Mr. Emerson's time would be better spent looking for ideas his Government doesn't seem to have to cushion the blow of the current economic crisis.

The Rudd Government's floudering and handing out spending money in the hope that it will make them look good this Christmas, at least, shows the complete dearth of ideas at his command and that of his party colleagues.

While it is essential to create and encourage a socio-economic environment in which ideas can be generated and shared, equally important is an understanding of the processes of innovation. Innovation is the process of transforming an idea into something that works. The widely accepted statistics indicate that only about one percent of ideas survive the innovation process. If we want greater public benefit from ideas, do we develop policies to generate more ideas, or to improve the likelihood of ideas being successfully innovated? Australia is already renowned as an inventive country- undoubtedly because of our open, progressive culture. Innovation is much harder, as it requires a wide array of resources to be marshalled- including the "4 Ms"- money, management markets and manpower.

Despite the obvious need, there are very few courses in innovation at any level of education. There is not one coherent textbook on the subject at any level, although there are many colections of the anecdotes and musings of industrial "heroes".

The recent Cutler Report (Venturous Australia- www.innovation.gov.au/innovationreview/Documents/NIS-review-web.pdf)recommends the establishment of a National Innovation Studies Centre. This is a necessary first step in establishing not only a creative culture but also an innovative culture.

Without this, we will continue to see ideas failing to be innovated, to the detriment of our society and economy.

The investment in education will not of itself create wealth, nor will it be fully rewarded if government policies, e.g, on tax, regulation and industrial relations, do not encourage enterprise and the creation and retention of wealth. Many existing and proposed policy initiatives are inimical to best use of the expanding base of knowledge and ideas.

Sustained economic growth requires policies which embrace openness, competition, change and innovation. Policies which have the effect of restricting or slowing change by protecting or favouring particular industries or firms, such as the totally unwarranted massive assistance to the PMV makers, divert resources to nonviable activities and inhibit growth in the new and potentially viable enterprises which Emerson hopes will emerge from enhanced education.

In addition, a shortage of ideas has not been a problem in Australia; the capacity to develop marketable products and services is a bigger issue, which will persist in part because product development requires access to and close interaction with the major markets of the US, Europe and East Asia. Craig needs to take on retro ministers such as Carr, Rudd and Swan if he is to get value from his laudable push to raise human capital.

Unfortunately this article perpetuates the misconception that ideas alone are enough to grow an economy. Ideas are great but useless unless the energy to implement them exists. What we started to do with the Industrial Revolution was to use exogenous forms of energy in a big way. Ideas (inventions) facilitated this but without the energy to implement them nothing would have happened. First they cut down the trees, then they turned to coal, and finally mainly to oil providing over 200 years of increasing energy use resulting in economic growth. Now we are at the peak of oil production and coal will peak by 2025. Net energy is probably in decline right now meaning that economic growth in the future will be impossible. This is the "big rollover" that has been predicted for a number of years - The breaking of a 200+ year trend. Ideas may help us to cope with it but they will not be able to thwart the energy barrier to growth. And if you think that renewables will be able to step up to fill the gap then think again - read Ted Trainers analysis, “Renewable energy - cannot sustain an energy intensive society” ( http://ssis.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/REcant.html )

Jedimaster, in the absence of a "coherent textbook", I'd strongly recommend Chris Golis's "Enterprise and Venture Capital - A Business Builders' and Investors' Handbook". This is an excellent work by an experienced venture capitalist and entrepreneur, for current and budding entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, policymakers and anyone interested in how innovation and R&D gets translated into saleable product. I think the original was in the 1980s, currently there is a fourth edition (Allen & Unwin, April 2002), with a new A&U edition due next year. Read and enjoy; send a copy to Craig.

So Craig, where are the ideas in Rudd’s massive growth momentum?

Not many new ideas there at that I can see. Just a fulfilment of his chronic me-tooism, by following just the same old strategy as Howard.

O o oh, sorry. Of course…you were referring to schools and universities, not to our illustirous fedral guvment (:>/

Craig, I fundamentally disagree with your tenet that the nurturing of imagination and the provision of a good education are all-important.

They are significant factors, but I think you’ve overstated them. Of course they need to be fostered. But look at the history of education and innovation. Where have they got us? They’re a mixed blessing. They have no doubt contributed to our improvements in life.... up to about the 70s. But beyond that, I doubt that they’ve led to real improvements for the average person. They have led directly to humanity getting grossly out of balance with the environment and resource base and into a now very precarious situation.

Good ideas that would have led to the development of human societies with an ongoing high quality of life that are in balance with their surroundings have basically BEEN IGNORED OR SUPPRESSED.

