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ELECTIONS - Labor or Liberal

Who do you think will win the next election Labor or Liberal?

  • Labor (Kevin Rudd)

    Votes: 221 51.8%

  • Liberal (John Howard)

    Votes: 206 48.2%
  • Total voters
    427
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That is mostly rhetoric.

In certain situations privatization can be a benefit. In other cases, it stinks. Many privatized government enterprises are an unmitigated disaster.

Corporatisation is a superior path IMO. (FWIW... I can't be bothered putting up examples)
 
Hi
It may be a distraction from original thread but we love to blame government.
Yes Government loves to privatise just like all big companies love to hand over things to contractors.
What do you expect when a director of government department earns bloody $90K, a professor earns some $140 K against an ordinary trades person earns some $160K through overtime etc and a director of company like MBL earns about $20 M. Whereas any dog and cat can spit on the government officer or the college professor who dares to raise a finger on the tradie or the director of a company ?
Bottom line you get what you pay. Under the circumstances teh so called government officials will be those who either sheer incompetent or just too lazy. Unfortunately those officers will take decisions for those multi millionaires.

So let us not blame government and rather let us try to reduce the blaming on government and be more critique on sending the competent people there and at least raise their compensation package at par with a tradie if not a company director.

Regards
 
It depends on the situation. I have worked both for government and private enterprise so I've seen both sides.

In general, my observation is private employees are significantly more productive in terms of output per hour at work but are far less efficient in their use of materials.

I'll avoid mentioning specific items to avoid identifying individual businesses but some examples.

1. I worked for a government department that sought to outsource some maintenance work. The lowest quote received was 3 times the fully costed (including all overheads etc) cost of doing the work in house. The most expensive quote was 5 times as much. Even the (liberal) state government baulked at the additional cost of outsourcing and the project collapsed.

2. Our average annual maintenance cost on a specific set of (quite common) equipment was $861.34 versus a generally accepted benchmark for private contractors of $5000.

3. Our maintenance was to a higher standard than that of contractors operating in Victoria and NSW. We typically achieved 50 - 100% longer equipment lifetimes as a direct result.

4. We obtained, for $50 each plus $450 freight, several sets of equipment valued at $15,000 new that was deemed "unrepairable" by interstate contractors. It took us less than one day's labour to identify the problem (which would have been far easier when it was still in-situ and connected to power, external devices etc) and less than $50 in parts to repair. A decade later most of these are still running to my understanding.

WHY are the contractors universally so lacking in skill? And WHY are their lack of skills so readily passed on as to abandon $15,000 worth of equipment in order to avoid literally half a day's labour (one person) an under $50 in parts to find the problem and fix it? That's most certainly NOT efficiency by any means. Incompetence and blatantly trying to profit from the sale of new equipment maybe, but not efficiency.

5. A national conference raised specific "unresolvable" technical problems in doing a specific task and sought solutions. I simply stood up and pointed out our literally 100% success rate with our in-house designed and built systems over the past 20 years that cost less than half that of the non-performing alternatives. Stunned silence...

6. Since I was responsible for the cost estimating I can assure you that we were not receiving favourable tax treatment. It was a requirement to include all relevant taxes both on estimates and completed works. And yes, we also included super, administration costs, vehicles, employee time, rent on the building at market rates, cleaning, toilet paper and so on as part of our overheads which were factored in to all works.

...

On the other hand I could point to some successful privatisations. Hazelwood power station, generally accepted to be the least efficient large coal-fired power plant in the developed world, was scheduled for closure by the old SECV in 2005. The new private owners are planning on at least another two decades of operation.

Airlines seem to run much better in private hands. But then they aren't a utility or taxpayer funded service.

Telstra's lack of customer service is renowned and not much seems to have changed with the move from government to private ownership. The customer still has to stand around waiting for Telstra's ridiculous work scheduling system to send a tech from the other end of the state to fix their phone (whilst a local tech is sent in the opposite direction).

Don't misunderstand me, I'm certainly not against private enterprise or proposing that the government start selling ice creams and making shoes. But with very few exceptions (mostly those previously run by the Commonwealth) whenever some public utility has been privatised the end result is a lowering of technical standards and an increase in price. Witness the ridiculously expensive electricity in SA and Vic (private) versus NSW and Qld (mostly public) and you'll see what I mean.

Private enterprise does most things reasonably well but I've yet to see an example where an essential service privatisation has benefited the majority of consumers.

