For some, the end begins now.

And all you whining shit heads can donate your tax cuts back to the ATO if you don’t want it, or give it to your local public school or public hospital.

Bet you won’t – i’ts the guvverments responsibility!

Get rid of the dole and pensions.

Get rid of medicare.

Get rid of public education.

And get rid of compulsory private health insurance by getting rid of the Medicare surcharge.

Middle class welfare… get rid of it! Breeder bribe bonus, Family Tax A and B, Childcare rebate, fark if people want to have kids, great, it’s a free country but why are we all paying for this?

First homeowner money also is useless, it just inflates the market and puts taxpayers money into the greasy claws of real estate people.

I’m not in a heritage area. Just one built in the 60s. I’ll try the ‘housing choice’ magic if I can ever work up the energy to try again.

Just whisper these words: “Housing choice”. But if it is heritage area tough.

You reckon? Ever tried to get approval to build a new architectually designed house in an established suburb? Trying to deal with the people at ACTPLA is enough to make you want to slash your wrists.

ACTPLA has a reffo from SA who does the builders bidding and allows everything to be built. Looks like ACTPLA is doing a superb job!

Agree the lake is a national treasure. That’s why it’s the right place for a national monument celebrating migrants to our great country.

On NCA job cuts. What’s that, about half the staff? How did the new gov work that out? Where’s the report and what will it mean? Does that leave enough people for them to do their jobs? Or are we going to end up with another useless gov agency like ACTPLA who couldn’t organise their way out of a wet paper bag.

The lake is a national treasure. The NCA don’t give a stuff about the sailing or rowing activities of residents of the ACT

I will be his intern!

I support the construction of Immigration Bridge. It’s a great idea. I also support the National Capital Authority. Sure they’ve made a few stuff ups along the way, but they’ve done a pretty fine job in other areas – such as the Griffin Legacy -which is an excellent idea and vision for Canberra. What I’d like to know is how the Rudd government worked the numbers for the job cuts.

VY for PM!

The easiest thing to do would be to stop the planned tax cuts, given the effect on inflation they will have anyway. That would save most of the needed $$. Also, we should be investing lots into the Future Fund, and getting ourselves ready for the global recession, when we may need to run deficit budgets for a while.

Pandy, so do you think the bridge is a good idea? Note that they’ve amassed a motsa of money from subscriptions, but they haven’t actually got final approval to build the thing. They reckon they’ll pay the money back if they don’t get final approval, minus an ‘administration fee’. Yeah, right, the whole thing’s a money making venture by a bunch of spivs, disguised as some sort of national tribute to immigration and multiculturalism (how can you argue with that). A lot of people support the bridge on that basis, but haven’t thought out how this ugly bridge to nowhere (well, I presume they’ll build a carpark on the other side where the clover leaves are now) will impact on the lake.

Fluges, even though the immigrant bridge is totally private funded, NCA will allow it to be built. It fits in with the plans that Griffin had and is one reason why they want to get rid of the clover leaves around Commonwealth Bridge.

Canberra’s restaurateurs, travel agents and architects will be hoping that the Gubbinment stays true to its word and takes the meataxe to the APS. Plenty of farewell lunches and VR money to go round then.

And if they can’t find $20b in rubbish programs devised in desperation by the last lot then the Finance wallahs aren’t trying.

So say we all.

Not, the executives paying when not in use – anyone else who needs a park

= revenue!

What about the empty executive car parks for the people who ride bikes? They could make them pay parking when not in use : P

Put them back to what they are supposed to be doing – i.e. lawn mowing in the Parliamentary Triangle.

Pandy, don’t forget the stupid ‘immigration bridge’ they’re trying to foist on us:
http://www.immigrationbridge.com.au/. This ridiculous ‘mighty national community project’, this monstrosity, must be stopped!

Good riddance NCA.

Albert Hall; getting rid of the clover leafs; saying traffic lights on Commonwealth Ave would actually increase speeds; allowing the exapnsion at the airport; telling what we could not do in the forestry settlements.

Hope you all rot.

thats simplified

“…how do you cut $13 billion out of the existing public service?”