You, as the former Director General of the Queensland Dept of Environment and Heritage would surely know all about the essence of sustainability. So can I ask you; where in Rudd’s education program or in his methods of upholding rapid growth does the genuine sustainability of our society come into the picture?

Can you assert that Rudd’s education program will actually lead to significant improvements in the quality of education and the nurturing of imagination? Or will it predominantly lead to the provision of barely improved services for ever more people? With a considerably increased birthrate and an absurdly high immigration rate, MASSIVE expenditure will be needed just to break even.

Education and imagination are not the keys. The embracement of a new paradigm is the key. If we can get it through our thick heads that continuous expansionism is bullsh!t and sustainability is paramount, then everything will just flow from that. If we continue to embrace very rapid expansionism, no degree of improvement in education will help us.

My ideas are simpler.
Dump tech...the destroyer of a world.
Plant out the trees again and build simple clean villages and learn to appreciate and love Gods Creation all over again.

While new and creative ideas are good and necessary, they are insufficient to make a difference. The lion's share of the work is done at the interface between the idea and its working application.

As others here have said, innovation is a process. It starts with an idea, some sort of implementation or trial, refining, re-implementation and backtracking, which is all maintained by the human qualities of creativity, effort and perserverance. While Emerson's philosophical approach is right, it's a long way away from delivery of the full package.

While I'm in the mood, here's a couple of quotes from Louis Pasteur that were in reference to medical experimentation, but which could equally well be referred to innovation.

"No, a thousand times no, there is no such thing as a category of science called ‘applied science’. There is science, and there are the applications of science, and they are tied together as closely as the fruit and the tree that bears it."

"The great thing is to design experiments that are absolutely decisive, leaving nothing to the experimenter’s imagination. At the beginning of your research into any topic, imagination should give your thoughts wings. But at the conclusion, when you interpret the facts that your experiments have brought together, your imagination should be totally subordinated to your experimental findings."

Faustino
Thanks for your considered opinion. Golis' book is a good guide to financing ventures, particularly past-startup. I said 4 Ms before- there are actually 10 Ms (that I use in my innovation lectures)- won't go into detail here. Venture capital is a challenge,and needs to be kept in mind from the beginning. But to me the critical issue is getting ideas innovated that are worthy of VC. There has long been a disconnect between out ideas factories (CSIRO, Unis, Govt reserach agencies etc) and the marketplace. That is not to say that these institutions should be commercialised, but the need to be "outcome oriented" so that ideas are selected and directed towards application.

But we shouldn't just beat up on the unis- our major companies have been asleep at the wheel with regards to innovation, and have expected others to do the brainwork for them. Hopefully the revamped Cooperative Research Centres program will help.

But my main point is that we need an innovative culture, not just an inventive culture. That means many people- not just techies and accountants- exposed to the notion of "the process of transforming ideas into something useful".

Craig,

The problems you have identified stem from an education system that ostraises children rather than reward them for their creativity thereby crushing the very thing you espouse in your article.

The tendancy of most teachers is to create a classroom of sheep allowing ease of control and minimising the effort they would otherwise have to expend in the creative teaching of subjects.

Besides, those teachers are themelves the product of the system they implement. So the cycle is perpetuated ad infinitum.

In examining ideas for future prosperity&sustainability 2 key constraints must be weighed:

*You can't keep immigrating people into a people-caused climate-catastrophe & a people-gridlocked economic-recession.

*PEAKOIL is real. Current low prices are a chimera of desperate design by wealthy nations and must not be relied on in future planning.

Ideas are useless unless they come within the framework of a THERMODYNAMIC plan & a sustainable quality-population-policy.

If we can get the THERMODYNAMICS RIGHT, we have a chance to survive the next-20 PEAKOIL onset-years in tact.

The plan? KAEP…Kyoto(Kanberra for nationalistas) Alternative-Energy-Protocol…will ideate the THERMODYNAMIC solutions to challenges we face over the next 20 years.

KAEP:

1. A massive change of our energy source from OIL and Coal to 5Km deep Hot Rock Geothermal power. Also intense R&D of laser drilling& seismic telluric location technologies to facilitate this. Within 20 years we must be able to build 600MW Geothermal plants in 1 year and for 1/10th the cost of nuclear plants.

2. Construct 10’s of thousands of 1-2 acre ENGINEERED WETLANDS and restrict our populations to 21 million. This is necessary to protect ocean currents from heat capacity altering wastewater pollution. This will stop dangerous climate perturbations. The climate change bogey must be put to rest to free scientists & budgets to work on THERMODYNAMIC related objectives.