Worth noting that even big business consumers don't like the idea of competition in electricity supply in Tas and are publicly concerned about what they see as an inevitable increase in costs and made quite a fuss last year. 12 months later and the state's biggest ever rise in power prices is announced, justified by the "incresing costs in the competitive market". Hmm... Just like gas bills in SA went up "due to the costs of competition".

Economic theories are one thing. In many cases they are right. But there's plenty of examples where privatisation has been a massive failure when applied to public utilities, the very area where the benefits were most aggressively promoted.

As for the bit about one-off benefits and hospitals, that's the big problem. A one-off gain that gets spent in a few years at most. Then we're forever stuck paying higher taxes to offset the lost revenue or ongoing cost of using contractors.

These things come and go. Today's management fad and buzzwords are tomorrows failed ideas. That's just the way it is. Remember KPI's? (seen them come and go twice now).
 
Smurf,
1. In summary you reckon you were cheaper and better . Must admit I'm surprised My theory is you get "what you honestly pay for" - by which I mean ALL expenses in the ledger, so that you're comparing Tasmanian apples with Tasmanian apples (and not with those inferior Mainland apples lol).

2. Apart from the fact that, when you get say three private enterprise quotes , one is high, one is about right, and one has (usually) made a mistake . ..
And the fact that he is the one who gets the job.

3. and Rarely is the contract awarded on any other consideration that "cheapest". Forget all the talk of QA etc.

4. Irrespective, if he (the successful private contractor) doesn't make the profit he thought he would, he scales down his service to balance his budget.

(take privatisation of hospitals, gaols etc - just my impressions )

5. Conversely, if the Govt had continued to run it, and costs exceeded expectations/ budget - they would find some way to hide the expenses, lol.

6. Anecdote :- I lived in the islands - they privatised the power station - including the maintenance of some old generators. I think that, wisely, the contractor insisted on "subject to confirmation after the machines overhauled" - all I know is that the "brown-outs" continued, and the Govt kept complaining about the expense

and I'm sure the contractor was responsible for making the Govt accept the reality that those machines needed serious money spent on them .

7. Continuing :- lol , The billing of the public continued to be handled by Govt. They used computers. People were send absolutely ridiculous bills. There was a massive queue at the complaints dept - I was present when the bloke 3 ahead of me presented the frazzled clerk behind the counter with a bill that read "$3,45, 789" or whatever, ( in the millions).

the clerk let the bloke get off his steam - then said, "would it help if I suggested that you might pay it by cheque, and write on the back "paid under duress" -
 
PS Then of course there's privatisation of Immigration Detention Centrs , (and hospitals I guess - and schools?)
where govts can blame "others" and /or "contracted people" etc
i.e. for reasons other than financial
 
lol - I have a similar theory about failed marriages

i.e. if a second marriage works, where a first one didn't - then there's good chance that it's partly because the person / persons involved has/have brought his/her/their experience(s) into the second marriage - AND BEEN PREPARED TO TRY HARDER THERE.

question then is " perhaps they could just as easily have applied the same "extra effort" to the first marriage ?"

i.e. if a man/woman had spent as much time and effort with their spouses as they do on their lovers - then they'd probably stay together?

or in Smurf-speak (or rather getting back to the topic ? ) "If a Govt had spent the proper money maintaining generators in the first place - etc etc " ...... - sorry m8, I'm being disrespectful of your superior technical abilities again

PS I know very little about generators
or maintaining happy marriages for that matter lol
 

And what about the way Govt Depts all get renamed lol - old letterhead is thrown out etc - for what !! except massive waste !!

Just taking that theory a step further - perhaps COUPLES should have namechanges - a symbolic re-marriage _ that way the lady gets her new surname! -

and so does the bloke !!

Here's a quick poem I just whipped up on the subject

https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=195717&highlight=namechanges#post195717
 
"Best" example of privatisation in WA is the buses. Less services, worse maintenance and they're stilling asking the govt for more money to keep the whole thing going.
 
IMO whether something is best done by private enterprise or government comes down to the nature of the activity. Specifically, whether it is a viable business in its own right and whether it naturally competes with other producers of the same product or service OR is it an integrated system which by its nature is most efficient as a monopoly?

Some examples.

Let's say we privatised Melbourne's water storages with separate owners for each dam.

Now, the costs are essentially fixed capital - the dams have little ongoing cost once built until they eventually require major works (which may be over a century later).

The volume of production is variable but absolutely at the discretion of nature, not the dam's owner. A private owner won't get more rain than government ownership.

