11-13-2017, 03:52 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-13-2017, 04:29 PM by thorn bird.)
Here's a blurb from todays Australian. Of course our vaunted regulator wouldn't be a prime example of what he is talking about would it?
Na,Of course not, those legends in their own minds are the worlds leading regulators.Just look what they have achieved in the past thirty years...??? err?anything anything at all??
Was the half billion dollars of taxpayer money to reduce a whole industry to ruin value for money? Pollies seem to think thats pretty impressive by anyones standards, which it probably is depending which side of the fence your on.
But they've actually convinced the government they are doing a great job, even though they have not achieved any benchmark set for them, not even their prime directive, to make us safer.
In that they have miserably failed, the yanks leading the way.
Wouldn't it be great if they did something that we could throw our chests out in pride and say jeez they got that right!
OPINION
FAT AND MISMANAGED PUBLIC SECTOR IS EATING US ALIVE
MAURICE NEWMANThe Australian12:00AM November 13, 2017
Milton Friedman once quipped: “You’re lucky you don’t get all the government you pay for.” Well our federal public service costs more than 6 per cent of GDP simply to run, so just how lucky are we? America’s population is more than 13 times Australia’s, yet employs only eight times as many federal public servants. On a relative basis the US has fewer departments and agencies.
In Australia, growth in public service employment and wages outstrips the private sector. According to The Australian’s economics editor: “Inflation in the cost of public-sector services is rising at more than five times the pace of the private-sector, and is equivalent to a tax of more than $800 a year on the average household.”
But running costs are one thing. In a Crikey article, carried by the Community and Public Services Union, Eric Beecher chronicles appalling mismanagement in service delivery.
There’s Centrelink’s fake debt letter “debacle” where thousands of poor Australians were hit with demands to repay money they didn’t owe.
Centrelink considerately attached a “suicide call-back service number” for the despairing. Beecher describes the handling of the North West Shelf royalty revenue by the Department of Industry as “extraordinary ineptitude”, “possibly costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in unjustified tax offsets”. The Australian National Audit Office confirms “available evidence indicates that the problems are much greater than has yet been quantified”.
Then there’s the $11 billion spent by the Defence Department managing 119 bases around Australia which the ANAO says is well in excess of the $9.3bn “expected value” of the 10 services contracts, signed in 2014, to do the work.
The department has defended its performance, saying the vast project to renegotiate the contracts has delivered value for money, when considered against increased service demands and changing expectations of the ADF. Yet a new $120 million IT system, meant to manage contracts between Defence and the private companies servicing the bases, was $39m over budget and five years late.
There’s also the flawed tendering and contracting processes overseen by the Immigration Department, which resulted in the waste of “tens and possibly, hundreds of millions of dollars”. Given these practices were subject to a scathing ANAO report, they could hardly be ignored.
We’re reminded of last year’s Australian Bureau of Statistics census “stuff-up”, the Australian Taxation Office’s massive and damaging IT outage, the Department of Health’s decade-long mismanagement of e-health records, and the embarrassing release of identifiable Medicare information. There’s also the Department of Finance’s lax oversight of ministerial travel arrangements. But not raised is the $576m public service travel bill — a blowout of $75m in just four years.
While this shocking record is acknowledged, Beecher argues the blame lies mainly with outsourcing to powerful private contractors who take advantage of CPSU members, under-investment in IT, IT service providers, and, of course, Tony Abbott.
It appears Abbott “demoralised and demonised” the public service. He imposed an industrial relations “hardliner” to negotiate a new enterprise agreement which the union rejected. His aggressive approach resulted in 27 agencies taking industrial action, with some managers admitting that “staff are simply no longer bothering to make any extra effort to achieve government priorities”.
Is this what the Australian Public Service means when it says it “must set the pace for a contemporary Australian workforce”? Treasury’s shortcomings are also Abbott’s fault. He appointed department head John Fraser, who, it is argued, brought with him a “dearth of quality thinking”. Treasury’s poor forecasting record for most of the decade is conveniently forgotten.
