The Australian- and New-Zealand-English expression dole bludger designates a person who exploits the system of unemployment benefits by avoiding gainful employment.

This expression occurred, for example, in the following from The Press (Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand) of Saturday 8^th July 1989:

Disillusioned Kiwis return from Q’land

John and Jill Drury have sold their Queensland home and are returning to New Zealand, just two of the growing number of Kiwis who are finding that the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side.
The Drurys and two of the three children who live with them in Brisbane’s southern outskirts are returning to Christchurch after 16 months in the Sunshine State. They are disillusioned with high unemployment, poor wages for the two children who are working, rocketing prices and prejudice against New Zealanders, Mrs Drury says.
[…]
The family has encountered considerable anti-New Zealand feeling amongst Queenslanders, who have a fixed view of Kiwis as dole bludgers, even though the days when New Zealanders could get off the plane and sign on the dole are long gone. A person must be resident in Australia for six months before qualifying for the unemployment benefit.

A shortening of bludgeoner, bludger originally designated a prostitute’s pimp. In Australian and New-Zealand English, bludger later came to designate a parasite, a hanger-on, a loafer.

The following explanations are from Aussie ‘Bludgers’ Bludgeoned, published in The Daily Telegram (Adrian, Michigan, USA) of Monday 26^th July 1976:

CANBERRA—(LENS)—Dole bludgers, beware. Malcolm Fraser’s Liberal-Country party government in Australia has announced that it is going to make life difficult for people abusing the right to unemployment assistance.
The word “bludger” originally meant someone who lived on the earnings of a harlot, but for a century or so it has been used in Australia to describe any lazy fellow who imposes on others. Before last December’s election there had been a considerable outcry about young men and women who preferred the dole to looking for work.

It seems that the expression dole bludger:
– was first used by the Australian Labor Party politician Clyde Cameron (1913-2008), Minister for Labor and Immigration from June 1974 to June 1975;
– in reference to young people who migrated to the Gold Coast, i.e., a metropolitan region south of Brisbane on Australia’s east coast, known for its long sandy beaches.

The earliest occurrences of the expression dole bludger that I have found are as follows, in chronological order:

1-: From The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Monday 18^th November 1974—this article was referring to an Australia-wide survey that has just been published in The National Times:

Spotlight on just where the jobs are

Detailed figures to be given this week will show a rapid worsening in the employment position in country towns and cities throughout Australia.
Criticisms by the Minister for Labor (Mr. Clyde Cameron) and others about the “dole bludgers” on the Gold Coast reflect more their hang-ups about surfers than the realities of unemployment, an investigation shows.

2-: From Teenagers make a living on the dole, by The Sydney Morning Herald Investigation Team, published in The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Monday 9^th December 1974:

There is common ground between local council and Government officials that much of the unemployment on the Gold Coast is an imported problem.
[…]
There is an understandable reticence on the part of the Gold Coast City County officials to talk of tanned surfies lying on the beach, supported by benefit extracted from taxpayers.
“The problem is that people down south think that this is all there is to the unemployment problem here,” said the Gold Coast Mayor, Alderman Robert Neumann.
Alderman Neumann, bitterly critical of Federal Government economic policies in spite of his support for the ALP, does, however, concede that Mr Cameron’s dole bludgers exist: “I’d be surprised if there were more than 300 surfies on the dole here.”
Mr Hamilton, the acting town clerk, interviewed separately, came up with the same figure. He said: “Maybe there are 300 surfies lying around here on the dole. There wouldn’t be more than that.”