The key to operational efficiency is to minimise water lost to spill. You don't want one dam overflowing whilst another is running low simply because its owner offered a lower price. What you want is to efficiently capture as much water as possible with minimal waste. Given that the total cost is mostly the original investment rather than ongoing operation and that the construction cost can not now be changed, even a 5% loss of water due to less efficient management can't possibly be offset in cost by any realistic operational cost saving.

Now here's the problem. To get efficient management of the water storages you need to be drawing water according to storage levels, overall demand and inflows. If one owner is charging $10 and another is charging $1000 then that's irrelevant since either you manage for long term resource efficiency or you end up completely running out of water. If you don't use the $1000 water today then you WILL use it tomorrow.

Short term there may appear to be competition but long term it's an outright monopoly even if you have 50 dams and 50 owners. The ONLY way to avoid that is to build a lot more dams than you actually need. Trouble is, with most of the cost being capital rather than operation that's going to push costs up rather than down.

To put some figures on it, operating costs for hydro-electric plant in Australia are generally less than 5% of total cost. The other 95% is capital. If you lost 2% of the water due to non-integrated operation then you need a 40% cut in operating costs just to break even. Trouble is, international experience with making river systems and storages compete against each other is that you lose 10% of the water to spill. You've got no chance of a 200% cut in operating costs to offset that so there's no chance of anything but a net loss from competition.

So privatisation per se isn't the problem but rather it is competition. Nature doesn't compete. Private ownership would be economically viable as long as you accept a monopoly.

But is anyone going to argue that a privately owned monopoly is going to reduce the price compared to a government owned monopoly? Possible but I'd argue that government faces more pressure to be reasonable in this regard than some multinational corporation would. Joe Public doesn't get the chance to throw out the corporation's board every few years or elect a new CEO.

Roads are another one. Traffic works as an integrated system that doesn't compete. You're not going to travel North of Sydney tomorrow afternoon just because a private road owner had a discount offer and it was cheaper than travelling South.

Roads are a monopoly no matter who owns it unless there is absolute duplication of infrastructure. But it comes back to the same argument as the dams. Most of the cost is that of construction and much of the rest is maintenance that is needed regardless of actual traffic volume. If you add even 5% to the infrastructure then you're never going to recover that through improved operational efficiency.

Same with rail. I've never heard of anyone going to a major railway station and asking for the cheapest ticket to anywhere. No, they want to travel to location X and won't travel to location Y just because a different track owner is offering cheaper travel. Competition is only going to work with massive duplication of infrastructure and the cost of that is so huge that you'll never recover it through increased efficiency.

It's similar with electricity too. The competitive market produces reasonable prices only with surplus capacity. The operation of the power stations might have become more efficient in a management sense (though it has become far LESS efficient technically in many cases - a lot of coal gets burnt simply to make "competition" work) but now we need idle plant sitting there otherwise the price spikes and industry faces ruin.

The common theme here is that the private operator is more efficient in their use of employees etc but LESS efficient in their use of infrastructure. You need excess dams, roads, rail tracks, power stations or whatever in order to keep prices reasonable under a competitive market system whereas a government monopoly requires no such surplus capacity.

The fundamental point that economists miss - by introducing competition into certain industries it is inevitable that technical and capital use efficiency goes down. If it didn't then you would still have a monopoly. The overall cost is only going to drop if that loss can be more than offset through increased maintenance etc productivity - sometimes it can, often it can't.

I've seen plenty of reports etc into competition, especially in the power industry. NONE of them said anything about how much extra fuel would be needed per unit of electricity produced in order to make this system work. Yep, that's right, they completely missed the single largest ongoing cost in the entire industry as though they didn't realise that plant efficiency isn't constant.

I'm not advocating that we nationalise power, roads, rail or anything else. But there's a real need to start counting ALL the costs in any economic debate as we clearly haven't been so far. The economic reformers wouldn't have a clue what a heat rate or anything else that affects the operation of any complex technical system is and that's the problem.
 
good morning all,

it appears howards legacy has been to reduce unemployment, get rid of unfair dismissal, allow for flexible hiring of staff, increase funding of private education, introduce strict gun laws, and increase privatisation.

nioka points out this is due largely to the mining boom, as a massive injection of revenue into our economy is going to stimulate other businesses as cashed up miners head into town and spend up in restaurants, bars, buy wizz bang electronics, new cars etc. mining shares have gone thru the roof, (before coming back to earth recently) and shareholders have buku dollars to spend. the u rate in the usa is about 4.5%, uk is 5.5% so ours is good but nothing special. global economics is the major driver, not howards policies.