3. GPAL (Gun lift, 1-ton Packet switched, scramjet ASSIST, INCREMENTAL launch) space NETWORK program that seeks to sem-robotically create stable storage-platforms between Earth and the Mercury-Solar Lagrange point and transfer data, personnel and materiel between them much the same way as data packets are transferred around terrestrial data networks. Relying on foreign space-elevator concepts is premature. GPAL is right under our Aussie scramjet & PNG MtWilhelm launch pad noses.

4. NANOTECHNOLOGY. It is essential that nano-materials be MASS PRODUCED for a wide range of uses related to GPAL, and for some serious R&D of Rydberg states of matter vis-a-vis COLD FUSION.

FUNDING?
By a .5%GDP permanent hi-tech job-creational budget. It must have OPEN-NET-ACCESS for all Australians to participate. Even if that means exposing some GPAL secrets.

KAEP, being low-ENTROPY&HIGH-ORDER will super-generate new ideas.

The easiest way government can help the development of new ideas is not by doing more but by doing less.

By that I mean

Less bureaucratic bulldust in the form of

Simpler and easier to understand Planning regulations
Simpler and less precious EPA regulations and approvals
Simpler and more flexible OHS interpretations
Simpler tax laws
Maintenance of the previous (Liberal) governments employee relations legislation

No support for inefficient existing old businesses who find the foundation of their investment secured by maintaining the status quo.

No grants for small business which require the government to pre-ordain “winners”, the people who play those games are losers who would not recognize a winning idea even if it bit them.

From all of the above we would see a huge reduction in the costs of employment of professional parasites and flunkies of the bureaucracy, who add nothing to the economy.

This saving would translate into a massive tax saving producing a justifiable reduction in tax rates, leaving more in the pocket of the innovative.

In short, butt out and let the innovators innovate “unhindered” by the do-gooding, opinionated ineffectual whilst simultaneously improving the return for those who actually take the risks

What a disappointing article full of platitudes and regurgitated common sense. You don't have to sell us on the why or the importance of this stuff, what we want is real change...change that fires our own imagination about a future of infinite possibilities to overcome the very real threats we are faced with...peak oil, climate-changed induced drought, ageing population, and turn to new opportunities for invention and innovation.

Tell us the how, the where, the when, and if you don't have the answers, then borrow from the inspired leadership of Barack Obama and source them through a collaborative government, open innovation models and please, with a sense of urgency and an impatience with plodding along in the belief that she'll be right, mate!

Obviously if we don't count the cost of something, anything will seem beneficial.

The fallacy underlying Craig's article is that the government just gets the money from nowhere. But of course it takes the money from people, from society. The assumption is that the use government makes of the money would be more productive than the use society makes of it.

But what evidence or reason is there to support this assumption?

We as a society all benefit from people not freezing to death, but does that mean the government should take over the doona and long-john factories? We as a society benefit from people not starving to death, but does that mean a big government Department of Food should replace supermarkets, cafes and shops?

Better ideas, new ways, rising standards, efficiency and economy come from people being free to choose between competing alternatives, not from unaccountable bureaucracies, and rules and regulations. People who advocate government control of education are actually advocating a worse outcome for our children.

The very idea of a ‘revolution’ led by bureaucracies is laughable. Innovators are precisely the people who don't fit in to bureaucracy. Someone asked why they don't teach innovation in (government-funded) universities. Well if you're such a good innovator, what are you doing selling your labour in a job? Bureaucracies attract time-servers and parasites: the entrepreneurial excellence that government parasitises takes place by people who risk *their own* substance, not people who simply take it from others and spend it without being personally accountable. How facile can you get?

Those calling for more government control of education are groups who gain from government at everyone else’s expense, such as education academics, policy bureaucrats, teachers’ unions and politicians. The more centralised and bureaucratised the decision-making, the worse the outcomes will fit every students’ needs and potential, and the more they will favour vested interests. Some revolution.

Before believing anyone who says we can nurture our children's imagination by extending the control of bureaucracies over every aspect of their lives - check for conflict of interest first!

Col, your post hit the nail on the head!

In a past life, I pioneered an innovative export company, which
won various awards etc, generated millions upon millions in exports,
all based on some good ideas and appying basic science, then
focussing on consumers.

Alot of the time, Govt was more a hindrance then anything else.

On the one hand, there was a whole army of bureaucrats, claiming
to want to help, most of them basically useless, even though
some had good intentions. Some companies with whom we competed,
became experts at sucking them dry for money, grants etc. Hardly
a level playing field.