Forgotten too are the 1500 Department of Education and Training staff who are supposed to create the conditions and incentives for schools and universities to flourish. They do not operate any schools or employ any teachers, but oversee the spending of more than $34bn a year.
Yet, despite regular funding increases, a UN agency ranks Australia 39th out of 41 high and middle-income countries for quality education.
Only 7 per cent of Australian school students perform at advanced-level maths, compared with 54 per cent of Singaporean students. But when gender-diversity, climate-change and a negative view of our history fill student’s minds, this is not surprising. Higher education is also lagging. Despite federal university funding per domestic student increasing 15 per cent between 2010 and 2015, Australian institutions, according to The Times Higher Education editorial director, are falling behind those in China and Hong Kong.
Regrettably, bad policy decisions and poor administration aren’t restricted to recurrent programs. We remember well the $2.45bn pink batts fiasco which resulted in deaths and house fires, and the $16.2bn “Building the Education Revolution” debacle, almost $2bn of which was completely wasted.
The latest taxpayer extortion is the National Broadband Network “train wreck”, which was forecast to cost $43bn but which will deliver a system little better than what it replaces for about $60bn.
Then there’s the uncosted French submarines, Snowy Hydro 2, experimental battery storage and the countless other brainwaves probably in our future. The inescapable conclusion is that today’s political leaders, federal and state, treat taxpayers’ money with contempt. They cultivate a culture which fosters conceit and deflects responsibility for failure. These days, announcements pass for policy. Implementation is for others to worry about.
And we complain about capitalism? Such negligence would see corporate executives fired, sued or in jail and their businesses bankrupted. That’s how the private sector is cleansed.
Political ineptitude, on the other hand, is perpetuated, courtesy of taxpayers.
Yes, we do have elections. But as long as the electorate puts its trust in the same discredited snake-oil promises, politicians will keep pushing their “government is the answer” remedies. Only when voters realise that insanity is voting for the same thing over and over and expecting different results will change and accountability be possible.
Na,Of course not, those legends in their own minds are the worlds leading regulators.Just look what they have achieved in the past thirty years...??? err?anything anything at all??
Was the half billion dollars of taxpayer money to reduce a whole industry to ruin value for money? Pollies seem to think thats pretty impressive by anyones standards, which it probably is depending which side of the fence your on.
But they've actually convinced the government they are doing a great job, even though they have not achieved any benchmark set for them, not even their prime directive, to make us safer.
In that they have miserably failed, the yanks leading the way.
Wouldn't it be great if they did something that we could throw our chests out in pride and say jeez they got that right!
OPINION
FAT AND MISMANAGED PUBLIC SECTOR IS EATING US ALIVE
MAURICE NEWMANThe Australian12:00AM November 13, 2017
Milton Friedman once quipped: “You’re lucky you don’t get all the government you pay for.” Well our federal public service costs more than 6 per cent of GDP simply to run, so just how lucky are we? America’s population is more than 13 times Australia’s, yet employs only eight times as many federal public servants. On a relative basis the US has fewer departments and agencies.
In Australia, growth in public service employment and wages outstrips the private sector. According to The Australian’s economics editor: “Inflation in the cost of public-sector services is rising at more than five times the pace of the private-sector, and is equivalent to a tax of more than $800 a year on the average household.”
But running costs are one thing. In a Crikey article, carried by the Community and Public Services Union, Eric Beecher chronicles appalling mismanagement in service delivery.
There’s Centrelink’s fake debt letter “debacle” where thousands of poor Australians were hit with demands to repay money they didn’t owe.
Centrelink considerately attached a “suicide call-back service number” for the despairing. Beecher describes the handling of the North West Shelf royalty revenue by the Department of Industry as “extraordinary ineptitude”, “possibly costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in unjustified tax offsets”. The Australian National Audit Office confirms “available evidence indicates that the problems are much greater than has yet been quantified”.
