fair enough, I got a little off track there .. I work with Dept Defense, and the last few years the waste I am seeing is getting worse - the accountability less, same as the NBN and everything else I mentioned

so at the top you have military people who delegate the development of new capability requirements by the ADF to less experienced people .. because the best of our ADF are out drving ships, flying planes or leading men .. not driving desks in Canberra, then those requirements are passed to DMO where public servants who mostly have little idea about weapon systems and platforms go and procure based on trying to buy the cheapest items, reduced risk and stay within their measurement guidelines .. so why, if all that sounds like a perfect recipe for procurement does so much go wrong?

yes pete I know defence won't move to a major city, I also know that while you have such a small pool of available people, like Canberra, then you are stuck with a mediocre public service

nothing is going to change there

currently though, the ALP in government is making few defence decisions at all .. to save money, so it drags the process down even further

wakatk .. how does you reference to a draft dodging coward relate to Australia being in Timor, or Solomon Islands, or Sudan .. or even Afghanistan, I suspect you mean President GW Bush, who left office in 2008 .. so why are we still there .. if that's what it's all about .. get YOUR facts straight is what I might suggest

[Deleted for abuse.]

Here is another one, Gary.

The purchase of the F-18 fighters was a disgrace. As usual, Australia chose to purchase an aircraft that was still on the drawing board instead of one which had just come into service and was in the air.

The fighter we should have bought was the magnificent F-15 fighter, a long range aircraft with stunning performance. The airforce wanted a twin engined fighter with mach 2 performance and the only serious rival was the still unbuilt F-18. The Defence Department rejected the F-15 on the grounds of cost, they claimed its $25 million dollar price tag was too expensive.

Byt the time the F-18 was built, its price had ballooned to $35 million each, and its performance was so woeful (only mach 1.8) that the US Navy which ordered it, came close to cancelling the entire project.

Australia ended up with a short range fighter with a speed below specification which cost 30% more than than the F-15. What made the whole thing more galling, was that the F-15 can be built in a version which makes it an ideal bomber, with 95% parts commonality with the fighter version.

Anyone who remembers the Lockheed bribery scandals of the 1970's might be forgiven for thinking that somebody in the Defence Department has their fingers in the till.

It may be that Australia needs to be less ambitious in the kind of defence force we are and want to be.

It seems all the big mistakes in procurement especially occur when we try for a unique Australian solution, or in the case of our airforce, something so leading edge that we can barely afford it and if it has problems we squeal about it usually because it is well beyond our control.

Regardless of wakatak's personal attack on Amicus's opinion, Amicus makes a similar point to the author "you can't get rid of or do anything about poor performance in the Canberra Public Service. So while they can reward, they cannot punish."

So there is no real downside to risk taking on procurement in our Defence Department, a military person might be punished, but never a public servant, there is no mechanism for it is there?

Morale and behavior, what do you do about people who behave badly, when they see poor behavior covered up for sports stars and other high profile people who seem to be able to get away with all but murder?

Currently with recruitment levels very low, the navy is doing all it can to retain people and punishing people is believed to affect morale, so the command folks are caught between trying to enforce discipline and the marketeers who are trying to recruit.

No answers there from me .. both these problems require cultural changes and that's so large that it's difficult to know where to start.

Amicus I agree very much with your claims about increasing waste within the public service and less and less accoutability (despite official rhetoric to the contrary).

However in many departments particularly Defence many of the senior executive come from outside Canberra and some serving officers from all over. Even amon civilian personnel, many incumbents have transferred or come from the private sector to Canberra from those major cities.

There are huge problems with recruiting in many public departments much of it due to the absurdity of generic selection criteria and a non-transparent merit process, but that is Australia-wide.

The waste within DMO is largely due to poor practices, dodgy contract deals and lack of accountability and if it is like many other departments, it is because there have been cuts made to lower level staff who perform the most critical of duties, but are seen as expendable when the efficiency dividend comes around.

The success of any organisation comes from the ground up and the failures within government come from seeing the world from the top down.

In revision Moderator, one can only assume you obtained your definition of abuse from the mine host of Friar Wabbott's Sunday School.