Then there was another whole level of bureaucrats,both
State and Federal, who wanted to throw their weight around when
it came to compliance, some real little Hitlers, where their power
had gone to their little heads.

I solved alot of those cases by appealing to their bosses, who were
usually far more reasonable and a bit more intelligent too.

In the end it was simply the volume of these people that one had to
deal with, that made me wonder what on earth I was doing, bothering
to be innovative, exporting and employing people.

So I sold the business and have never looked back.

There are heaps of opportunities to be innovative in Australia,
but given the many barriers erected by the many Govt Depts, why
should anyone bother?

We have heard this Ruddspeak from even prior to the election.

Talking about "ideas", getting people to together to give them "ideas" and even suggesting they may have some "ideas" but not actually seeing any ideas arise, just a restating of the problems over and over.

Behind articles such as this I hear the faint cry of Help! we really have no idea.

Yabby “Col, your post hit the nail on the head!”

Thanks Yabby…
I, like you, have seen a lot of it over our careers.

Government is no answer to mediocrity, unless you are looking for a job, in which case it becomes the employer of mediocrity and as you observe, small minded little Hitlers…

I recall a case in the Melbourne magistrates court (only because I required as a witness but not called) where someone made a clerical error and avoided about $3000 in customs duty on a total import of capital equipment to manufacture mobile phones in Australia worth around $7 million… the customs folk made a song and dance and dragged to chairman of the company into court to answer for his “crimes” he simply told the magistrate ‘clerical error’ the magistrate kicked the customs peoples arse for even bothering him.

Telstra managed to get in on the act (the maintainer of their own monopoly), now no mobile phones are made in Aus and that same equipment was shipped to Hong Kong and into a Chinese factory.

Atman “Talking about "ideas", getting people to together to give them "ideas" and even suggesting they may have some "ideas" but not actually seeing any ideas arise, just a restating of the problems over and over.”

It is perception, spin over substance.

The appearance of making a difference whilst doing nothing.

It is the stock in trade of politicians in general and socialist politicians in particular.

“Behind articles such as this I hear the faint cry of Help! we really have no idea.::

And I hear the knock of deathwatch beetles

"Based on a series of empirical studies, former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has concluded that almost all of the increase in America's prosperity during the past half-century is attributable to new ideas."

Unfortunately, many of those ideas have produced massive waste, pollution, global warming, social inequality and will probably, one day lead to planetary exhaustion. Ideas should be connected to how the natural world works. Self-importance does not recognise that one's very being is dependent upon so many other natural forces. We deny these 'other' natural forces at our peril.

If this is Emerson's view he should seek to dissolve parliament or at least remove 95% of all MPs with immediate effect, including himself.

Col and Yabby, I’ve got to disagree with the basic tenet of your posts. I don’t think you should be knocking government regulation as hard as you are. Sure there are problems, but IMO the problems are more closely linked to a lack of resources and uniformity in administering the various regulations than they are to the regs or the bureaucrats themselves.

There is no doubt about it; we need a strong regulatory regime. (this is where Col and I fundamentally disagree…and have head-butted each other over hundreds of times on this forum).

What we need to make sure that all regulations are well understood and uniformly applied is the resources to do the job! As with the police, many if not the vast majority of regulatory regimes throughout government are badly under-resourced.

People need to know where they stand, with confidence. We need to know that if we flout the regulations we will stand a very high chance of being busted. As it currently stands, with many regulations, we think that if we obey them we might be just about the only person who does so, thus putting ourselves at a great disadvantage amongst our colleagues or competitors….and that if we quietly disobey them, no one will notice.

I think it would be a bad idea indeed to free it all up and give the business sector much more open slather. That would just mean that the aggressive and unscrupulous players gain a big advantage, much to our overall detriment.

So this is my big idea for the morning; good regulation and plenty of it….all of which is crystal clear and administered equally for everyone.

But then, as a ‘professional parasite and flunkie of the bureaucracy’, what would I know? ( : > /

Ludwig “lack of resources and uniformity in administering the various regulations than they are to the regs or the bureaucrats themselves.”

One of the responsibilities of management, in private industry is to manage the task. What you are suggesting is the bureaucrats cannot manage their task, in which case they should resign and make room for someone with the ability to manage.
“lack of resources and uniformity in administering “ is the managerial responsibility of the bureaucrats you are defending. If not them then who?

Maybe the best solution is for government to outsource the task back to private industry…

Maybe a better solution is save all the money by making industry self-regulating, with whopping fines when they are caught out.

I disagree with you on this one Ludwig, the regulations and resources define the objective for the bureaucrats and they can either perform or (here is the heresy)

surrender their tenure

and that would be a first !

