Paul1405,
I don't actually have any "hostility" to my line manager as such. He is my fourth line manger in ten years & only two of them did a reasonable job & they got shafted because of it.
He is performing to the satisfaction of his managers for the simple reason that he is not performing hence he is easily controlled by them. All wants is to stay on long enough to build up his Supper account. At least that's what he told me and, he is three years older than me.
I can appreciate if you live down south you actually are required to show some progress to keep your job but in remote communities it is the opposite. The longer lack of progress can be dragged out the longer excess career public servants can be shoved off & out of sight. Of course only a few care about the community ! I have seen consultants being hired & then another consultant to help out the first consultant. Meanwhile budgets are blown to smytherines & blue collar workers reduced in numbers whilst bureaucrats seem to proliferate like the proverbial rabbits. You should see the airfare & travel expenses of these bureaucrats. You'd literally crap yourself . How all this is kept so out of the public eye is a true art. It is indeed nothing more than excessive welfare for bureaucrats. No contribution testing applied. If there were the ALP component within the public service would collapse over night from the backlash.

individual, In my working life I have come across very few people with the necessary people skills to make good managers. Discounting the lazy and incompetent, from the rest some have had excellent job knowledge, were nice people but lacked the ability to communicate, people who could not or would not listen and who often failed to impart their ideas and knowledge to others, in other words kept their subordinates 'in the dark'. Then there are those through personality traits could not manage people, the overbearing, the insecure the self controlling. there are many types, but all have one thing in common they can not get the best out of people. Unfortunately in Australia poor management skills is a big problem which has been around for a long time.

Paul1405,
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that why is it possible for incompetent people to occupy positions of authority. It would of course be utterly naive to think the situation could be addressed & solved but, why do we as the constituents allow this to become an epidemic ?
I know some of the incompetents are there because they are simply yes-people. I could accept it if that was the odd occasion but in Australia it's become a prerequisite to be incompetent if you wanted to get into the public service. That's the tragic of authority now in Australia. We have witnessed the dumbing down of our young, we tolerate the idiots who put up their hands to stand for election & we accept corruption in the public service. I think we need to take a really close look at the constitution & either abide by it or change it. The way things are lately is just pure hypocrisy & blatant corruption.
If we really are serious about contribution testing it is with the public servants & their pays & benefits we need to start. Remember bad things happen when good people do nothing.

"why is it possible for incompetent people to occupy positions of authority." Individual in an ideal world this would not happen, but then again in an ideal world there would be no incompetent people.
"why do we as the constituents allow this to become an epidemic?" That is the $64 question, but as I see it, the people. us, are not empowered to control society. Its rather naive of us to think that once in every 3 or 4 years we spend half an hour to wonder down to the local school to cast a vote and that's it, political control has now been established by the action of the masses.
"it's become a prerequisite to be incompetent if you wanted to get into the public service". Its not that public servants are any more incompetent that anyone else, its the nature of the beast that is the problem. Politicians of all persuasions need a bureaucracy for their governments to function, and we know that by their very nature bureaucracies are inefficient and wasteful. As society becomes more complex, politicians always seeking power, see a need to become more and more invasive in society, more rules, more laws and that requires ever more bureaucracy to administer the ever expanding rules and laws and so forth and on and on it goes. Is there a better way, I sure there is, but I can't think of it. can you? While every we have politicians, and we see them as necessary in a democracy, we will have a bureaucracy, politicians can't survive without it.