10-22-2016, 08:32 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-23-2016, 04:35 AM by Kharon.
Edit Reason: Whoops - Wong thwed
)
The State Safety Program cup – Round one.
Sterle to bowl: Halfwit receiving at the river end.
P 93 – Hansard. Sterle kicks off proceedings with a short question. Then follows a torrent of – well - I just don’t know what to call it. Clearly ‘work-shopped’, obviously rehearsed, probably while sharing a mirror with DDDDDDD; but a ‘jumble’ of buzz words, and nonsense words, which would make Lewis Carol envious. I must have read the Halfwit opening statement a dozen times now; sometimes I get a glimmer of sense. Only to have that feeble light snuffed out the next read through. For example – despite the ‘mining b’boom’ operational staff numbers remain static; so the front line troops managed the increased volume of traffic without needing additional ‘ operational support’ i.e. more controllers. Then our hero goes on to say that despite the ‘static’ front line non requirement; there was a growth in support staff.
Mr Harfield: During that same period of time, other than a couple of additional fire stations, our service provision in air traffic control and aviation rescue and firefighting had not grown. Over the last 10 years our staff numbers had grown 1,500 FTE while our service provision had not really changed. The operational staff numbers had stayed relatively static.
Why? Shirley it didn’t take an additional 1500 folks to draft that ridiculous poster.
Mr Harfield: It was 1,500 over the last 10 years and, over the last five years, it would have been around 750. At the same time, as I said, our operational staff numbers, which are operational air traffic controllers and aviation rescue and firefighters had not significantly changed.
[All] this staff growth was in our projects and what we would call the back of house, our support areas.
This muppet do like to ‘badge’ things and use trite little descriptors; “headline increase” and the like. But; and I’m only guessing here – what he is trying to say is, that if the ‘support, back of house’ groups were to be retained, the price of service would increase and the majors told him to put it where the sun don’t shine. “Unpalatable”. Furry muff too; if the ‘front line’ is static and there is no increase in efficiency (reduced delays) then he must answer a couple or three awkward questions – like billion dollar earnings, but your broke? Or: what do we get for a five percent increase in charges? Or: WTF are you spending all thy billion dollar earning on – exactly?
[Considering] that this growth had been in back of house, not in our operational areas, obviously the airline industry found that completely unpalatable considering the current economic conditions. We revisited it and we went out with a five per cent price headline increase and consulted on that. Obviously that was unpalatable.
I don’t know who writes this stuff; there are enough swings and roundabouts in the opening ‘blurb’ to confound a barn full of boffins. No matter – Sterle and his no so merry band keep rolling and do, what I should do; ignore the ‘workshop gobbledegook’ and get to the nitty gritty. I must keep reminding myself that the Senators, in all probability, had an inkling that the AG would be taking a close, if belated look at the ASA. I keep looking for clues, to see if the Senators did know; hard to tell; but what I do get is a clear message that the Estimates committee will be taking a look – and anyway.
Halfwit reminds me of a couple in the CASA top lines; that Weeks for one. This sentence :-
“[In] restructuring the organisation, which was announced on 17 May, we have proceeded to work through the organisation to reappoint and realign that organisation under the new operating model and that will see a reduction of 900 positions across the organisation.
is a masterpiece in arrogance, ignorance and blarney used to say ‘nothing’. Pompous, pointless verbiage designed to impress. Like those silly ‘coffee table’ books – tossers love to leave ‘casually’ about the place. Here’s another – who the hell talks like this.
Mr Harfield: That is correct. This Accelerate Program is not touching our front-line service delivery, which is aviation rescue and firefighting and air traffic controllers. They are actually excluded from the Accelerate Program. As we work through the questions from Senator Xenophon about the interactions with CASA, I will go through that and what we have done in that space.
Enough, the new bucket is starting to look a little shop-worn and battered, courtesy Halfwit, so lets play spot the Senators clues. Halfwit was so busy spinning and weaving, proving that he’d done all his homework in anticipation of the questions; he failed to see the chasm opening up behind him.
Senator STERLE: I will stay focused and get back onto the question I just want to ask you here first. What is the number of proposed changes to job classification level?
Mr Harfield: We can provide that on notice—all the specifics. We can provide all that.
Senator STERLE: That is easily got? That is no drama?
Mr Harfield: Absolutely.
All carefully prepared; the positive ‘absolutely’ giving the game away; that question was anticipated, homework done and the Senator ‘happy’. “Must be winning” thinks Halfwit , “he swallowed all that without a blink”.
Senator STERLE: If you could provide that, that would be good. Is there a target that you want to achieve?
Senator STERLE: Okay, that is good—and at what level.
