Thank you for a very informative article. It is not just our local, state and federal government organisations that affect us with this "outsourcing" of responsibility.

Our foreign relations are also affected. See this item, by R from Le Monde, written by Rémy Ourdan, translated and made available at
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/8717/

TRANSLATION: Mercenaries are heading for Afghanistan (Le Monde)
Written by Mark Jensen
Friday, 12 June 2009

The preface notes that:
"Rémy Ourdan focused on a May 5 incident that revealed how Blackwater has not only changed its name (to "Xe") but is using subcontracting and front companies in an attempt to overcome its execrable reputation. -- The privatization of war almost guarantees that the NATO mission in Afghanistan will fail: "'There's no going back,' one American officer thinks. 'Unless you increase the defense budget considerably, the Obama administration will not be able to renationalize war. Yet these guys cause us nothing but problems. Not only do they earn ten times the pay of our soldiers, but they're subject to none of our rules. They have no chain of command and no sanctions. We try to get the population behind us, but they couldn't care less. They come to make money and they leave.'"

And where does this leave Australians?

I found this little booklet to be a very useful explanation of the dangers of public private partnerships:
http://vanguard.net.au/2008/pdf%20files/PPPbooklet.pdf

A timely article, particularly in light of the shocking case of Mr Ward, who died last year because of the gross negligence of a private security firm contracted by the WA government to transport prisoners on its behalf. Apparently this is by no means the only example of such callous negligence by firms that undertake such roles for governments in Australia.

P.S. Note to the editor: this appears to be a classic case of an article that has only been proof-read by a spellchecker, e.g. "populus" instead of "populace", "stationary" instead of "stationery", "to" instead of "too", "fell fowl" instead of "fell foul", etc. Perhaps I'm too pedantic, but it's not a good look for a serious journal.

CJ Morgan "I'm too pedantic", yes we know.

Thank you for the feed back,

C.J Morgam,

I'll take responsibility for the spelling mistakes. In future I won't try to edit my work at three in the morning.

Rowan Kernebone

I didn't do a good job did I? Anyway all fixed plus a few more things as well! :)
Susan Prior - ed

‘Legislative’ and ‘regulative’ are not different sources of control. They are both just different species of enforceable commands. It is the enforcement that gives them both their character as a source of control.

Contractual relations are not a different source of control either. Contracts are simply a means to an end. The *funds* that pay for the services contracted, are obtained by the government’s monopoly of coercion. Ultimately all government action depends on taking property by force or threats from private citizens, and then paying private citizens to do certain works. But even if a service were not contracted out to private enterprise, the government would enter into contracts with government employees to provide the service.

However if there is no market demand for a particular service, then it is questionable whether it should be called 'privatisation' - if all the demand, revenue and specifications come from government.

The reason governments privatise services is not because they believe in private property rights. It is because they know that government departments are notoriously inefficient; and they expect to get the same quantity and quantity of output for a lesser price.

It is laughable to talk of “our right to open government”. What right to open government? You mean how our governments are decided in back-room deals by private political parties dividing up preference votes from minorities in marginal seats that they get by bribing them with other people’s money?

What right to equality at law? You mean the right that the tax and welfare systems systematically violate?

What right to have control of government? What right do you or I have to ‘control the government’?

Right to control government must mean a requirement to consent, and therefore a right to withhold payment; otherwise we are merely talking about different ways of dividing the spoils.

Glad to see the typos corrected, can't say I was upset by them. Thanks to CJM sticking his neck out.

As for odo,
"Let him who is without fault cast the first stove."

The blackest day in New South Wales history was when the then Government of Robin Askin, entered a private-public partnership with the legal profession in 1970 , and privatized the civil side of the Supreme Court. By creating a corporation governed by nine lawyers, the separation of powers was defeated, and the Courts became a subsidiary of the executive government. The Commonwealth when it created the Federal Court of Australia did the same, and the Family Court is another one of these private corporations which should be doing a public job.

