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The Forum > Article Comments > Fix the States, fix inflation > Comments

Fix the States, fix inflation : Comments

By Jason Falinski, published 27/5/2008

Infrastructure bottle necks, high property prices, lack of skilled workers, and wage growth, mostly in the public service, are all the purview of state governments.

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Jason,

You mention the phrase "rent-seekers" quite a lot in your article and especially how such activity reduces productivity. However any criticism of the most obvious form of rent-seeking, where the phrase comes, is absent.

Assuming you know something about economics, would you care to enlighten those less well versed what would happen if there was a massive increase in land tax which was dovetailed with an equally massive reduction on taxes on the provision of goods and services?
Posted by Lev, Tuesday, 27 May 2008 10:51:18 AM
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Yes the-answer is to fix the states [PERMANTLY]
The states are-that extra burden killing us all
we are over-governed [and under represented]

The states are little more than a cash cow for big buisness and collusion ,it would do us well to recall the half a billion that beaty gave a certain magnesium firm a few years ago , by grant [gift], plus how howard kicked in another half a billion , [that just insured investors [and share-holder] returns

All-the oppressions the states have laid upon us ,drug laws for the poor , child protection[read supply] for the child molestors, the divisivness and competition to favour big-buisness with special protections [like mount-isa lead-levels ,and cheap electricity for smelters, like giving free forrests to gunns, like privatising our waters , electricity , and many-other deviant practices serving the party supporters from big-buisness ,like the chair-sniffers they all really are.

The states can go as-far as they like [by controling policing like in victoria ,for egsample [or abolishing the upper house in qld ,or by selling the railways in nsw ,the deal-making must be obvious to blind freddy ,just look at how after retirment , beaty now openly serves big-buisness [while our water/electricty prices have doubled]

We have federal govt and local councils, what use [service] is state level providing [environmental protection that protects poluters , education that dosnt educate, and roads in a shambles , that is tendered into huge govt contracted out sources ,the hospital dental farce alone high lights that it isnt working.

But i hear the whine commonwealth powers come from the states [wrong] they come via referendums[the power of the people to form govt]

[besides we dont have constitutional-law [we are under maritime juristiction, ask a lawyer] ,

The states are that useless straw to far [recall your gst is paying for them[who paid for it pre gst?[the ritch who used to pay death duties ?but now just get tax cuts

[r.i.p states ,you have transgressed that one step too far [read act 70 of 2002-Qld] if you doudt what i say]
Posted by one under god, Tuesday, 27 May 2008 11:32:29 AM
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Kennett's legacy to Victorians has been no Victorian on the public payroll has a secure job, their employment can disappear a the stroke of a pen.
The local council is staffed by compulsory part timers and town planners lurch from 3 month contract to 3 month contract leading to no continuity of planning decisions and less than fearless and forthright planning decisions.
Local council services for the less well off in the community are provided by part time staff so that programs for the elderly are haphazard.
Teachers can spend up to 10 years on contract applying for their job and 50 others in the area every 6 months.
Patients in private hospitals as well as public hospitals are in the tender care of nurses who were hired at the start of the shift who don't know their way around today's workplace.
Because we still have employer based superannuation schemes older workers are not able to find meaningful permanent work.

In short Kennett's reforms were a disaster for working women and state public servants in Victoria throwing them out of secure employment and forcing those who were retrenched to continue in casual work or face a poverty stricken old age.

I think the rent seekers are those leeches in the financial services sector.
Posted by billie, Tuesday, 27 May 2008 11:50:06 AM
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Billie ,why should State Public servants be a priviledged elite?It is the tax payer in private enterprise who sustains them.

That said,you do make a good point about a private sector that wants to drive wages lower to feed the share market.The profits from the minerals boom is not being shared equitably.