PS Ludwig, you and I have “head butted” well in the past and I trust we will into the future too… I can happily engage in pursuing our “differences”, as much as I enjoy our many agreements

But I always appreciate that whilst we differ, the difference has always to content and never to character.

Happy Xmas Ludwig.

*but IMO the problems are more closely linked to a lack of resources and uniformity in administering the various regulations than they are to the regs or the bureaucrats themselves.*

Ludwig, you probably see this whole thing from your perspective
and your Dept, but let me tell you from lots of experience,
that is certainly not the case in other parts of Australia and
other Depts.

Firstly the rules are often not written by the most practical
of people. Secondly when it comes to interpretation and
implementation of those rules, its really all about the attitude
and intelligence of some of these people. For some Depts, it
seems to me that as long as they can walk and breathe, thats all
they need to get a job.

Nope, its not about a shortage of money, for usually they charge
us heaps for the joy of dealing with them.

Every one of them seems to think that our whole working life
should revolve around and focus on his/her particular set of
rules and with so many of them seeking compliance, in the end
it becomes overwhelming.

I did tell one particular Hitler type at worksafe, that I was
selling my business and intended to employ nobody in future,
best they all joined his department and police each other :)

*I think it would be a bad idea indeed to free it all up and give the business sector much more open slather.*

What you need is better regulation, not more regulation. What you
need is for some common sense to apply, when it comes to interpretation and compliance. What you need is for Govt to
facilitate, not just be a frigging hinderance.

What you need is good judgement, but sadly that is commonly missing
and its not due to a shortage of money, but a shortage of intelligence.

Oow, I think I got out of the wrong side of the bed this Mundy mornin! Been and gone and done it now – got offside with me two good mates, Col and Yabs. (:>(

Ergh. I think I’ll go bury m’ head under a pile of pillows!

Aah noo I won’t. I’ll…I’ll, I’ll head-butt em… until they see the error of their ways and acknowledge Ludwig’s overwhelming worldly wisdom….or until m’ head cracks open! Oh yeah, I do love a good bit of head-buttery on OLO!

.
Col, you wrote; “What you are suggesting is the bureaucrats cannot manage their task”

In many instances they can’t manage them as well as they should be managed. But the primary reason, in my experience, is the lack of resources put into the tasks in the first place….by our illustrious governments.

This is the bit that peeves me the most – we’ve had boom times for ages, with enormous wealth flowing into government coffers, and yet so many of the basic regulatory services are piss-poor and getting worse as human population pressure increases.

Crikey, if a police officer or a bureaucrat can’t see his or her efforts contributing to a better outcome for the community (and environment), then what do you think is going to happen to their motivation, work ethic and efficiency?

If the resources are there, then the management regime and the efficiency of all those involved is likely to be much better.

Privatising regulatory duties and putting them in the hands of those driven by the profit motive is not the answer. Neither is self-regulation.

The answer is getting government to undertake their duties properly by matching resources with tasks delegated to their public servants.

I appreciate the opportunity to amicably disagree and debate with you Col. This is the essence of OLO.

Happy new year (I’ll just let that silly Xmas stuff slide by unnoticed if I can).

Good on you Craig Emerson. You are one of the bright lights of the New Labor Party, and you should consider this New Idea. The function of ideas, is to harness the collective brains of a society, and not oppress the creative members of it. If I may be so bold as to say that a lot of past Labor Governments, and some State Governments, have been closet Liberal Party Governments, introducing the Liberal Party agenda, of creeping fascism, to the silent claps of the Liberals, would you be offended. You have shown by a series of articles, that you are not a shackled ideologue.

How is this for an Idea?. Since the Liberal Party, has been the driving force for government by lawyers for lawyers, why don’t you start to restore balance to the economy, and stop the Lawyers Party, which is still in government, despite an overwhelming vote of no confidence last election, by having your leader publicly repudiate the Australia Act 1986. You and Kevin Rudd are both too intelligent to accept it can be legitimate, even though it was passed with Labor Party Support. It cannot both continue the Commonwealth and abolish it in the one Act. It cannot repudiate our Christian Heritage, and continue it. It cannot authorize a break up of the Federation, without a referendum, and the idea that it can should be rejected.

In 1984, the Labor Government referred a question to the Australian People. Question two was seeking approval for an Act to allow the Commonwealth and States, to voluntarily refer powers to each other. It was refused, but the Australia Act 1986, did it anyway. The politics of consensus, all the rage in 1984, was not enough. The idea that Australia is a United States, has held back progress.