Stop the public servants reliance on itself thats how. The public service makes things overly complex to ensure that they need more of themselves – eg the ATO should have performance based on dimplified tax act (it is currently taller than a person!!!!) – it should be halved each 12 months.

Stop stealing money through taxes just to give it back minus a public service administration charge – Howard employed thousands to “police” rather than provide service.

“…how do you cut $13 billion out of the existing public service?”

Make the pollies take a paycut.

Is that my cloud over there?

How cool would it be to have all the government offices using OpenOffice, Firefox, and open source email instead of Microsoft! Would save heaps – not just in licensing, but also lost productivity due to viruses.

I don’t think that you will have much trouble finding VR canidates – the bulk of the babyboomers are approaching or over 55. They are generally past it anyway – so lets see if they invested well in making the next generation skilled and experienced (you reap what you sow you old farts)

I’ll happily accept a redundancy package. World domination does not start in the public service.

Open Source software.

(okay, so i’m trolling a bit. :P)

Sorry, should have been Neanderthalsis rather than Thumper.

I’d agree that there is a lot of fat in consultancies and outsourcing. But some of it would need to be done anyway – although public servants would usually be cheaper. One could make savings by reducing the effort going to the rear end of agency activities (some accountability stuff, but an awful lot of permanenet structures to deal with short-term problems). Most government information campaigns, even when not overtly political, have been a poorly directed waste of money. A bit of rationality about buildings would save a lot.

And then there are programs. Minor tweaks in social security for the more affluent aged or a critical approach to funding of public/private things (eg hospitals and child care) would be useful as would restructuring education funding to provide a standard contribution related to other school income. Be critical about some of the less worthwhile universities and their airier programs.

As a proposition, if Defence buys something for, say, $1b and that includes mistakes, delays and fudges worth $400m, why shouldn’t Defence have to find the lost money. And there’s been a hell of a lot of that kind of thing. Defence is probably the worst, but it’s not the only offender.

One thing that should be done if there must be losses is pool those who may lose their jobs and reallocate them where they can work. The 1996-97 and later redundancies led to (a) a massive number of expensive and variably useful consultants and (b) a huge loss of talent, much of which found its way back in after a couple of years. It was an utter waste of resources.

I can see it now Thumper. The tax cuts will go ahead, but they’ll scrap the childcare rebate and the health insurance subsidy – to support the whole thing, they’ll produce a consultants reporty that found that people preferred tax cuts to hand outs because it allowed them to choose how to spend their money. The tax cuts will get swallowed up on covering the cost of health insurance and childcare.

A quick check down the back of the sofas netted some Little Kev some $3b in unspent funds last week.

There seems to be a fair bit of fat that can be trimed from the operational budgets of a number of Depts as well as cuts to projects / programmes, esp in defence, DEEWR and FaCSIA.

Still, Wayno came out and said that they will go ahead with $31b in tax cuts despite their search for dollars and the so called war on inflation.

I am happy to consult on how to best cut back on consultants. Give me money now !!

Toriness, wash your mouth out! 🙂

get rid of overpriced consultancies – who are simply ex-public servants who have left the APS to work for a consultancy firm then are hired back to do the same work for 3 times the price

“…how do you cut $13 billion out of the existing public service?”

Sack everyone, then replace them with consultants!

“…how do you cut $13 billion out of the existing public service?”

Cut programmes. Ditching ASL isn’t going to get you close. Defence, health, social security are the big government spenders so the most fat can be trimmed from these areas. The government might look at walking away from a number of Defence contracts, they could probably lose some of the middle class welfare like the baby bonus, health insurance rebate and the childcare rebate – then you could put some spin on the way the $13 billion will be calculated – instead of digging up a lump sum, you say it’s calculated over the term of the government so the amount you’re looking for becomes $4.3 billion a year (assuming a three budget government).

Given the difficulty the APS is facing in recruiting at present I doubt that the former NCA bods will have too much trouble finding somewhere to hand their cardigan – actually, for NCA types it would probably be a black lambswool or cashmere polo neck …

YEs, I realise that the article does mention “Government spending -and- the public service”, but the pre-election buildup seemed to play up more about the increase to spending (smaller than Liberals yes, but still an increase to costs), tax cuts (decreased income)and the promised razor gang (the promised decreased expensing).