i know little about the running of a business but to me unfair dismissal laws helped small business sack workers, but removed a workers security. good and bad reoint of view. labours policy brings balance imho.
the struggle between employee and employer has always been there. to work well there must be a balance all round. howard went too far.

the gun laws were a positive i reckon. i am a shooter but as has been said, we dont need assault rifles behind the bedroom door. in saying that i agree- lots of good people forfeited good guns.

privatisation. smurf has shown the considerable negative effects of it. its not a lay down mazzaire winner. at the end of the day a company needs to maximise profits for its shareholders. reduce cost or increase price, or both. i have nasty dreams where aussie post is privately run and i get a sms to say 'you have mail.. it can be collected between 9 and 4 etc etc.

apart from stricter gun laws there is little evidence that howard has advanced australia.

how has he sent us backwards?
education- yes more money has gone in, because the student population has grown, but percentage wise, its less. in a technological era, we are being left behind. we are becoming a dumb country. our unis are forced, thru lack of real funding, to import O.S students. this lowers our standards (they are obliged to pass so the uni gets the cheque, and educates our competitors to our high standards.
gotta go...to be continued
 
the role of a govt is to provide strategic direction. to gather all available data and plan ahead for the current population and future generations.

education- the gov't wants to bring in merit pay for teachers. bishop should resign for this alone.
of course some teachers are better than others, we could all pick out our favorites from our school days, just as some politicians are better than others. there are heaps who should be taken out the back and put down.
by attracting the better teachers to select schools, where the kids are easier to teach because of cultural capital, leaves the rest to deal with the rowdier kids in less desirable towns. do that, and within a generation you can say goodbye to australian egalitarianism.

foreign policy- the pacific island nations in our arc of responsibility are basket cases. JI will trickle into areas of poverty like water to low ground. we only give a quarter of 1 percent in aid, yet downer runs around thinking hes their defacto chief.
we took part in an unsanctioned invasion of a soverign nation, justified by a deliberate deception, and has destroyed a nation, killed over half a million civilians, 3000 us troops, 100 pommies, etc. we have a battalion there training what iraqi soldiers the yanks didnt kill. the yanks have 160 000 in country, we have 500. their deployment is token-politically motivated.
thanks to our govt, we are all complicit in the all the deaths to date and all the death to come. there is no easy solution, just more carnage.

the vaunted pacific asylum-seeker solution has had nil effect on the numbers coming and has cost over a BILLION dollars.

environment- when al gore came here with 'an inconvenient truth' our esteemed industry minister, mcfarlane, said he was just a political has been flogging a b grade movie. guy pearce proved that the big polluters are integral to australian policy formation. for 10 of its 11 years the govt has denied global warming, despite a plethora of reports. we contibute only 1 % of the global problem but we could have developed renewables years ago and sold the technology to the big polluters, making our nation wealthier, cleaner, and having a massive impact on global emissions. all business wants is a target and we cant even give them that.
for 10 years there was no problem with water supply and suddenly the situation is so bad a $10 billion water plan is announced that did not go thru a single relevant dept, including treasury. water supply to queenslanders, NSW, and victorians is a national problem and needed federal leadership

aboriginal affairs- for 10 and a half yrs there was no problem, now its so bad that the policy doesnt go thru cabinet, and doesnt take in a single recommendation from the report that 'inspired it'. the plight of abs is not restricted to one state and is a national disgrace requiring federal leadership. a a nation we havent said sorry, havent admitted to the stolen generation or the massacres eg waterloo creek. a childrens book by john marsden called 'the rabbits' says it all.

there are so many other aspects which all up make me think that this govt will be remembered as an aberation in the political history of australia. many have enjoyed economic prosperity, but how much is really down to them and how much is due to our natural resources, tourism, agriculture, hard work, intelligence, previous policies etc. this country could be a magical place to live, but not while howard, abbott, costello, downer, bishop, nelson, mcfarlane, coonan, hockey, and ruddock are steering the ship.
have a top day...its gonna be a beauty.
 

note for diary - next year give the horse a flue injection...

weekend entertainment - read back on the political backflips that occurred during this election year (more U-turns that a carpark full of grannies looking for a spot on Saturday morning)

and tonight - watch out for the moon in the east at sunset
 
well, with the release of labor's new IR policy... its time to start this up again.