Without a fully functional Federation, with a totally independent judiciary, drawn not from the Lawyers Party, but from the electorate, the Federation has collapsed. The ideas of New Labor, that the States are superfluous, in an age of fast transport, are commendable. Keep up the good work

Yabby, you wrote; “What you need is better regulation, not more regulation.”

We certainly need better regulation! And part of that is to make sure that it applies equally to all those that it is supposed to apply to, so that the small player isn’t penalised more-so than the big player because their cases are easier to deal with and the big boys might just get their legal people onto you and cause a great ruckus and drain on public servants’ time and energies that could be spent elsewhere, so that everyone knows what the law entails and can be confident that breaking the law will very likely result in significant penalty, etc.

In some instances better regulation may well mean more regulation, especially with ever-more pressures being exerted by rapid population growth.

As far as the intelligence of regulators goes, yes I agree, it sometimes seems that the people involved are not the best people for the job. But do you think it would be any better if the whole kaboodle was privatised?

I see good and bad, competent and incompetent people in all walks of life. I’ve certainly encountered plenty of dodgy sods in private enterprise as well as the public service.

“What you need is for some common sense to apply”

Of course! And one of the most basic components of commonsense is to have a resource regime that matches the tasks, instead of one that falls a million miles short and necessitates all sorts of short-cuts, blind-eying of certain activities and differential treatment…and ends up giving the public the impression that the middle managers and officers on the ground are hopeless, rather than their political masters.

“What you need is good judgement, but sadly that is commonly missing
and it’s not due to a shortage of money, but a shortage of intelligence.”

Where would you find a much better standard of commonsense or intelligence?

Ludwig” The answer is getting government to undertake their duties properly by matching resources with tasks delegated to their public servants.”

Many years ago I got involved in training a group of project managers in the finer points of project budget management in the IT industry.

One question they asked me was

‘What happens when we are given a woefully inadequate monetary budget by the line managers of the projects they were expected to manage/implement ‘ ( similar to the manner you are basically suggesting)….

My reply was simple,

You decline the role because – if you accept an inadequately resourced role, you are setting yourself up to fail.

I offer the same advise to every well intentioned person, regardless of their level in an organization or the nature of the organization they work in.

Failing in a role because the budgeted resources are the product of someone else’s incompetence or ignorance shows a shorted sightedness of epic proportions.

Personally, I always place myself where I can always afford to decline such a poisoned chalice.

It comes down to basic honesty, not only of those with the budget but those setting the budget. I did a lot of work in recent years with a couple of government departments, they were, in budget terms, more deceitful than private industry.

I presently contract to a privately owned group of companies. A couple of the owners work in the business. They have a far more “personally critical” interest in the budget process and obviously expect absolute transparency in its preparation, far more than bureaucrats employed to manage the 'politics' of doing something more than what it achieves.

Re “ (I’ll just let that silly Xmas stuff slide by unnoticed if I can).”

Watch out or we will rename you Uriah… but best wishes for the New Year too :- )

*Of course! And one of the most basic components of commonsense is to have a resource regime that matches the tasks*

Ludwig, all the many incidents I am thinking of, had little to do
with resources, more to do with the attitude of some public
servants, given their monopoly like situation of enforcing their
interpretation of the rules.

Its usually not those higher up the food chain, but here in WA
we are a mere branch office. Some of those people need a basic
course of how to deal with the public. When they try the big
stick approach, because of their monopoly situation, is when I see
red. Common sense and basic reasoning skills matter!

In private enterprise, there is usually the choice of going to the
opposition, not so with many Govt Deparments.

In other words, the problem is attitude. Attitude by those
usually lower down the food chain, throwing their weight around.
I became extremely good at dealing with these idiots, for every time
I bypassed them and went to their bosses, reason in the end
prevailed. It just took some huge effort at times.

One of them once tried to threaten me, that she had the power to
close my business down. I responded by threatening to expose her
on every tv channel news and front page of the newspaper. It worked
like a charm :) Public servants are nervous about anything
which rocks their career path, it pays to remember that.

The thing is, nearly all these things were about basically
trivial issues, where these people thought that they could throw
their weight around.

In the end, one can become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of them,
that is why I doubt I would ever bother to open a business employing
lots of people, ever again. I also know of a number of major
business ventures, where investors have simply decided that its not
worth the bother and have gone elsewhere. Next we'll be back to
job creation schemes.

The public service should facilitate private enterprise, not act
as a major hinderance

“You decline the role because – if you accept an inadequately resourced role, you are setting yourself up to fail.”

Col, if everyone was to decline the role, where would that leave us? It would leave us with no regulation and therefore open slather in regard to whatever particular area we might be talking about.