The blackest day in Australia’s history was when the High Court in 1953 did what Parliament could not do, and gave a Registrar and a Justice absolute power to decide who would get to bring a case to the High Court. These Public Private Partnerships, no longer deliver what they are contracted to do, which is deliver justice, but instead deliver institutionalized injustice to all and sundry. They even privatized what used to be a public duty, sentencing of prisoners. It was a public duty because a jury was made up of members of the public, not the public service.

The dark side of the PPP is the five suicides a day that occur in Australia, and lots of these stem from the hopelessness that not being able to get grievances honestly dealt with engenders in a man or a woman.

Until this particularly destructive type of PPP is abolished, as the High Court provided in 1996, when it decided the “Kable Principle” case, then we are not a democracy at all but a country run by a very nasty group of mercenary individuals. In a democracy, every person was entitled to be present in a court, and twelve voted on the evidence. The evidence was presented under the guidance of a lawyer. PPPs are not democracy.

OLO provides a forum where some very nasty aspects of government can be exposed, and there is none as dark as the abolition of a fair go in court. The lack of understanding of punctuation, and Capital letters has allowed this

This article is a reminder of the lack of governance in some of these outsourced contracts. The duty of care and responsibility is removed from government except for what is often a weak oversight process.

It all starts with the government's tendering processes. The criteria or specifications often deal only with the essential services or goods provided and the question of cost. There is little duty of care in terms of the wages and salaries paid by those contracted companies - often very much lower than public servants who performed the same duties previously (with the exception of ICT services).

In the past the public service was required to contract to companies where a certain percentage of either goods/services were Australian owned. Not so anymore under the ridiculous free trade mantra where even our employment services are now contracted to foreign owned companies and much of the profit goes overseas. It is hard to believe this is being perpetrated under the auspices of our democratically elected governments.

There have been many outsourcing disasters both in service delivery and where the predicted cost savings have not emerged but rather blown out to be much higher than expected.

There is little oversight on some of these contracted services - as long as the services/goods are delivered little thought is given to the internal workings and even sometimes fraudulent behaviour of contracted companies. These companies are wholly motivated by profit rather than delivering a high quality service and the government has always been an easy target.

Wing Ah Ling wrote:
"‘Legislative’ and ‘regulative’ are not different sources of control. They are both just different species of enforceable commands. It is the enforcement that gives them both their character as a source of control."

Though all actions of government are a form of manipulation this statement is far too generalised to be usable. The aspect of enforcement is also too generalised. The use of suggestion through advertisement is an obvious way governments attempt to change behaviour without resorting to enforcement (the anti-smoking campaigns being a prime example of this).

I would also suggest that the concept of government control being centred on acts of violence or threats is substantially out-of-date. Though it is still true that those government policy actions termed as "negative' such as criminal sanctions can easily join your classification, the two other policy actions being neutral or positive can not be based on this. So I must disagree with you on those counts.

Finally the concept of government contracting must also include the social service industry as an example. Services such as family support services, emergency housing and counselling services are not profitable but governments around the world utilise a contractual relationship to ensure that these services are provided. In the social service area this is a relatively new concept, with some contractual relationships being less than a decade old for services that have received funding for much longer (family support agencies have a 100 year history in NSW).

I do agree with your last comment though. A right to consent does include a right to withhold money, seen through the need for parliamentary approval for all government budgets (think Whitlam) and in a broader sense voting is us exercising our rights through withholding money from one party and providing it to the other.

Rowan Kernebon

Sir Vivor, As for odo, "Let him who is without fault cast the first stove."

If CJ Morgan was so sensitive, he wouldn't "cast the first stone", he hardly needs defending, he hands it out, he can take it.

I'm sure it is like water off a duck's back.

mike-servethepeople,
I tried the link you suggested, but it appears faulty. Any suggestions?

odo,
Are you able to comment on
"The dark side of private-public partnerships",
or are you limited to commenting on other posters?

I just tried it from the earlier comments page and got straight to it. If it doesn't work, try http://vanguard.net.au/2008/index.php and click on the graphic at the bottom of the page.

Thanks to Rowan and Susan P. My pedanticism was mainly because I thought the typos detracted from an otherwise very good article. I'm one of those dinosaurs to whom things like spelling, grammar and good governance still matter, I guess.

