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Don't address the stats with anything meaningful then.
Retrospective - Paul Keating as economic manager
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I actually did, I brought the topic back on thread, Keating brought about FIFO, so the stats are there to be seen.
I just thought you were clever enough to understand the obvious, obviously not.
As I said, It is much healthier for a person to go home to his family every day, which is the reason mining companies built mining towns.
When fringe benefits tax was introduced, from memory it penalised the mining companies for supplying company housing, they sold the houses and started FIFO camps.
Today in W.A there are no company towns, back in the 1960' and 1970's they were great communities of aspirational families, wanting to build a future for themselves and the country, now they are a shadow of their former selves. IMO it is a tragedy.
Maybe you can add something more intelligent than, 'The suicide rate is huge'? Or are you agreeing with me that Keating may have had a brain fart?
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Yep, even a child wouldn't have been able to escape hearing it since it was a term constantly used on practically every news bulletin even on commercial radio.
For those who didn't live through that era, the closest comparison would be the term "Covid" or "pandemic" during 2020 and 21. Everywhere and couldn't escape hearing about it.
"Economic rationalism" was one.
"Microeconomic reform" was the other term.
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Looking at Keating's legacy and sticking to things I know something about, an observation about the energy industry.
On one hand reforms broke the back of what had become overly militant unions and also reigned in some rather out of control organisations running the industry. I say that as someone who's in no way opposed to unions ideologically, just in practice some did go too far and held society to ransom.
On the other hand, National Competition Policy and things relating to it are a very real obstacle to efficient operation of the power system today. It's directly adding financial costs, fuel consumption and emissions simply because we've got different generators competing with each other when it would be more efficient if they complemented each other. End result is it's part of the cause of the present energy crisis in the eastern states simply because infrastructure that's already built, which is sitting there right now, isn't being used to its full potential due to all manner of legal and regulatory constraints that nobody dares breach.
Putting that in simpler terms, rules and regulations get in the way of technical efficiency and when they conflict, it's the rules and regulations that must be followed. It frustrates those on the technical side greatly to see such things occur, which could be stopped in a matter of minutes, but no can do, competition law says otherwise and comes with very harsh penalties if breached.
In general I'd say Keating had reasonable ideas but failed to accept that not all ideas which seem reasonable in theory are actually good in practice. In anything from art to engineering, there's things which seem good until you head down the track of trying to do them and realise that actually no, they're not worth going any further with since there's actually a fatal flaw.
Within the energy industry the good thing was it stopped over building and it stopped militancy. Both were very definite problems.
The bad thing is it also stopped efficient dispatch of generating plant and it stopped effective planning for the future, both as a direct consequence of having no single entity with effective control. There's an awful lot of guessing going on, and mistakes being made, simply because effective communication and resource sharing doesn't occur between the various parties to it all.
The chickens have now come home to roost there - Keating-era reforms certainly aren't the only cause but they're a factor in perpetuating silliness.
On one hand reforms broke the back of what had become overly militant unions and also reigned in some rather out of control organisations running the industry. I say that as someone who's in no way opposed to unions ideologically, just in practice some did go too far and held society to ransom.
On the other hand, National Competition Policy and things relating to it are a very real obstacle to efficient operation of the power system today. It's directly adding financial costs, fuel consumption and emissions simply because we've got different generators competing with each other when it would be more efficient if they complemented each other. End result is it's part of the cause of the present energy crisis in the eastern states simply because infrastructure that's already built, which is sitting there right now, isn't being used to its full potential due to all manner of legal and regulatory constraints that nobody dares breach.
Putting that in simpler terms, rules and regulations get in the way of technical efficiency and when they conflict, it's the rules and regulations that must be followed. It frustrates those on the technical side greatly to see such things occur, which could be stopped in a matter of minutes, but no can do, competition law says otherwise and comes with very harsh penalties if breached.
In general I'd say Keating had reasonable ideas but failed to accept that not all ideas which seem reasonable in theory are actually good in practice. In anything from art to engineering, there's things which seem good until you head down the track of trying to do them and realise that actually no, they're not worth going any further with since there's actually a fatal flaw.
Within the energy industry the good thing was it stopped over building and it stopped militancy. Both were very definite problems.
The bad thing is it also stopped efficient dispatch of generating plant and it stopped effective planning for the future, both as a direct consequence of having no single entity with effective control. There's an awful lot of guessing going on, and mistakes being made, simply because effective communication and resource sharing doesn't occur between the various parties to it all.
The chickens have now come home to roost there - Keating-era reforms certainly aren't the only cause but they're a factor in perpetuating silliness.
Just proves how insidious the media industry is then, now and always; the media is and always has been a tool for controlling information and hence opinion/thought for the benefit of their owners.
My neighbour a former energy worker on transmission lines tried to explain to me a big problem was they (not sure who "they" is) were paid by how much infrastructure they built and as a result they were very built all over the place with substations and lines going in literally just to build them. If it was more a case of future proofing is an open question.Looking at Keating's legacy and sticking to things I know something about, an observation about the energy industry.
On one hand reforms broke the back of what had become overly militant unions and also reigned in some rather out of control organisations running the industry. I say that as someone who's in no way opposed to unions ideologically, just in practice some did go too far and held society to ransom.
On the other hand, National Competition Policy and things relating to it are a very real obstacle to efficient operation of the power system today. It's directly adding financial costs, fuel consumption and emissions simply because we've got different generators competing with each other when it would be more efficient if they complemented each other. End result is it's part of the cause of the present energy crisis in the eastern states simply because infrastructure that's already built, which is sitting there right now, isn't being used to its full potential due to all manner of legal and regulatory constraints that nobody dares breach.
Suffice to say it frustrates those on the technical sides that their hands are tied and that common sense cannot simply be followed to prevent silly outcomes.
In general I'd say Keating had reasonable ideas but failed to accept that not all ideas which seem reasonable in theory are actually good in practice. In anything from art to engineering, there's things which seem good until you head down the track of trying to do them and realise that actually no, they're not worth going any further with since there's actually a fatal flaw.
Within the energy industry the good thing was it stopped over building and it stopped militancy. Both were very definite problems.
The bad thing is it also stopped efficient dispatch of generating plant and it stopped effective planning for the future, both as a direct consequence of having no single entity with effective control. The chickens have now come home to roost there - Keating-era reforms certainly aren't the only cause but they're a factor.