It is the Globalised economy that is driving this and with energy now at a premium ,things will only get a lot tougher.
Posted by Arjay, Tuesday, 27 May 2008 5:37:26 PM
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As someone who lived through the Kennett Government, I saw nothing but damage in education, even though it was carried out under the great god Reform:
Running a campaign of denigration against the teaching profession,
Using retrospective legislation to get out of legally enforceable contracts with the teaching profession,
Dumping almost 9,000 needed teachers,
Worsening the primary PTR from 15.8:1 in 1992 to 17.2:1 in 1999,
Worsening the secondary PTR from 10.8:1 in 1992 to 12.6:1 in 1999,
Increasing class sizes,
Increasing teaching loads,
Abolishing the time allowance pool,
Reducing elective choice,
Officially introducing outcomes-based education – not bad in itself in my view but very bad in the few of some,
Bringing jargon – ‘beginning’, ‘consolidating’, ‘established’ – for reports,
Abolishing history and geography in favour of the mess of SOSE,
Reducing the number of marks required to get an A in VCE English tasks between 1994 and 1996,
Putting large numbers of teachers on short-term contracts,
Putting principals on contracts to facilitate their supporting the Liberal attack on their colleagues in the classroom,
Removing teacher input from principal selection,
Changing principal section panels so that it was no longer required that the majority of members be local or that the majority have educational qualifications,
Increasing the power of principals to bully and victimise their staffs,
Introducing limited tenure promotion positions and bonuses for sycophants as command and control devices,
Introducing performance plans, annual reviews and all the mad jargon of the business world,
Bogging schools down in charters, triennial reviews, data-fests and the like,
Discriminating against teachers and other department employees on School Councils,
Destroying the advantages of economies of scale inherent in a system by making schools spend thousands of person-hours creating their own versions of key selection criteria, etc.,
Producing a ministerial order purporting to ban teachers from speaking out about education.
The only real reform was making VCE marking criteria more specific – not much to show for seven years of effort!

The Labor Government has been slowly rebuilding the education system after the liberals ‘reformed’ it out of existence.
Posted by Chris C, Tuesday, 27 May 2008 6:06:11 PM
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The author says:
‘The states have been enjoying record revenues, which they could have used to build infrastructure, educate people, release land, build utilities, help improve the health of its citizens. Instead they have found it easier to cynically manipulate policy for the benefit of donors, while buying off interest groups, rent seekers and the favoured few Labor mates who have attached themselves to the party machine.’

Unsurprisingly, he gives no details. So I will supply a few of the ways in which the Victorian Labor Government has been using its time in office to improve education:
Improving the primary PTR from 17.2:1 in 1999 to 15.9:1 in 2006,
Improving the secondary PTR from 12.6:1 in 1999 to 11.9:1in 2006,
Improving the primary PTR from 18.1 in 1981 to 15.8 in 1992,
Improving the secondary PTR from 10.9 in 1981 to 10.8:1 in 1992,
Setting up the Victorian Institute of Teaching,
Restoring teacher representation to principal selection panels,
Providing VCAL as an alternative to VCE,
Dumping SOSE and restoring history and geography as traditional disciplines within the humanities,
Lifting the ban on teachers speaking out on education,
Instituting a high-standard reporting system across the state that provides parents with specific information on much their children have progressed each year,
Employing an additional 5,193 teachers between 1999 and 2006,
Staffing primary schools to allow a maximum class size of 21 pupils in prep to grade 2,
Investing $1.4 billion in capital spending on schools,
Committing to rebuild every school in the state, with a down-payment of $1.9 billion in the next four years,
Lifting the top teacher pay by $10,000.

Despite the last, which some may see as rewarding ‘Labor mates’, teacher salaries remain tens of thousands of dollars behind their levels of 33 years ago and the staffing of secondary schools is still worse than it was under Dick Hamer. This suggests that Labor does not reward its so-called ‘mates’ or ‘rent-seekers’ in the teacher unions, and I suspect that if anyone did a long-term study of public sector wages, the same would be apparent in other areas.
Posted by Chris C, Tuesday, 27 May 2008 6:07:03 PM
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