What? Labor Govenment stuffing up the budget? That cannot be right
They stuffed the NSW again and the Qld again? Nah that cannot happens.
The problem is, all Labor governments are big spenders, and leaves problems for future generation to clean up.
There is also the intrinsic problem that all Labor governments like large public services, this is because people on government jobs likes to vote Labor, because they have more job protection, even if they are doing nothing. They are also forced to be a member of the Public Sector Union, who then donates money back to the ALP.
So by employing large public services, Labor will have more support, and will have more “”taxpayer” money to spend on the next election. The problem is by spending all the money, they have no money left for transport, health, education etc. And we all suffer.
The next big spender – Kevin Rudd, who seem to spend more than thousands of drunken sailors. Lets spend $42 billion on rolling out a new internet ….. we will do it ourselves (privatise telstra, more public servants). What would telecommunication companies knows about telecommunication, Telstra? Optus? Vodafone? I Kevin Rudd knows how to run a telecommunication company!

Exactly! Unfortunately the "Smart State" bureaucracy even more inefficient and bungling than ever.

The response to Public Sector shortcomings is not to try to fix things but to add another layer. So you get administrators on top of administrators, lots of think tanks, meetings, conferences, net working opportunities, gloriously mismanaged schemes and untold waste. And they're all gonna vote Anna next election to maintain their cosy status quo ....

Welcome to Blighs World!

That the Institute of Public Affairs would argue against public spending is about as obvious as the daily rising of the sun. The tricks in the IPA’s reports are the deliberate choice of the period after the cuts (so-called “reforms”) of the 1990s, the failure to appreciate the rebuilding that state Labor governments had to do after the damage of their Liberal and National predecessors and the disregard of population growth, inflation and economic growth. The IPA did a similar hatchet job in the 1990s providing the subsequent Victorian Liberal government with its destructive agenda. It has done two reports this year on the same old theme. I have provided chapter and verse of the way the first report misleads at:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2009/11/02/newspoll-57-43-to-labor-in-victoria-2/#comments

The more recent report has the same faults, as will the next one, and the one after that. It is my hope that the experience of Victoria from 1992 to 1999 was sufficient to innoculate a whole generation against future infection by the ideo-illogical IPA.

I continually hear about this great boom that has occurred in both Queensland public sector numbers and their pay but as a Queensland public sector employee, I have not seen this myself so if the author would provide the official figures it would be nice. Admittedly, I work at the coalface, not in admin.

While teachers recently won a pay rise, these booming salaries he speaks of just don't appear to be a fact anywhere I have seen.

Certainly, public sector employees as a percentage of the total labour force have significantly declined over the last few decades, while higher levels of unemployment and underemployment have become entrenched.

A problem faced by Public Services is that there are too many layers but with little accountability. Jokingly I would often say that management seemed to all have Masters degrees in the "lack of decision making". They will tell you that there is a need for checks and balances. This I do not disagree with but as an example I will explain further.
Coming from the private sector into the public service as a consultant I asked a simple question. This was, "At what stage does a recommendation become a decision.
The answer I was given was “when the process was completed”.
I replied you missed the question. Again, I asked at what stage a recommendation becomes a decision. This executive manager thought for a moment and replied, "I don't know"
Here is one example of the problems. At that time, I was working in Industrial Relations and Industry Training, which required me to go out into the field to try to resolve a problem or a dispute.
Not employed at executive level my reports could only be recommendations.
I explained the reality was, I and other field officers, had made the decisions, as the department had no other information.
Hence, the system then required forwarding reports to a supervisor. In my case, knowing my work, he would sign; send it on to the next level (boxes) where it may be signed again, and so on, until there were no more boxes, when it became a decision.

continued.

Cutting out the many levels; employing the appropriate skills and experience, would reduce costs, and gain better use of its skilled and experienced base.
Officers faced frustration when promoted because of their knowledge and experience, provided no input to policy development and finished just higher paid clerks. I believe this is an insult to them and a loss to the government of the types of skills that were really needed.
Restructuring frequently meant getting rid of your skill base, employing juniors, to reduce wage costs, sometimes, on the basis of entitlement federal government subsidies for employing trainees, etc. yet failed to understand why there backlogs and bad decisions.
I entered Public Service as a Consultant; coming from the private sector with my own businesses in engineering building and construction, manufacturing and consultancy I encouraged respect for the worker, whether blue collar or white collar. Your company needs them. Without them, you have no company. In addition, companies that give no loyalty to its employees can hardly expect loyalty in return. It is a two-way concept and we need to keep that in perspective.
You still need your checks and balances but not just for the sake of having them. I believe I did well in my field earning the respect of both the worker and the employer. After being retired since 1994, I still meet people who tell me of the respect of the public for my work. That I believe is a compliment and proves my view. It would have been easy to just write out breaches and take court action, but I found that sitting down with the clients and discussing the problems in non-threatening manners got better results. During my time, I never had to resort to breaches but was able successfully to help people understand the issues and resolve them in a manner that each party could continue to work together in a friendly manner.
Professori_au