I for one am happier that the new policy is taken the common sense approach, by keeping the good bits of Work Choices and backing it up with solid safegaurds such as 'no disadvantage' and heavy union restrictions.

Would have still liked the unfair dismissal for small businesses retained, but it looks like BHP lis happy with this...


meanwhile the liberals have started with the negative campaign, just like they did against broadband, education, even IR etc... What bet they will eventually try to copy labors policy but do it in their own way and do it rather badly (i.e. dodgy bush wireless broadband scheme, higher education endowment fund, and the flimsy protection for workers under 75k).

Still they need to get their own story straight first


Sources: The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22329650-7583,00.html




Interesting Editorial in the Australian on how the Howard govt has dropped the bundle on economic reform in the boom times...

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22329657-16741,00.html
 
Although one can't rule out a late Howard fightback, I too think Mr Rudd will win the election. According to the polls, the Goverment has lost a lot of the so-called "Howard battlers" vote. I feel that its largely a combination of the following factors as to why this is the case.
1. The unpopular IR legislation.
2. Interest rates have risen 5 times since the last election. This has hurt many battlers.
3. The "Its Time" factor. After 11 years there are also voters seeking change. They considered change last time only to to be put off by Mr Latham's character. Now they feel that Mr Rudd is similar to Mr Howard in many respects.
The next election will be interesting indeed. One should not forget that Labor still needs a fairly considerable swing to win.
 
greggy said:
3. The "Its Time" factor. After 11 years there are also voters seeking change. They considered change last time only to to be put off by Mr Latham's character. Now they feel that Mr Rudd is similar to Mr Howard in many respects.
Click to expand...

Yes, I agree that Kevin Rudd's similarity to John Howard, and his apparent capacity to echo John Howard's philosophies to a large degree, is allowing the electorate to have a change which they believe won't really be a change at all in terms of the good stuff. We'll see.
 
John Howard is waiting to see what Pauline Hansons policies are. Remember he has put into place most of the policies he condemned her for having. Has she got anything left to fight for.
 
A classic example of how ideologically driven policies are wasting our money that I found out about last week.

In short, a government office needed a printer so an enthusiastic employee picked a suitable model, went to the shop and bought it. It cost $1200.

All went well until management found out. It seems that buying the printer broke some IT outsourcing contract and it had to go, to be replaced with a printer from the contractor.

OK, so $1200 wasted then? Nope!

It costs $24,000, yes $24,000, to lease that $1200 printer from the government's IT contractor for 3 years. That doesn't include toner or paper.

Now you know why I'm truly fed up with outsourcing. I've seen plenty of examples like this involving all sorts of things, not just IT, and the end result is higher taxes or reduced service whilst some contractor laughs all the way to the bank. An outcome that completely defeats the objective of outsourcing in the first place.

Another government department that imports cheap and nasty copy paper from Israel because that's what suits the stationery contractor is another one that comes to mind. As usual, stupid fools outsourced the entire stationery supply operation so they've got no ability to simply buy something else and distribute it to their offices. Apparently the paper doesn't even stay flat once it's printed on and causes lots of problems in printers, copiers etc with jamming.

It does however come with all the relevant fancy logos, stamps etc that it conforms to this, that and every other standard and is a quality product. As usual, the fools making these decisions seem to think that just because something is "certified" means it's good enough. As I've said, leave technical things to technical people and keep contractors and office clowns well away from them. I'll admit I hadn't thought of them stuffing up with something as simple as paper though - that they did makes the point rather well IMO.

Needless to say, this cheap paper isn't so cheap once the taxpayer gets the bill for it. Actually it's about the same (so I'm told) as paying retail at officeworks for decent paper.
 
Reading this forum, listening to talkback radio or reading the newspaper,everyone is fed up, on a governmental system that spends all our taxes on beauracracy gone mad.
We have 1 federal, 6 state and 2 territorial education departments with their own curriculums, in the one country. With say roughly a billion$ being spent annually in each department, of course thiers no money for a better qualified/paid teacher.
That's education, now do the same for health, law enforcement, transport, ports, enviroment, etc, etc
Labor, Liberal doesn't matter, their all their to feed their face while they can, including the contractors, who do deals that the public don't see. Jobs for the boys, is alive and well.
What can we do....find and support the smaller parties out their trying to stop the rort. www.republicans.org.au are on the right track and worth looking at.
We have to start somewhere, and getting involved is the only way.
 
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