Amusing and on the ball as always.

As usual this bloke is totally ignorant;

"My plan to reduce the 2.6 million Australian bureaucrats by 90% was simple, just find people with better skills!" Really Mr Ballentyne the bloke who picks up your garbage, or the fellas who fix your power failure in the middle of the night, they're all bureaucrats according to you. Clueless, reduce by 90%, well there goes 90% of the police force, people like Ballentyne are big or law and order, they're usually demanding a copper on every corner to protect them and their money.

As for the weather my order of preferred sources are as follows;

1 The Bureau of Meteorology, get next day forecasts correct 90% of the time.
2. Madame Zorbic, if you come in sopping wet without an umbrella, she can gaze into her crystal ball and tell you it raining.
3 Stuart Ballantyne, couldn't tell you when the Suns shining.

BTW when he says; "find people with better skills" he really means cheap labour from Asia, maybe the Australian weather could be outsourced to a call centre in India.

Wow the right really cant do comedy can they.

A lot of people notice that, mikk, and there are good reasons for it.

Good political satire punches upwards or sideways at power by exposing an absurdity that already exists. Weak political comedy punches down or invents absurdity and hopes the reader won't check.

Guess which one the right does...

When the joke depends on the premise being true, and the premise collapses under basic scrutiny, the humour collapses with it.

Comedy needs to exaggerate reality, not ignore it.

"Wow the right really cant do comedy can they."

Yes, just like Swift and Kafka. I'd rather read satires than see it made real as with renewables.

Dear Chatbot John:

Tut tut;

I appreciate the point about satire needing a solid footing in reality-Thats fair. If the premise doesn’t hold the humour falls flat.

The authors intention wasn’t to invent absurdity, but to exaggerate trends I’ve observed firsthand-particularly around communication, regulatory complexity and institutional growth. You may disagree with the conclusion, but they aren’t fabricated for the sake of a punchline.

As for punching down, the targets in the piece were government departments and regulatory systems-institutions with authority and public funding-not individuals and vulnerable groups, Thats very much punching up in the traditional satiricle sense.

Provide some factual claims you may think would stand up as counter arguments.
Satire works best when it provokes debate grounded in reality, not when it shuts it down along partisan lines as evinced in responses above!

Tangy Clam Meat Diver,

If you'd like factual counterpoints, that's easy enough. The BOM forecast accuracy is measured and published. Next-day forecasts routinely verify well above 80-90% depending on metric and region. Five-day forecasts today are roughly as accurate as three-day forecasts were a couple of decades ago.

That isn't astrology. It's measurable model improvement.

Your "2.6 million bureaucrats" figure includes teachers, nurses, police, defence personnel, emergency services and frontline health workers. It isn't a headcount of Canberra regulators. Cutting 90% would not trim paperwork. It would dismantle public service delivery.

Maritime regulation complexity can increase because of litigation standards, insurance requirements, international harmonisation and accumulated case law. More pages do not automatically equal pointless growth. The relevant question is whether safety outcomes worsened under the newer framework. If they didn't, the nostalgia argument weakens.

And yes, satire should exaggerate real trends. My point was mostly that exaggeration still needs a stable factual base. If the factual base holds, the satire lands. If it doesn't, it reads like grievance - like this article.

That's not shutting debate down, it's inviting it onto firmer ground.

Facts;

The public service in Australia comprises 2,600,000 of which 190,000 7.5% are Commonwealth PS of which about 40,000 1.5% work in Canberra. About 4,000 Canberra based PS could safely be described as bureaucrats or 0.15% That blokes a fool!

Some 20,000 more bureaucrat positions have been created since Covid 19. Not surprising it gets defended so vehemently !
Yes, these include Drs & other professionals & service personnel however, that is not the argument as the defenders well know. The argument is the number of non-productive vs productive i.e. revenue producing people. The former are now even with the latter & if someone can offer a reasonable explanation as to how this cost can be sustained I'd love to hear it !
Revenue producing is vastly different to revenue using.
Sadly, idealism doesn't take reality into account !

Between 2020 and 2025 the number of non-productive, never productive aged welfare recipients in Australia grew by 200,000 to 2,600,000 or about 10 times the growth of the public service. At the present rate of growth the number on aged welfare is expected to increase by another 1,000,000 over the next decade if unchecked! The aged welfare handout is unsustainable in it present form, more stringent means testing is required, including the value of the primary residence, cars, boats, chateau's in France, overseas holidays, zimmer frames, those annoying go carts in shopping centres, family pets, grandchildren etc etc. Cuts to cash payments will be necessary, as much as 99%, as some millionaire pensioners are receiving up to $100,000 p.a in benefits. A Seniors National Service for old folk, similar to "Work for the Dole" scheme is needed. A system of "food stamps" instead of cash payments would go a long way towards cutting costs! I've explained in the past how a 'Pensioner Tent City' a sort of work camp, established on the outskirts of cities and towns would free up housing space, for unemployed young folk, and newly arrive migrants. Indy have you signed up yet?

it is difficult to become a prophet in your own land according to the Book of Proverbs.
The Labor administrations & its bureaudroids such as Paul 1405 are living proof of that !