The private provision of public services and infrastructure was road tested by Kennet in Victoria. He then unsucessfully market tested the provision of his political services.

Local proselytes of flat earth clap trap like our own Institute of Public Affairs still struggle with concepts such as climate change. Meanwhile, the state government is struggling with the environmental management of some of the worlds dirtiest power plants and the question of demand management in a situation where it makes perfectly good sense for the now fragmented, privately owned generators to burn more coal in a competitive market that some would argue is selling power to cheap by ducking out on externalities.

If one can run trucks or build planes, why not run hospitals, prisons and public transport?

We have done P.P.P's in Victoria. Many ended in substanstial Contractual Deficit and selfish parties to the Contract (taxpayers) footed the bill. Most recently it was with rail. Fortunately, the Government honoured the Social Contract and tipped buckets of money in when a good corporate citizen’s branch office went broke running suburban trains. Flat earthers expressed the view that the private transport company should have been allowed to chaotically flounder stranding public transport users for an indeterminate period of time.

Customers of the branch office’s market don’t have the Global Corporations option of where they pay tax and continue to foolishly look to Government under the Social Contract. Unfortunately the bastards vote.

It’s not the client who has incrementally abrogated the Contract, but the provider. The provider on one hand has been conned to the belief that public sector debt is an evil thing but on the other, contends that private debt to fund infrastructure is not.

Smaller Government should be a good thing, but it’s a bummer when one's ports are clogged, one's roads impassable, and the rail, water and energy infrastructure paid for by one’s great grandparents is at the point of collapse and one cant get one's Mum a bed for her hip replacement. But hey, GDP is rising isn’t it?

It is not an unsuccessful test – it is in advance lousy politics:
“The private provision of public services and infrastructure was road tested by Kennet in Victoria. He then unsucessfully market tested the provision of his political services” (from Jim K)

“Public Affairs still struggle with concepts such as climate change”, “the state government is struggling with the environmental management” (Jim K) - those who are professional have traditionally been kept out of Australian job market, which is to great extent a show-ground for privileged to swipe their advertising agencies for science/health/engineering etc departments where particular professional knowledge and hands on expertise in a field rather than playing English while exercising simplistic craft skills if any at all, is the most.

I'm not so sure the problem is that 'the people' expect too much of their government. Unless you mean they expect the government to protect its' citizens. That *does* seem to be too much to ask.

Over the past few decades, economics has come to drive and shape our personallives in ways it never did previously. I'm still not sure what the price of the Yen or a 2c rise in Billiton shares is supposed to mean to my life, as I live it, today?

Governments have chosen to produce ever more prescriptive and proscriptive legislation, embarking upon a massive control frenzy. We, the people, surrender a portion of our wealth to the common good - supposedly administered by the state, the Commonwealth. The state is supposed to use that wealth *for us*, not merely to advance the interests of the people currently privileged witht he responsibility of being our guardians and trustees.

Trust has been eroded over the years, replaced by enforcement and litigation. Everytime a lawyer has to walk into court, we have lost. Even when we succeed in our suit, we have lost.

It is not that 'the people' have demanded that the state nanny them, but rather they have come to expect that the state will live up to the expectations raised on its' behalf by our representatives, who run it on our behalf. With the domination of money over actual people, corporations interests over human beings, has come a warping of our society and its' values. We have not surrendered to the state willingly, we have begun to wake up and realise that we allowed the people running the state to control the agenda.

[Globalisation is an amusing artifact of this process. Neither telecommunications nor computers change the fact that we have been trading and interacting globally for centuries. It's just faster and easier now.]