to them as a child, they don't know it's normal.