That would be failure...big time. Doing a job with inadequate resources doesn't mean it will be a failure, just not as good as it should be.

What would happen if the wisest people declined? The quality of the regulatory service would be even worse than it would be with a woeful budget but good people to maximise efficiency.

A half-hearted regulatory effort, even if it is unfairly administered, is still a whole lot better than having no regulation.

In fact, that is a very good point to consider, for all those who rightly or wrongly feel that the standard of government regulation is poor; what would happen if it was entirely absent? Would it be better or worse?

I think in most instances, most people could see that it would be worse, when viewed from a holistic long-term perspective.

Hey Ludwig…

What you are suggesting is “compromise and mediocrity” can produce an acceptable solution or stand-in for acceptable performance.

On this I will strongly disagree with you.

The point is poorly prepared, staffed and executed regulation provides no safe guards but costs the community heaps of time and frustration as individuals try to comply.

If it cannot be achieved properly, it is better it not be attempted…

I would observe, no one is remembered for climbing half way up Everest, same no one deserves being remembered for a half hearted part-implementation of any regulatory process.

“I think in most instances, most people could see that it would be worse, when viewed from a holistic long-term perspective.”

I think most people would consider it a waste of their expropriated taxes, as viewed in both the personal, immediate view as well as in an holistic long term perspective.

Remember, government and the civil servants are there to serve the needs of the tax-paying electorate, not to direct them.

Col, Diocletain, Yabby, well said. Ludwig, I've worked as an economic policy adviser to the UK, Australian and (aaargghhhh!) Queensland governments, and found that all the incentives are for excessive regulation and bureaucracy with little thought for public interest or costs and benefits. Governments and bureaucracies are fundamentally anti-innovation and entrepreneurship, they should be much smaller and less intrusive than they are.

Some years ago I read a wide range of research which found that economic growth was greatest when government's share of the economy was about 22%, rather than the 40-odd we have. I know you think (and I agree) that economic growth is not the main aim, but whatever the aim, a system which depends more on individual responsibility and intititaive will always out-perform a bureaucracy-dominated big-goverment one.

Ludwig, my brother works for the public service, in a different
State and different field then you do. He is in the health sector.

According to him, its a very different situation, to the one that
you paint in your department, in your State.

He is one of these relatively uncommon people who hate waste and
take taxpayer funds seriously. He tells me that petty pilfering
is common and that the Dept will spend whatever they are given,
one way or another. Seldom is any surplus returned to consolidated
revenue.

One year his computer system was replaced, despite his protests that
his system was just fine. There was a surplus to be gotten rid
of before the end of the financial year, they would spend it one
way or another.

Now the Dept might limit spending on beds, nurses etc, so that the
headlines read about how bad things are. But there never seems to
be a shortage of money for administration. Those with their snouts
closest to the taxpayer trough, are doing very well, thank you.

Few public servants would understand what it means to compromise,
cut costs and compete. They should go farming, to learn about
the real world :)

ARRRRRGH!

The ghost of T-Rex speaks:

Geothermal gradients from localised igneous surface features, to our cool leafy nests, sustained our evolution for 300 million years. The dead bodies of my compatriots, GEOTHERMALLY cooked to hi-octane perfection, have sustained your evolution for just 100 years and what’s left is too darn difficult to recover.

Don’t you get it? We didn’t need to evolve brainpower, IDEAS and manual dexterity & ENGINEERING. We had all the Entropy gradients for a dino-heaven. So we couldn’t drill for that GEOTHERMAL heat when it SUBSIDED. The gradients went & we became extinct.

And so too will you if you don’t drill for optimal GEOTHERMAL heat gradients … suckers.

Oh there were some times after: The African rift valley

(http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24778801-12377,00.html-The geothermal potential from the African Rift Valley is "at least 7000 megawatts")

whose radiant heat spawned your kind and the subduction volcanoes around continental rims that gave saber tooth and mammoth like megafauna the edge. There was even Stromboli, Etna and Vesuvius which breathed life and backbone into my kindred Roman spirits. But now there’s nada … nuthin’. So, its GEOTHERMALLY up to you. Drill DEEPER my pretties.

You have the technology but do you have the PRESCIENCE? Don’t waste your time just drilling for my unholy remains or expecting to run an economy on sunbathing silicon, or I’ll be seein’ y'all on the flip side.

Lower your ENTROPY Geothermally & ideas will come. Sit around public-service V Free-enterprise brainstorming and you will wind up in a deep pit thinking of ideas to pull yourself out by your thong laces.

ARRRRRGH!

