About 1991 NSW RTA roads and traffic Authority began a new path.
Talking to its workforce.
A Liberal state government was in place.
Workers reps, mostly union delegates heard about a vastly different future.
Roads would be built and even maintained by, contractors.
Along with a promise natural attrition would reduce the workforce not redundancy's.
I sat among that group learning about those changes.
We heard senior people tell us this.
Yes we know in the short term it will cost more,we will get less for our dollar.
But we workers long term 40 years plus for some, understood it had to come that we had been stripped of the tools to do our job.
The promise that eventually contractors would give better value as they built business and skills and started to compete we some thing we believed, we got that quite wrong.
Contracting out costs taxpayers much more for much less.

4 hours..no reply...so i will add my thoughts

yes i agree...there isnt any real competition..thus we bneed a better way...[standardise..the cost of the hole]...they fix

so they go looking for them...take photo-graphs..[and measurements..of the 'hole'..]..location..and repair efforts...on standardised forms..to approved contractors

knowing each hole fixed =..say 50 bucks
and payment is immediate...[signed off on..and held legally to accounting..in case of fraud]..this could be extended into any 'service'...on a needs basis

so heavey rain..would see these contracters
going out and fixing things immediatly...
knowing a fair return is assured

extend this top other 'services'...even so far as replacing bald tyres..or repairing vehicles...if its a public danger..repair it first
[then the consumer/defaulter pays]

police..instead of issuing fines
issue repair orders..and what is owed is simply the cost of repairs

[no doudt you put that...concept..into your negotiations?
i been talking about it for years..]

Yes, I agree this is a very poor model. Probably because it is temporally based on terms of political tenure. Make some silly deal that will collapse in a screaming heap in a few years, because chances are it will be somebody elses problem by then.

Geography plays an important but unrecognised role, the kind of road that works ok in Brisbane for a while simply wont last in the tropics. But the contracts and agreements are formed in Brisbane. For example, the overtaking lanes at Giddins creek near Babinda are full of potholes and surface irregularities one must drive around. It was only opened a few months ago. Will the same company be paid to repair their own shonky work? Well that seems to be rewarding poor workmanship.

In Sydney, they sell the rights to operate motorways to private contractors, and then close other roads to force people to use them. Wasnt the premise of constructing motorways to ease congestion? in which case closing roads seems like an admission the motorways arent really needed in the first place.

governments none of them could build roads contractors now build, but a great deal of contracting is for maintenance and wasted.
Back to 1991, the DMR as it was before it became the RTA had both a responsive workforce and a wasted one, such was standard for any government endeavor.
Disturbingly the first contracting out was for a day Labour task, over night firms won big contracts.
You could see the plan unfolding , make firms strong , get better competition between them so one day, hopefully, the increasing costs would fall.
At the same time those redundancy's that would never come, came, and a flood took them.
Contractors grew ,concerns about poor work out comes unsafe practices even shonky owners, EX RTA winning the biggest contracts had the three wise monkeys treatment, still the tactic today.
A landslide began about the time I became a union official.
One after another the contractors went broke over night, mid night flyer's, no pay no superannuation nothing.
It was my job to help hungry unemployed workers, victims of the let us create contractors rush.
The ex RTA boss owed the most.
Every construction contract ever let has over run its agreed value,some by most horrible amounts, but hidden from sight is the fact small contracts cost more in over runs and out right poor workmanship!
At the start of this process most workers looked with hope at change, it could not get worse so we hoped it would get better.
Contracting out continues today roadside toilets vegetation and waste removal, this year the contracts cost much more than day labour did,for a great deal less.
We you I every one know it is not good enough but why.
A public servant is so truly remote in this case from the workplace he/she would understand nothing.
An area manager is an engineer but his/her job is to manage, few can.
I have never seen a minister who is hands on never one, some will remember one who spent a fortune on putting his photos up along the road but traveled by helicopter.

Do not get me wrong, this is not a plea for more jobs, it is a request that some one who cares can tell me why it failed.
Those shovel leaner's, thats how the public see them, often have hundreds of untaken sick days.
40 years service, seeing the dreadful toll of death at midnight or 4am after being called back to work, some suffer break downs and never work again because they have seen too much.
I want the best work out comes from my mates, the only way to keep their jobs is to be the best.
This story is true, I lead a team, wanted to get the best results.
So took hands on approach, became the district sprayer operator for poisoning.
[no I know it only promotes worse weeds but did as I was told]we had a 300 hundred liter tank, I asked for 300 gallon, enough to get between depots without having to return to mine for refill.
The average out put was 900 liters a day.
I offered to cut the program by 9 tenths of its projected time do the lot.
No to expensive, was the answer.
It is now done by a contractor ,with a 300 liter tank.
Management wants to contract out costs do not matter no intention to do it once do it right exist.
The answerer?
contract out management rolls every one of them privatize the public servants .

The NSW RTA that sent its negotiating team to be trained shoulder to shoulder with its workers delegates soon forgot its mantra.
Remember the task was to consult its workers and see that constant improvement, best quality work out comes took place.
And as natural attrition took place build skills and wealth, their words, so contractors would in the end cost less and produce much more.
After constant problems firms, some not all became good bosses and good deliverers of quality work out comes.
About this time the RTA management team was transfered to state rail, worth remembering later.
And the well established contract suppliers of traffic control and labour hire lost the contracts!
To the most shonky grubby lot yet, on price,without reference to work out comes.
Any investigation will prove much more is spent for much less and courts are seeing government contractors who are nothing but villains very often closing down and starting up the next day with another name.
NSW RTA sponsors such firms the ideas that we learned are dead.
Rail? goggle graft in NSW rail contracts let by ALL government endeavors have been given to wifes and brothers of the one who controls the bid.
Free lunch's and trips on boats buy loyalty and contracts worth millions.
We are not much different than third world country's and it matters not what type of government is in power.
Given the task, most people could run a department better than this, whitewash and self defense stops open investigation but surely tax payers need better out comes.
If the workers are the problem, they are not, even that can be fixed.