Mr Harfield: Absolutely.
This ‘feel good’ – ‘can-do’ – Absolutely –no worries Senator caper goes on for a page or so. Halfwit now firmly convinced he has the Senator in his back pocket; purring and completely satisfied; mollified by the assurances given, impressed with the Halfwit masterful use of buzz and spin. How thick can you be: ASA has been up to it’s proverbial ass in alligators for about two years now. Every estimates session has been conducted in an atmosphere of suspicion, attempting to get the lid off this can of worms; yet Halfwit blithely continues his meaningless dialogue unable to see the shadow of a very large axe over his head. The shade of Heff swinging it.
CHAIR: I am really looking for the short answer, and then I will leave you alone. So, the assessment as to the risk profile of a need for these services at an airport has diminished per activities measured by you as passengers in and out. Forget about passengers in and out; to me that is a moot point. But the level of activity at an airport: you have decided that we can cope with more activity in terms of going from 350,000 passengers to 500,000, where we do not think we are going to see an increase in incidents.
Senator STERLE: That is great. We have got it from three of the four most senior people in the pyramid, that there is going to be no contracting out of Airservices work anywhere.
Mr Harfield: Correct. Contracting out in the sense of we are not privatising Airservices, but for me to contract out non-core services, some administrative service or whatever, it does not mean that we will not contract that out—which is normal. It gets undertaken today.
Senator STERLE: With the other 780 or 800 redundancies—you have your job family there—will there be any other contracting out in any of the other job family categories? We have had redundancies, and then will we find contractors coming in to replace them?
Mr Harfield: Not contracting. We may contract out a function—in the sense that there may be a service that we find is more appropriate and more efficient to contract out, and is not what we would call a core service—
Senator STERLE: I understand that.
Mr Harfield: An administrative service that we may be able to do it differently.
Senator STERLE: I do understand that. Mr Harfield, you and the board, and all your people are not dills—I do not say that trying to be smart, but I would hazard as a guess and have a stab there to say that we would be fooling ourselves to not think that work still needs to be done under these other job families, but not for full-time employees? Am I wrong?
About now, Sterle finishes his over and ambles off to boundary for a spell of fielding and passes the ball to NX. How will the increasingly nervous batsman handle the change of pace? See you back at page 95 to watch the rest of the Halfwit uninspiring innings. Too much blocking and letting the ball go through to the keeper, the run rate reflecting a defensive stance.
Toot toot.
Sterle to bowl: Halfwit receiving at the river end.
P 93 – Hansard. Sterle kicks off proceedings with a short question. Then follows a torrent of – well - I just don’t know what to call it. Clearly ‘work-shopped’, obviously rehearsed, probably while sharing a mirror with DDDDDDD; but a ‘jumble’ of buzz words, and nonsense words, which would make Lewis Carol envious. I must have read the Halfwit opening statement a dozen times now; sometimes I get a glimmer of sense. Only to have that feeble light snuffed out the next read through. For example – despite the ‘mining b’boom’ operational staff numbers remain static; so the front line troops managed the increased volume of traffic without needing additional ‘ operational support’ i.e. more controllers. Then our hero goes on to say that despite the ‘static’ front line non requirement; there was a growth in support staff.
Mr Harfield: During that same period of time, other than a couple of additional fire stations, our service provision in air traffic control and aviation rescue and firefighting had not grown. Over the last 10 years our staff numbers had grown 1,500 FTE while our service provision had not really changed. The operational staff numbers had stayed relatively static.
Why? Shirley it didn’t take an additional 1500 folks to draft that ridiculous poster.
Mr Harfield: It was 1,500 over the last 10 years and, over the last five years, it would have been around 750. At the same time, as I said, our operational staff numbers, which are operational air traffic controllers and aviation rescue and firefighters had not significantly changed.
[All] this staff growth was in our projects and what we would call the back of house, our support areas.
This muppet do like to ‘badge’ things and use trite little descriptors; “headline increase” and the like. But; and I’m only guessing here – what he is trying to say is, that if the ‘support, back of house’ groups were to be retained, the price of service would increase and the majors told him to put it where the sun don’t shine. “Unpalatable”. Furry muff too; if the ‘front line’ is static and there is no increase in efficiency (reduced delays) then he must answer a couple or three awkward questions – like billion dollar earnings, but your broke? Or: what do we get for a five percent increase in charges? Or: WTF are you spending all thy billion dollar earning on – exactly?
[Considering] that this growth had been in back of house, not in our operational areas, obviously the airline industry found that completely unpalatable considering the current economic conditions. We revisited it and we went out with a five per cent price headline increase and consulted on that. Obviously that was unpalatable.
