Budget night

I would rather a slightly bloated public utility - which is creating jobs - that is not focused on wild profits for investors/sharesholders - and keeps low cost competition on the table

 

I am not going to get into an argument with you @TSK , I am quite certain our political ideas are probably diametrically opposed. Of course government have a role in delivering essential services but I pretty much feel in every other area they should just setup the regulatory framework and then get out of the way.

You did ask for an example of government inefficiency, there are plenty of course, but I will give you one from my neck of the woods. After Campbell Newman got tossed in QLD for having the audacity to reduce Government spending, labour come in with a brilliant policy of “no forced redundancies”. Why? What private sector company would ever come up with such a ridiculous concept. So now you have government departments that will either carry unused headcount they don’t need, or alternarively will put the surplus staff in a “future deployment pool”, waiting for a job to come up. In the meantime they just work on their resumes or surf the net on their phones.

Never mind the fact that lots of them are already have higher pay and better conditions than their equivalent roles in the corporate world anyway, which acts as a disincentive for lots of folk in the public sector to ever want to leave, which I also fundamentally disagree with.

So yeah, If I have the choice I would rather hold on to more of my tax dollars than fund this type of government waste.

 

in a capitalist country once the asset is sold, hell or high water it ain't coming back just buy shares and get dividends to pay for all your utils bills
their growth will outpace utils bill increase

CBA dividend for my banks fee and mortgage
APA for my gas bill
AGL for my electricity bills
CTX for my petrol

 

I agree that utils should stay public and government run but it ain't going to happen in the country
so I just find another way to pay for it via their shares

 

Newman was defeated for a number of reasons, I suspect how he approached people like he was still in the military rather than government had something to do with it. I’m not across the redundancy options in qld gov but have worked in companies (billion dollar turn overs) where they requested people to put up hands for redundancy and this was checked to see if operationally it could be done and they left on good terms....hell some got rehired a year later. The problem is you look at government services with the lense of what you Consider essential rather than as a society with a multitude of needs.

 

My wife was telling me that private medical insurance companies are seeing unexpected profits because people are now reluctant to use their insurance because of excessive gap fees.

In our household, despite having top cover for everything, we were going to face a gap of $9000 for an operation. We got a second opinion and the second surgeon said to try some physio and wait and see.

While I understand your meaning, I can't think of any situation where privatisation of a service has benefited the public. Private companies borrow at commercial rates of interest and are expected to make double digit profits, and those profits are expected to grow every year by at least the rate of inflation.

 

Depends on what the metric is used for success. I can't think of one myself but I'm sure they exist...

 

The Coalition says the silliest things about economic management | Richard Denniss

Does anyone have a recommendation for someone on the 'conservative' political side of economics that does analysis like Greg gericho at the guardian. Most of the Oz appear to be opinion writers rather analysis, same with AFR.

 

AFR is gear for stock market, they mostly report on companies, business model, rumor of deal and M&A activities not really gear for in depth economic analysis that is not their market
I am a subscriber and I prefer it to stay that way

 

This could have been a thread on privatisation

I don't agree that there are many (if any) efficient government departments, but they do manage to operate and get the job done. (Police would be hard to privatize, imagine the corruption)

The sell off of many public assets has been to obtain funds to spend today (and look good), with little long term considerations, from power to ports and desalination plants, both state and federal gov got it wrong in my opinion !

If they aren't competent to run the services already sold off, how can they possibly be competent or responsible enough to figure out a budget !