Government is a business.

The business of government is run by an elected person.

Improvement would be popular election of the Governor-General, how about on the first saturday each July.

Within our Constitution our G-G is required to select his/her ministers from the MHRs and Senators (or people about to be elected).

Major change will make Ministers more accountable, to our popularly elected G-G manager of government business, Parliament, and we the voters.

Will not see this as our politicians do NOT want accountability....

Run the country like a business?
You mean, hire a CEO for about the same as we pay for the entire elected assemblage of federal members (both houses).

Sack half the Public service, which would send up the share price. Declare that a bonus-able outcome, sell off the mining sector to pay for that.

Send ALL the jobs off shore where they can be done cheaper.

Buy out the share holders (people) in a leveraged privatization buy out.
Lease a fleet of leaky fishing boats from Indonesia on a complicated buyback off shore accounting scheme, to take them off the balance sheet as an asset to minimize tax but enable a 200% business loss deductions.

Bundle up the remaining average poor Aussie on to said leaky boats all with:

- Chinese made and embroidered jackets with a individual choice of "illegal Boat person", "economic refugee" on the back.
-One faulty motor,
-limited food and water
-an old fashioned Brace and large Bit,
-a big sign reading "Surplus to Lequirements" in smaller print
love and kisses Australian new management" (naturally made in Bangladeshi ethnic Chinese)

Split what industries left into synergistic derivatives and flog them to off to Asia .

In order to pay Macquarie Bank an that Texas Group's fees for packaging the whole deal, rent the non productive space out for a nuclear or waste dump.

Write Tassy off as an uneconomic loss. Then declare the whole enterprise Bankrupt.

The rich could change their names to names like Thatcher, Reagan and Bush etc disappear overseas. surreptitiously buy their own state in America say Kaliforia, amalgamate it with Texas and live happily ever after.

After which the administrators would compelled sell it back to the only people left, the indigenous Australians at fire sale rates.
No one would want to go there, no unwanted boat people, no limitation on pollution, lots of profits and the indigenous people would have most of their country back... Clearly a Win Win situation.

Makes no sense? About as much as the question..

Despite the clumsy phrasing of the question, what lies behind it is still valid.

Peter Hume expressed it best.

>>what reason is there to think a territorial monopoly of coercion – government – is better at providing services than by way of businesses competing for voluntary custom?<<

"Voluntary custom"

This encapsulates the entire question - "why should the government provide any services at all to its citizens? Why can't they use private enterprise instead, the miserable leeches".

Once upon a time, we considered the provision of infrastructure - railways, roads, telephone lines, water, electricity - etc. as being the proper concern of a government.

How this managed to get thoroughly distorted, I will leave to the historians (although I expect Maggie was involved somewhere).

But the fact is, it is now a horrendously old-fashioned concept.

If the bus route doesn't make a profit, axe it. Don't worry about the old folk who don't have alternative means of transport - sod 'em all. They only count one vote each. And will soon be dead anyway, so why should we subsidise their trips to the library? Let 'em watch TV.

I hope when Peter Hume gets old, or (heaven forbid) gets sick, that he has accumulated sufficient wealth to be able to buy himself out of trouble.

Take taxis everywhere.

Buy a kidney from his private helicopter pilot.

Carry his own defibrillator around with him, that sort of thing.

The public service itself is its own biggest enemy, of course, having become a byword for laziness and inefficiency, being smug, self-absorbed and worthless drain on the real economy.

But making everything user-pays is to tackle entirely the wrong problem.

Transforming Peter Hume's public monopoly into a private one is both the most common, and least effective solution, and also the most open to corruption.

Anyone been to Sydney Airport recently? Tell me that it is a better experience today than when the airport, the parking, the baggage trolleys, the catering franchises etc. were publicly owned?

There is a place for public services. Sadly, I doubt we'll ever see them again.

Pericles, all I can say is I can't really add anything more to what you said. Instead I just want to highlight your points.

Peter Hume: "we should be asking: what reason is there to think a territorial monopoly of coercion – government – is better at providing services than by way of businesses competing for voluntary custom?"

Yes, there is. The American Health system versus our own is an excellent counter example.

The takeover of electricity production early in our history is another excellent example. It was not in the interests of the private companies to standardise, or even to buy power off one another. Because of those two things failure at one generator meant failure of supply. After the take over electricity supply became far more reliable and cheaper.

Then of course there was the take over by the state of the fire services a few centuries ago. Originally the brigades were owned and run by insurance companies. It turned out to be in the insurance companies best interests to let any premises burn that wasn't insured by them. Their private brigades often rushed to the scene, inspected the insurance plate then stood by enjoying the show put on their rivals battling the blaze.

Any finally even if it were true that the customer would be better off under just about any business running the show there is one glaring exception - having things run by a monopoly.

The remainder of your point stands, of course. It was a good argument in favour of not running government as a business.

Houston we have a problem!!
Couldn’t be more relevant to the political running of Australia as is now! We have high level public servants determining policy direction. Not the other way round.
The Humphrey Appleby’s of the world all reside Canberra and please themselves as to how the country runs.
You can blame the government official elected to fix these problems when you have a Yes minister farce occurring here and now.
Perhaps you should say we should scrap elections as waste of time, at least they have the illusion of democracy.