Aidan,

David Archibald has written 10 books that I am aware of. I haven't read any of yours, lately. You seem to know everything, but you haven't manage one, it seems.

Before you call other people 'moron's, you really need to give some thought to what people could call you, a person who asks: “ Is this really worth discussing?”. We are talking about money wasted, and money that could be saved; and you don't think that's worth talking about! Your mental capacity is the one on question, Aidan, not that of a scholarly person who actually does know what he is talking about. That is certainly 'obvious'.

ttbn,
His being an obscure book author does not change my opinion. Not only does he rely on false assumptions, but he also lacks the reasoning ability that a "scholarly person who actually does know what he is talking about" would have.

Consider his position on the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, for example: a single alleged error in a letter, plus an acknowledgement of the problem of climate change and its link to greenhouse gases - and in his mind that makes the entire organization worthless!

Similarly he wants to abolish the CSIRO, which has a long track record of helping industry to innovate (as well as doing basic research and inventing wifi) because they dare to do the (actually very valuable) job of modelling the effects of climate change.

With interest rates at record lows, investing in our future makes more sense than ever. But Archibald thinks it would be better to instead to chase a budgetary outcome that any objective analysis would show is harmful.

Where there's genuine waste, of course it should be addressed so that resources can be redeployed where they will do more good. But this thread is not about money wasted; it's about money that one ignoramus wrongly assumes to be wasted because he's blind to the value of knowledge.