Odo - you quack me up. Do you have an opinion on the article at all, or about the important issues it raises?

"Though all actions of government are a form of manipulation this statement is far too generalised to be usable. The aspect of enforcement is also too generalised."

No it's not. Government gets all its revenue by the use of violence or the threat of violence. Taxation is a compulsory impost and by law confers no right to any specific service. Compulsory means that if you don't pay it, a group of armed men will physically seize you, beat you into submission if necessary, and lock you up in a cage.

As to government's revenue from inflating the money supply, or from borrowing, both of these depend on its prior monopoly of the use of violence or threats.

If this is out of date, ie not reality-based, let's abolish the enforcement underlying taxation and see what happens to government revenues, shall we?

Interesting to speculate what an improvement would result from requiring the *real* consent of the governed.

"The use of suggestion through advertisement is an obvious way governments attempt to change behaviour without resorting to enforcement (the anti-smoking campaigns being a prime example of this)."

That is a typical example of ignoring the enforcement there is. When government runs anti-smoking campaigns, they get the funds by threatening to throw people in prison if they don't submit to having their property confiscated. That is where the force is involved, not in the advertisements.

As there is no law - legislative or regulatory - against smoking, there is no enforceable command not to smoke. The enforceable command is to pay money as a precondition of smoking.

"... two other policy actions being neutral or positive can not be based on this."

You haven't said what those two other policy actions are. But I repeat *all* revenue of government depends on its monopoly of the legal use of force or threats, and therefore all government action does too - *whether or not a people subjected to 10 years compulsory state indoctrination fail to recognise the fact and mistakenly think they are talking about consensual decision-making.*

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/water-policy-delivers-scary-possibilities-20090624-cwpw.html?page=-1

The above link is too an article about water and the P & P.

"Veolia now delivers Adelaide's water supply. According to Christopher Sheil, a University of NSW historian, in an interview with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists: "When a corporation wins a highly unpopular contract over public goods like water, it gets the privatising government by the balls."

CJMorgan / Sir Vivor. No, and I didn't realise you two had suddenly become the poster's focus and content police, thanks for informing me.

I sure hope neither of you has ever just clipped and posted out of someone else's post, as a comment or to denigrate the poster, that would be truely hypocritical in light of your current outrage, wouldn't it?

"Let him who is without fault cast the first stove." What? Really, the first stove? Is that a quote from some special version of the Bible?

You quack me up!

Thanks to James H for the interesting item on Veolia in SA. One of the comments Kenneth Davidson's editorial bears some reflection:

" ...the answer [to SA's water problem] might be tankers or tugs and water bags from Tasmania providing Tasmanians are prepared to sell a small fraction of the waste water that runs into the sea after generating hydro-electricity."

Waste water?
What? This terminology escapes me.

I can only assume KD sees the "used" hydroelectricity water as waste because it could be put to use better (in his opinion) on the mainland. I don't expect to hear him clarify. He may be interested (as may others) in a book called Wolf Totem, by Jiang Rong, published by Viking in 2004. It is a fictional chronicle of the settling of Inner Mongolia in the late '60's and early '70's. It is a well-told tale of resource utilisation and "development" which is very pertinent to an arid country like Australia.

Odo - thanks for your little bit of oxygen, to keep the argument burning: or was it phlogiston? Meanwhile, I await a substantive comment from you, on P-P Partnerships. You needn't have original ideas, you only need to openly attribute others' ideas to them.

It seems as though there's always a slide to more secretive government - not just in contract law, but right across the board.

It's mostly because movements toward transparency take greater effort and require a large lurch toward reform, whereas secrecy increases in small, easy bites.

Not all the news is bad though - I'm hoping the amended whistleblower legislation proves to have teeth, particularly in regard to protection of journalist sources.

The movements toward uniform defamation laws with greater clarity also provide some hope.

As for the contract law issues here, I think some pretty good points are raised here, particularly with large amounts of stimulus cash currently working their way through the economy via government contracts.