The Federal Budget for Canberra - 2007

Kimba

You’re thinking of the wrong opposition, it was the NSW Opposition (Liberals) who wanted to cut 20,000 jobs from the NSW public service (and they didn’t get in).

And libertarianism makes the (grotesquely flawed) assumption that everyone behaves and spends their money rationally and everyone can look after themselves, given the economic imperative.

Our present system of high marginal tax rates, big government, and welfare penalises graft and rewards sloth.

Whilst firmly of the belief you could fire one in four public servants and feel no appreciable difference in the level of service, I don’t know if paying the PS more, reducing the benefits and asking them to work harder will necessarily solve the problem, VY.

I could make better cash in the private sector, but I’ll stick with the public. I like my 8 hour work day. If I went to the private sector, I’d have more money, but I’d be back at work every night. Money is not the sole “economic stimulus”.

I’d like to see the public service become a bit leaner and meaner. Basically, pay public servants better in terms of cash, reduce all the extra benefits a bit, and get them to work a bit harder. In particular make SES far more accountable. The end result is a hard working public service that delivers lots of high quality services, and the people are paid accordingly.

Well the interesting thing with this Gov’t is that their total staffing and spend is now even bigger than after their slash and burn in 1996.

I have not doubt Labor won’t slash it back either. Just a bit of reorganising, and let it grow even bigger!

Move to the US, Ralph. You’d love it there. They’re taxed as highly, but get sweet bugger-all back for it. An unaccountable public service, services provided by private contracted firms, and nothing really works. I’ve been back just under a week and the difference is huge.

I’d be surprised if a Labor gov’t really slashed the APS.

I did say small government, not no government. There is a role for public goods, defence, some roads etc. Health and education are grey areas indeed.

Ok, Ralph, in which case don’t drive on any roads, don’t use a hospital, never go to school (as both public and private are funded from taxes), or rely on the many other government services which I’m sure you do. Otherwise you’re just picking on the services you don’t use because you don’t use them.

“the real question is where we’re going to put them all.”

Tralee.

So is that the best you can come up with?

Sorry I didn’t think that suggesting people actually get off their backsides, and not sucking people’s money off them through high rates of taxation, and having governments spend money poorly and distort markets while they’re at it would be such a ludicrous idea.

Free markets and small government, also called libertarianism.

Yeah but you’re also a nutbar.

You’re thinking of a government that would still provide comparable services.

When I say smaller government, I mean almost zero public welfare, minimal taxation, no subsidies, and minimal red tape.

smaller the govt, less services (i.e. timely advice, service delivery) provided to constituency. Contractors will boom, leading to mispent govt cash due to laziness and distinct lack of time. bad karma, this is how corruption becomes entrenched in public institutiuons.

The less public servants we have, and the smaller the government overall; the better.

Well if Rudd is elected we wont have to worry about housing the extra public servants as they want to cut 20,000 of our hard working public servants. Imagine what that will do to our economy. And where is Lundy, Ellis and McMullen???

Great budget, especially investments into assets for the future. This should keep the good times rolling for another year or two. I guess we should ‘make hay while the sun shines’, eh?

Oh, we’re going to put them out at Brindabella of course.
Stanhope is probably hoping that he can siphon money out of these funds to build his salute to mafia..

houseboats on lake burley griffin.

The first question is where will they even find them?

And where are they going to park? 😉

And they’ll all get juicy redundancy package before coming back next week as a contractor, the ACT economy will boom just like last time.

And honestly I can’t see the ALP seriously reducing the scope of what they want to commonwealth government to do, that means more public servants still.

the real question is where we’re going to put them all.

Sorry, 5,244.

5,400 public service jobs…that will then be slashed if a change of government happens, as was apparently the case in ’96?

Funny … I was a PM in my last job before I started my family.

I wouldn’t hire you as a Project Manager. Budget approval comes before delivery. 😉

andy, I tried that with a job at Dept of Health (I think, it’s a long time ago now) – after being offered (and accepting) the job I asked for part time and they refused.

From what I recall, to become permanent in any job you have to complete a probationary period (usually three months). During that time I would most likely have to work full time and that is just something I just can’t do right now.

