Hound,

What? Just something else you are too stupid to get?

Hound,

What? Just something else you are to stupid to understand?

ttbn, spot on but i think it is even easier than that. all we have to do is look backwards in our own history & reverse the mistakes.

Cobber the workers enemy, such clever wit.

Rhian, sounds good when you say it fast but ALL industries are less efficient today, therefore what they are doing must be wrong.

Rhosty, spot on, the way the ruling, left wing elites are stealing from the workers is disgusting.

Imacentristmoderate

You say “ALL industries are less efficient today.” But ABS data show both output and labour productivity are at all-time highs.

http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/meisubs.nsf/0/0BEF55D9E6EE23A1CA257EB30011F09B/$File/5206001_key_aggregates.xls

On what basis do you make this claim?

Rhian, do you believe ABS stats? do you believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden too?

An agenda to boost 'productivity' would tackle many of the no-go areas in policy reform. The legal system is one of these. Universities are a bigger one - what would a focus on productivity mean for universities, who remain one of the last public institutions quarantined from public accountability? The silo-structured community services systems are another - they cannot be productive in tackling family dysfunction, alcoholism, domestic violence, mental illness, and suicide. The aged pension and retirements system is another, though this one is being talked about. The defence forces are surely another, where no politician dares to raise issues of 'productivity'.

That said, I disagree with Syd on HR - that is a symptom of wider inaccountabilities and inefficiency, rather than a cause. And, most importantly, I disagree with the blanket opposition to private education and health. Here, Syd remains captive to an antiquated 'progressivism' which equates good education and health care with state monopolist systems. Politically and economically, this is a cul-de-sac. A better approach is to transfer education and health to not-for-profit mutual systems, away from state provision, along the lines of Medicare architech and revisionist Dick Scotton's 'managed competition' framework for health care reform which introduces both consumer-governance and competition into our oligarchic provider-centred state systems.