Taking Government Private Partnerships (GPPs) to their optimal limit.

First privatise the Armed Forces. Indonesia, Pakistan, China or Halliburton would all put up fine bids I imagine. Anyway, Governments have no business running armies these days. They are best run by the private sector which is experienced in these matters and has the wherewithall to pay for expensive equipment and recruitment programs.
We can then abolish the Federal Government at a huge cost savings to the country. The Federal Government will have no value since it has sold all it's real assets (Ie OUR assets) and of course no power as it has no armed forces.That means we can streamline the Budget by eliminating Canberra and Federal bureaucracy.

Next, because state governments are so inefficient we can put out tenders for sale of them as well. This adds the missing piece of Howards faulty GPP policy. - competition. The Company owned states will be in competition with each other and that is a healthy thing for a privatised country.
However here's the tricky bit. We will require company elections every four years and if the state Companies are not worthy or not competeing effectively with the other states we the public can tender out for new companies to run our states.

That leaves local governments. Because private enterprise is so efficient we will no longer need local government. Every aspect of our lives from transport to policing to hospitals will be more competitive, more efficient and HOPEFULLY cheaper for we the consumers.

Now that leaves one last problem. What if the massive development ensuing from free market competition pushes our drought status over the tipping point and there is no longer enough food to eat or water to drink?

But that's no problem at all ... there's always Soylent GREEN.

(PSST - soylent GREEN is people!)

To be continued in 24Hr

It is clear from economic growth theory and extensive empirical evidence that policies which embrace openness, competition, change and innovation will promote growth. Policies which have the effect of restricting or slowing change by protecting or favouring particular industries or firms are likely over time to slow growth to the disadvantage of the community.

The Beattie government favours a change-denying, vested-interest approach. It does not acknowledge that investment and growth is driven by the private sector, and sees the community’s increasing embrace of private schooling and medical care as a threat rather than as clear evidence of people’s preferences and as an opportunity.

The scope for improvement is indicated by the fact that labour productivity in Queensland is only about two-thirds of US levels, as well as being much lower than in other states. Queensland can clearly do better with more growth-supportive policies, including a less negative attitude towards the wealth-creating private sector.

This includes dropping the discredited “picking winners” approach, under which bureaucrats with no relevant experience believe that they can identify commercially viable opportunities to which commercial businesses and investors are blind. It also means dropping the emphasis on “big projects”, such as the failed magnesium smelter, which tend to do more for foreign investors and equipment suppliers than they do for Queensland.

Disclosure – the poster contributed to Des Moore’s paper on the role of government in Queensland.

PS - Soylent Green - nice little sci-fi story - silly film.

professor expresses concern over IR laws
Professor Ron McCallum, dean of the Sydney University Law School, says he is deeply concerned over the new industrial conditions introduced as a result of the Federal Government’s WorkChoices legislation.

Last week there were reports of one employer using the legislation to remove its workers' rights to penalty payments, bonuses and public holidays in return for a pay increase of just two cents an hour.

Professor McCallum says more like that is around the corner, and he is worried too about the way in which WorkChoices has been introduced.

The Commonwealth Government has purported to grab control of industrial relations from the states using the power to make rules governing corporations given to it in the Australian constitution.

Professor McCallum has told Sunday Profile's Julia Baird there is something wrong about using a power over corporations in order to control the working conditions of human beings.

"I think it’s the most significant case on federal-state powers since the High Court disallowed the nationalisation of the banks in the Chifley government in 1949," he said.

continued.........
"The High Court and the Privy [Council] said the federal government didn’t have power to nationalise the banks, it’s of that level, because if the Federal Government wins in this case then it seems to me they can establish a whole lot of other laws governing all the things that corporations do and corporations do most of the things that happen in private sector economy."

Professor McCallum says if corporations law is used to settle and prevent labour disputes, then labour laws become a subset of corporations law, thereby making workers a commodity.

"I have put this view up by using examples which may seem frivolous but it’s to make a serious point," he said.

"Supposing we had a power in the constitution called the women’s power and it allowed parliament to make laws about women. Could we use that power to make laws allowing women and men to marry each other and divorce each other and the answer is, yes. But wouldn’t we say that these laws are a bit lopsided and that we gentlemen are but mere appendages? The point I’m trying to make is that if you put labour law as an appendage to corporations law, it’s corporation law that always wins."

Professor McCallum says he has worked all his life around the world and in Australia to find balance between the rights of employers to run businesses and the rights and obligations of employees, and has found the laws are unbalanced.

"I find it unjust for example that if the majority of workers at an enterprise want to be dealt with collectively, they can’t insist upon that right," he said.

"I find it unjust that if your employer which is incorporated and has a hundred or less people and you are terminated because arbitrary capricious or unfair behaviour, you have no remedy other than the common law.

"I live and breathe these laws. I have friends and acquaintances and family working, I’m a worker myself and it’s only really through our passion and commitment that we can really get things done."

God i hate Des Moore.

More on Government-Private Dictatorships (GPDs) and the doomed Snowy sale.

On a serious note, may I remind people that the ASIC/ASX which is now charged with ensuring fairplay from the new Snowy Hydro owners is a lame duck. It has presided over an explosion of westpoint style con-schemes and rip-offs across Australia in the last 15 years that has touched the lives of just about every Australian. In fact beacause such schemes stimulate spending (by the con artists) they are good for the economy. Thus it is not beyond possibility that the ASXs motives for going soft on corporate criminals is politically motivated and may not be incompetence.

There is no doubt in my mind that whoever buys the Snowy will be allowed to do whatever they please whenever they please and foreign ownwership regulations will be quickly overwhwelmed. If Howard was serious about foreign ownership caps he would have installed them from the get-go. He didn't. Adding them upon public pressuring like a senile King Lear is extraordinarily effete. There are ways to avoid foreign ownership rules by using shelf company structures. As for price gouging, Sydney Airports Corporation (SAC) airport prices and invents new ones, then justifies them by saying the changes reflect equivalent prices at other global airport facilities. Of course they don't tell you that they own or have substantial interest in the other airports. The eventual Snowy owners, like SAC, will have ample scope to play that same game, finagle humungous price hikes and present the usual to hide the pure greed involved. They will probably end up smuggling drugs through the Snowy as well?

John Howard and HIS Federal government will just stand by saying, "we can't do anything except buy them out and that's too expensive an option. We will have to raise your taxes to buy them out"

Well Mr Howard, why don't WE privatise your job as well since: "We too do believe that the private sector is better at running private businesses like FEDERAL GOVERNMENT than the government'' .