Then there’s the $11 billion spent by the Defence Department managing 119 bases around Australia which the ANAO says is well in excess of the $9.3bn “expected value” of the 10 services contracts, signed in 2014, to do the work.
The department has defended its performance, saying the vast project to renegotiate the contracts has delivered value for money, when considered against increased service demands and changing expectations of the ADF. Yet a new $120 million IT system, meant to manage contracts between Defence and the private companies servicing the bases, was $39m over budget and five years late.
There’s also the flawed tendering and contracting processes overseen by the Immigration Department, which resulted in the waste of “tens and possibly, hundreds of millions of dollars”. Given these practices were subject to a scathing ANAO report, they could hardly be ignored.
We’re reminded of last year’s Australian Bureau of Statistics census “stuff-up”, the Australian Taxation Office’s massive and damaging IT outage, the Department of Health’s decade-long mismanagement of e-health records, and the embarrassing release of identifiable Medicare information. There’s also the Department of Finance’s lax oversight of ministerial travel arrangements. But not raised is the $576m public service travel bill — a blowout of $75m in just four years.
While this shocking record is acknowledged, Beecher argues the blame lies mainly with outsourcing to powerful private contractors who take advantage of CPSU members, under-investment in IT, IT service providers, and, of course, Tony Abbott.
It appears Abbott “demoralised and demonised” the public service. He imposed an industrial relations “hardliner” to negotiate a new enterprise agreement which the union rejected. His aggressive approach resulted in 27 agencies taking industrial action, with some managers admitting that “staff are simply no longer bothering to make any extra effort to achieve government priorities”.
Is this what the Australian Public Service means when it says it “must set the pace for a contemporary Australian workforce”? Treasury’s shortcomings are also Abbott’s fault. He appointed department head John Fraser, who, it is argued, brought with him a “dearth of quality thinking”. Treasury’s poor forecasting record for most of the decade is conveniently forgotten.
Forgotten too are the 1500 Department of Education and Training staff who are supposed to create the conditions and incentives for schools and universities to flourish. They do not operate any schools or employ any teachers, but oversee the spending of more than $34bn a year.
Yet, despite regular funding increases, a UN agency ranks Australia 39th out of 41 high and middle-income countries for quality education.
Only 7 per cent of Australian school students perform at advanced-level maths, compared with 54 per cent of Singaporean students. But when gender-diversity, climate-change and a negative view of our history fill student’s minds, this is not surprising. Higher education is also lagging. Despite federal university funding per domestic student increasing 15 per cent between 2010 and 2015, Australian institutions, according to The Times Higher Education editorial director, are falling behind those in China and Hong Kong.
Regrettably, bad policy decisions and poor administration aren’t restricted to recurrent programs. We remember well the $2.45bn pink batts fiasco which resulted in deaths and house fires, and the $16.2bn “Building the Education Revolution” debacle, almost $2bn of which was completely wasted.
The latest taxpayer extortion is the National Broadband Network “train wreck”, which was forecast to cost $43bn but which will deliver a system little better than what it replaces for about $60bn.
Then there’s the uncosted French submarines, Snowy Hydro 2, experimental battery storage and the countless other brainwaves probably in our future. The inescapable conclusion is that today’s political leaders, federal and state, treat taxpayers’ money with contempt. They cultivate a culture which fosters conceit and deflects responsibility for failure. These days, announcements pass for policy. Implementation is for others to worry about.
And we complain about capitalism? Such negligence would see corporate executives fired, sued or in jail and their businesses bankrupted. That’s how the private sector is cleansed.
Political ineptitude, on the other hand, is perpetuated, courtesy of taxpayers.
Yes, we do have elections. But as long as the electorate puts its trust in the same discredited snake-oil promises, politicians will keep pushing their “government is the answer” remedies. Only when voters realise that insanity is voting for the same thing over and over and expecting different results will change and accountability be possible.