Posted by the ghost of Mr T-Rex

The two-posts-in-24-hours limit is a bit crippling here. So I’ve started a new general thread to continue this discussion. We’ve effectively hijacked Graig Emerson’s thread anyway…you are naught people, Col, Yabby and Luddles!

See ‘How good is our regulatory regime?’….if it ever gets approved. I submitted it some hours ago and it’s still not up. So I’ll post here…..

….
Yabby, I can remember good times in our department when funding and staff levels were much better. We had ‘excess’ funding to ‘dispose’ of sometimes at the end of the financial year. On a couple of occasions I secured helicopter trips out of that money, which were very useful for vegetation mapping and national park management purposes in areas that were difficult to access on the ground. In my opinion, that was money well spent.

Back then, our regulatory and managerial roles seemed to be up to scratch…and staff morale was good.

I think it's a good policy for managers to plan on having a moderate funding surplus close to the end of the financial year, rather than committing the lot and having nothing in reserve to cover unforeseen circumstances, or worse – running seriously overbudget. Then if there are no unforeseen expenses, there is no shortage of ways in which the money can be put to good use.

Of course, managers can’t plan to have a surplus if basic day to day operations demand the expenditure of all allocated funding.

Your view that there is “petty pilfering” or inappropriate expenditure just isn’t the case in my experience. All expenses have to be justified and accounted for. If there is one thing that is well-managed, it is this core financial aspect of operations.

This financial year we are heading into the red, just with wages. As people resign, they are not replaced. Morale is very low. Operational expenses have to be minimised. Our overall role is seriously compromised.

Anyway, if I may revisit the question that I asked last time;

Where outside of the public service would you find a much better standard of commonsense or intelligence, or managerial capability?

Faustino “Some years ago I read a wide range of research which found that economic growth was greatest when government's share of the economy was about 22%, rather than the 40-odd we have. I know you think (and I agree) that economic growth is not the main aim, but whatever the aim, a system which depends more on individual responsibility and intititaive will always out-perform a bureaucracy-dominated big-goverment one.”

similar to your post, my personal desire is for government’s intervening management of their share of the economy (I guess Tax as % of GDP or some similar global measure) to return to the lower end of the spectrum rather than increase with “churn” payments (a term which came from Usual Suspect originally) with people of reasonable income receiving benefits for children etc.

Or worse still, artificial taxes designed to inflict a particular social order upon us:
carbon taxes,
FBT and
the recent Alco-pop decree
as examples.

Better those people not be taxed in the first place, rather than be taxed and then qualify for government handouts.

To the main aim

Margaret Thatcher had a view on that, recognizing that

economics are (merely) the method; the object is to change the soul

and with inspirational remarks like

Let our children grow tall, and some taller than others if they have it in them to do so.

Better we are all free to enjoy the diversity of our genes producing unequal growth and aspiration,

than we suffer that equality decreed by a political system where we are only allowed to grow and aspire to some arbitary, confining limit determined by some remote and soulless bureaucracy.

KAEP's post, the 33rd in this comments thread, contains a faulty link. It gives you a 404 message, 'page not found', as it stands. It seems KAEP has inadvertently failed to type a space between the true last character of the URL he intended and an immediately following word in his own text. As a consequence the hyphen he typed incorporated the word 'The' as part of the link.

The correct URL is this: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24778801-12377,00.html

This link works. The short article from The Australian is worth a read. It includes the following claims:

"Kenya already has a geothermal plant, dating back a quarter of a century, that delivers around 115 megawatts, or just over a tenth of the country's electricity capacity."

and, in relation to minimising the risk and expense of proving up [new] geothermal prospects by a new type of exploratory drilling

"The pilot drills, some of which took place near the existing plant operated by power company KenGen at Olkaria, aimed at proving a new technology called micro-seismic and magneto-telluric surveying."

and

"[UNEP Executive Director Achim] Steiner spoke enthusiastically of geothermal as clean and "indigenous", a code word that usually means free from geopolitical risk and immune to market fluctuations."

Something for Australian governments to take on board, especially in relation to the prospective allocation of funding from the Federal government's $ 500 million Renewable Energy Fund, I should think. See, courtesy of Ludwig in another thread,: http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=113221

At least one Australian government, that of NSW, would appear well placed to be head contractor in emplacing such HDR geothermal energy into the existing publicly owned electricity grid, especially if it was able to prove up the known Hunter region hot dry rock prospect. We would need a good REF, wouldn't we, to oversee an 'open book' costing of such a project, one highly likely to be synergistic with other low-grade waste heat utilization possibilities from the existing coal-fired generation.

Col, did you see my response at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2396#52905 ?