There is no way that I can start full time, not with two under school aged children now, and then rely on the employer to maybe allow me to reduce to part time only AFTER I have started.

The Budget is pretty good. Even ‘nero’ Stanhope likes it!

duffymum, the way to do it, is get a permanent job then say you have family commitments and you want to work part time..

Al, I lost count of the number of times I contacted Centrelink, DEWR and the like asking for part time work. Every single time I was told that they would either take my name or there was nothing available.

I even got as far as an offer once, even mentioning that I needed to work part time, but they conveniently forgot about that when they offered and were only content to honour the offer if I would work full time.

Yes, there is definitely an I.T. shortage here but when they only truly want full-timers there is nothing I can do about it.

And Al, I was most definitely looking very hard – please don’t accuse me of anything less. But after a while (try three solid years) repeated rejection does get to you … ask anyone in this same boat.

That was the first thing I thought of when I heard about the changes to the Russell roundabout … oh those poor people that need to use that route during this. So glad it’s not me (I used to be at one time). 🙁

Duffy mum: you can’t be looking too hard given the complete crisis of IT staff in this town. You only need rock up to DEWR or Centrelink or several other departments, tell em what hours you want to work, and you’ll be on the list.

Actually.. you know what this flyover means.. a metric shit ton of congestion and annoyance during peak hour.
Think Glenloch Interchange, PLUS Belconnen Way GDE disruptions…

I wonder if the bridges will include foot traffic.
I hope so.

Defence has been trying to get an underpass thru parkes way for ages – as has pedal power. Hundreds of people try to nip across that road at lunch to job around the lake.

What about some spending on the Kings Hwy? Now that’s a road that needs atention that is very much long overdue.

And it’s all well and good putting more money into childcare benefits in order to get mothers back into the workforce … BUT … where are all the part time jobs for those mothers that they want?

I was forced to resign when I was unable to get childcare for my son back in 2005. I have since looked long and hard for suitable part time jobs so that I could return to the workforce but there has been nothing. I am a 20+ year experienced I.T. professional but no company hires part time I.T. staff.

Yes, I could do something else (and I did, part time admin work was all I could get, but for the short while I was there I felt thoroughly bored with the meniality of it all). If you are used to challenging work before you have a family, to return to something that is simple and repetitive at best, just so you can work, is never going to encourage you to stay in the workforce.

Tax cuts increase the supply side of the economy. The bigger our economy the better.

Governments are great at bringing together money and spending it very poorly.

Tax cuts are useless. the gov’t is the only body that can pull together all that small money into big money and do big things with it.

The Russell roundabout has been a mess since Snow built his CBD at the aiport. Now the traffic load is unbalanced, by the hordes heading to the airport in the morning, and leaving of an evening. If you approach it along Moreshead too late in the morning, it is backed up past the small Russell offices roundabout. And just as bad along Parkes Way back toward Civic.

The Feds allowed Snow to build his airport empire, so they should bloody well fix the roads mess it created.

hehehehe

or you could combine the two and have high speed canal catamarans…

No tax cuts we can do without its infrastructure spending we need and the vision to be able to commit to the big engineering and nation building projects that need to be started.

Such as European style very fast trains between Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane

And the large scale movement of water from where its abundant to where its not.

Not enough tax cuts. Too much welfare spending.

Yep – just confirmed in canberra Times.

I think it’s a good idea – I hate that roundabout. and it is the worst blackspot in Canberra I think – more than one accident a day (mostly minor).

CT:
“The funding also includes the replacement of the Russell roundabout at the intersection of Kings Avenue and Parkes Way with an overpass. New bridges will carry Kings Avenue over Parkes Way and through to Russell. The project is due to be constructed in 2008-09.”

why don’t they spend that money on a flyover for monaro/morshead FFS.

Yep, almost funny when you think how much they’ve spent trying to make the roundabout safe.

Remember though that the PM and C1 have to try and traverse it on a regular basis. So there’s a personal security matter focussing the mind of a short person.

A flyover at the Kings Ave and Parkway intersection – is that the Russell roundabout?