Heard the greens wanted to re name the Navy ships picking up the refugees, HMAS TAXI!
Silly as it seems it is nothing compared to Liberals plan.end all refugees from Ceylon as we once knew it back home.
On the record!
First against the law of the refugees convention.
Then? they are not a signature to the UNHCR!
Bring on Malaysian solution.

<< I specifically exempt those who actually work for a living - the nurses, the teachers, the police, the firemen, the ambulance drivers - from my overall view of public servant hangers-on. It's the pen-pushers, the flower-pickers… >>

Hold on Pericles, I’m sure that if you thought about it a bit more, you’d see the merit in lot of other sections of the public service. What about main roads, environment, rubbish collection…. and on into a very long list.

Sure there are inefficiencies and misprioritisations ...and the police would be as bad any department in this regard ...but generally speaking the PS is a pretty damn necessary part of our society.

As a former flower-picking public servant, I’ve got to say that my role and the role of my unit was very important, in striving to find the right balance between rural productivity and environmental protection, and in furthering our knowledge of the Queensland flora so that we would have a better basis for planning for its protection, in the face of ever-increasing human activity. This is a very real and important public service, if I do say so myself!

But you being you, you would have formed the opinion that a botanist in the PS would be one of the most superficial and least service-oriented jobs possible, yes?

Your oft-repeated lambasting of the public service seems to me to sit in stark contrast to your very good intellect and highly articulate writings on this forum.

What’s that you say?

Ohh, yeayus, this thread is about the Greens, not the PS!

Umm…. alright... What can I say about the Greens?!

I think all I can say is that is pretty much agree with you re your first post of 7 Sept!

Flattery will get you nowhere, Ludwig.

>>Your oft-repeated lambasting of the public service seems to me to sit in stark contrast to your very good intellect and highly articulate writings on this forum<<

But I'm a sucker for it , so thank you anyway.

>>This is a very real and important public service, if I do say so myself! But you being you, you would have formed the opinion that a botanist in the PS would be one of the most superficial and least service-oriented jobs possible, yes?<<

One of them, yes. From a "very long list".

My concerns - the "lambasting" - starts with politicians, and moves on to include every facet of the public service that remains unaccountable to anyone except itself. Including, I should point out, the lack of accountability for its presence on the public payroll in the first place. I am sure that you worked in an area of high perceived value - hence your pride in the work you performed. But in general, that value is rarely, if ever, tested properly in the real world.

We have become accustomed to pouring billions of dollars of taxpayers money into activities that are never financially justified to the taxpayer, or justified on some form of political whim, separate from any mandate upon which they were elected, or simply undertaken on a "this will run well in the Press" feelgood basis.

In my view these exercises represent the single largest source of wasted productive potential in our economy.

<< We have become accustomed to pouring billions of dollars of taxpayers money into activities that are never financially justified to the taxpayer >>

Yes, some of the time. One example I can think of think of straight away is 110million$ WASTED on upgrading the Bruce Highway across the Cardwell Range half way between Townsville and Cairns. A totally unnecessary project.

But as far as regional ecosystem mapping and the management of tree-clearing legislation and all manner of other environmental regulations that I was involved with, I would have the most vehement disagreement with you about it being or not being a fundamentally important part of the public service.

This comes down to the core of our disagreement over the last several years:

You desire minimalist government with as little ‘interference’ in our lives as possible, while I will maintain that that would be a recipe for disaster, in which the powerful and aggressive would come to rule the roost.

I desire strong governance, which leads us in the right direction rather than just pandering to the short-term wishes of the people or big business, and which has a very broad and efficient public service to uphold a high standard of services and law enforcement across the board.

Environmental regulation is a core duty of government, and a strong environment department is very important. Contrary to your belief, I would say emphatically that it should be a whole lot larger and better resourced….. at least in Queensland!

I wonder what the Greens would do in this regard if they won power in their own right?

Ludwig - If the Greens won power under their immigration policy of let everyone come Australia would not last, it would be full of welfare for lifers supported by the taxpayer in no time. the greens would facilitate this by having all the Navy ships go to Indonesia, Malaysia, SriLanka and every other country to bring them back. It does not matter that very few speak English or want to work under the Greens the more that come the better, for the life of me I don't know why but that is what they want.

To give a little more insight into my concerns over government intervention/spending, Ludwig, this paragraph in The Economist caught my eye the other day, and encapsulates my thoughts quite accurately. Particularly the last sentence.

"Modern governments play a much larger role in the economy than the ancient Greeks or the founding fathers could have imagined. This makes political leaders a huge source of patronage, in the form of business contracts, social benefits, jobs and tax breaks. As the late political scientist, Mancur Olson, pointed out, these goodies are highly valuable to the recipients but the cost to the average voter of any single perk will be small. So beneficiaries will have every incentive to lobby for the retention of their perks and taxpayers will have little reason to campaign against them. Over time the economy will be weighed down by all these costs, like a barnacle-encrusted ship"

http://www.economist.com/node/21561932

It has been the boiling frog syndrome, which affects governments - or, more strictly speaking, government-paid workers - just as much as it does industry's approach to CEO pay. What starts off as a good idea is manipulated for personal gain by the participants, eventually reaching a point where it is a) anomalous and b) uncontrollable.

The fundamental problem that I see is the disconnect between action and accountability. While you may view the management of tree-clearing legislation, to use just one example of many thousands, as a vital part of government's mandate to look after its population, I question its value to society as a whole, and whether the money is being spent productively and beneficially. All the arguments I have seen are perfectly circular: the government does these things because it is the government's job to do these things.

Nothing personal, you see. Just a visceral reaction against large-scale wastage.