"Brett Martin" <brett@no-spam> wrote in message > on the Commonwealth.
You start to wonder if we would be better without
> the large states and moving instead to a county/province system (more
> similar to the US, UK and Canada) Then again we'd probably end up with
> more bureaucrats.
Interesting, but wrong conference, but I just got to say that I've been a
believer in 2 tier government (federal and local) for more years than I care
to remember.
Times move on and the States have really largely lost their relevance.
Perhaps a bounty could be declared on Public Servants?
One other small thing. There is no constitutional or other reason why NSW
legislation would come into effect on 1 Jan or each year, and in fact it
would be a major clog on legislation if there were.
Must have been some other reason.
Tony Smith
"Brett Martin" <brett@no-spam> wrote in message .
> >
> > Perhaps a bounty could be declared on Public Servants?
>
> I should point out that I'm one btw. The potential issue is the way the
> feds have gotten rid of professionals over the years. For example
> DOTARS has next to no engineers. They are not informed buyers and
> really don't have the capability to assess proposals in infrastructure
> or development. They passed this responsibility on to the States.
>
And the States don't have them either. QLD for example is still suffering
from the pogroms of the Gosstapo which removed a significant portion of the
top echelon of public servants and replaced them with a combination of
political appointees and people headhunted by "professional" people search
companies (who invariably in my experience end up selecting the person with
the most well written resume and the most glowing referees, which means that
50% you get a good one and the other 50% you get someone who the losing
organization is keen to unload). However I do have to admit that things are
settling down now and that there are (at least) some good things happening.
On point top what you mentioned above, the "new breed" are responsible for
the investment of public money into Stanwell power and Queensland magnesium,
both of which are in the process of blowing up impressively at enormous cost
to the public purse.
As far as public servants go, I used to be one too.....
Then one day they announced that as part of a drive to greater efficiency
they were going to give pots of money to encourage all the incompetent,
lazy, unhappy, unqualified people to go forth and seek new horizons...
I looked at my age and general circumstances, talked it over with my partner
and thought, bugger it, I'd like another career and put my hand up.
Strangely (I'm mean anyone with 1/2 a brain could see it too) the only
people who actually did put their hands up were those who were qualified,
still interested and who possessed the competence to get out and have a go
at something else.
The funny thing was that a group of us ended up at our desks a few weeks
later doing the same job, but as contractors (at a much higher hourly rate).
At least 1 is still there as a contractor, but that wasn't what I left to
do.
This process repeated itself across most PS Departments, Agencies and
Authorities, which is why there is a shortage of engineers in DOTARS, a
shortage of Lawyers in the DPP, a shortage of experienced accountants in TAX
and why nought but the dregs are left at Centrelink.
There were (and still are) some pretty major toxic cultural issues in the
Commonwealth Public Service (the American inherited cult of managerialism
being amongst the worst) but as this is a 4WD conference it's just about
time to quit this post and this thread I think.
If you want to continue I think we had better go to email, mine's pretty
obvious.
Tony Smith