I don’t know who writes this stuff; there are enough swings and roundabouts in the opening ‘blurb’ to confound a barn full of boffins. No matter – Sterle and his no so merry band keep rolling and do, what I should do; ignore the ‘workshop gobbledegook’ and get to the nitty gritty. I must keep reminding myself that the Senators, in all probability, had an inkling that the AG would be taking a close, if belated look at the ASA. I keep looking for clues, to see if the Senators did know; hard to tell; but what I do get is a clear message that the Estimates committee will be taking a look – and anyway.
Halfwit reminds me of a couple in the CASA top lines; that Weeks for one. This sentence :-
“[In] restructuring the organisation, which was announced on 17 May, we have proceeded to work through the organisation to reappoint and realign that organisation under the new operating model and that will see a reduction of 900 positions across the organisation.
is a masterpiece in arrogance, ignorance and blarney used to say ‘nothing’. Pompous, pointless verbiage designed to impress. Like those silly ‘coffee table’ books – tossers love to leave ‘casually’ about the place. Here’s another – who the hell talks like this.
Mr Harfield: That is correct. This Accelerate Program is not touching our front-line service delivery, which is aviation rescue and firefighting and air traffic controllers. They are actually excluded from the Accelerate Program. As we work through the questions from Senator Xenophon about the interactions with CASA, I will go through that and what we have done in that space.
Enough, the new bucket is starting to look a little shop-worn and battered, courtesy Halfwit, so lets play spot the Senators clues. Halfwit was so busy spinning and weaving, proving that he’d done all his homework in anticipation of the questions; he failed to see the chasm opening up behind him.
Senator STERLE: I will stay focused and get back onto the question I just want to ask you here first. What is the number of proposed changes to job classification level?
Mr Harfield: We can provide that on notice—all the specifics. We can provide all that.
Senator STERLE: That is easily got? That is no drama?
Mr Harfield: Absolutely.
All carefully prepared; the positive ‘absolutely’ giving the game away; that question was anticipated, homework done and the Senator ‘happy’. “Must be winning” thinks Halfwit , “he swallowed all that without a blink”.
Senator STERLE: If you could provide that, that would be good. Is there a target that you want to achieve?
Senator STERLE: Okay, that is good—and at what level.
Mr Harfield: Absolutely.
This ‘feel good’ – ‘can-do’ – Absolutely –no worries Senator caper goes on for a page or so. Halfwit now firmly convinced he has the Senator in his back pocket; purring and completely satisfied; mollified by the assurances given, impressed with the Halfwit masterful use of buzz and spin. How thick can you be: ASA has been up to it’s proverbial ass in alligators for about two years now. Every estimates session has been conducted in an atmosphere of suspicion, attempting to get the lid off this can of worms; yet Halfwit blithely continues his meaningless dialogue unable to see the shadow of a very large axe over his head. The shade of Heff swinging it.
CHAIR: I am really looking for the short answer, and then I will leave you alone. So, the assessment as to the risk profile of a need for these services at an airport has diminished per activities measured by you as passengers in and out. Forget about passengers in and out; to me that is a moot point. But the level of activity at an airport: you have decided that we can cope with more activity in terms of going from 350,000 passengers to 500,000, where we do not think we are going to see an increase in incidents.
Senator STERLE: That is great. We have got it from three of the four most senior people in the pyramid, that there is going to be no contracting out of Airservices work anywhere.
Mr Harfield: Correct. Contracting out in the sense of we are not privatising Airservices, but for me to contract out non-core services, some administrative service or whatever, it does not mean that we will not contract that out—which is normal. It gets undertaken today.
Senator STERLE: With the other 780 or 800 redundancies—you have your job family there—will there be any other contracting out in any of the other job family categories? We have had redundancies, and then will we find contractors coming in to replace them?
Mr Harfield: Not contracting. We may contract out a function—in the sense that there may be a service that we find is more appropriate and more efficient to contract out, and is not what we would call a core service—
Senator STERLE: I understand that.
Mr Harfield: An administrative service that we may be able to do it differently.
Senator STERLE: I do understand that. Mr Harfield, you and the board, and all your people are not dills—I do not say that trying to be smart, but I would hazard as a guess and have a stab there to say that we would be fooling ourselves to not think that work still needs to be done under these other job families, but not for full-time employees? Am I wrong?
About now, Sterle finishes his over and ambles off to boundary for a spell of fielding and passes the ball to NX. How will the increasingly nervous batsman handle the change of pace? See you back at page 95 to watch the rest of the Halfwit uninspiring innings. Too much blocking and letting the ball go through to the keeper, the run rate reflecting a defensive stance.
Toot toot.