13 October 2012

Greens claim ‘fiscal conservative’ tag

| Jazz
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The ACT Greens Media release this morning has them claiming the fiscal conservative tag from the two majors with a pretty significant $160 million difference in recurrent commitments from the next closest party.

Are they completely delusional in what it costs to run government? or are the measures suggested in the media release sufficient to significantly reduce the costs of governance of the ACT. Certainly the difference between the $158m announced by the Greens and the $441m in recurrent spend proposed by Labor makes for a pretty significant dent in current debts or dare i say it, rates and stamp duties.

Media Release below :

The ACT Greens have now finalised their total spending envelope for the 2012 election, reinforcing their commitment to returning the budget to surplus by 2015-16.

“The Greens commitment to sustainability applies to economics too, and we’ve outlined, and submitted to Treasury, a fiscally responsible plan,” said ACT Greens Leader, Meredith Hunter.

“Costings matter, and we’ve put the numbers out there for the Canberra community to see. While one party has played games and blatantly hidden their costings and plans, the Greens have subjected ourselves to the scrutiny that we believe all election promises should undergo.

“I’m calling on the other parties to announce any savings they have planned and submit those proposals to the Treasury process.

As of October 11th, the announcements* by the three major parties came to:

Recurrent commitments over 4 years
ALP (announced so far) – $449 million
Canberra Liberals (announced so far) -$319 million
ACT Greens (total commitments) – $158 million
*Correct at time of publication

The Greens have identified five ways that the ACT Government can make savings in operations, and called on the other parties to come clean with their savings initiatives.

“We’re looking to reign in ballooning insurance premiums, increase competition for Government tenders and reduce consultant costs.

“The bulk of savings in our plan comes from improving competition in Government procurement, and the Greens plan will simply bring the ACT into line with the Commonwealth.

“The Greens are open and transparent about our savings. These are all of the savings that we are planning, and they do not cut one job from the public service.

“The other parties election promises, particularly the Canberra Liberals, have not included any indication of how they fit into a fiscal plan to return to surplus.

“Given the massive job cuts we’ve seen by other Liberal State Governments, I’m calling on Zed Seselja’s Liberals in particular to come clean with any savings they intend to make.

The Greens five efficiency initiatives are:
· Insurance premiums for workers compensation grew by almost 30% over the last few years in the ACTPS. The Greens would focus on reducing workplace injuries to reign in the ballooning costs.
· Tender the Greenhouse Gas Inventory to private sector. Currently the ICRC undertakes the task at substantially greater cost than is offered by private firms.
· Increase competition for Government procurement by reducing tender limit from $200k to $80k – in line with Commonwealth.
· Reduce shared services use of consultants
· Make better use of internal audit processes to drive cost savings though redesign of inefficient processes

“These savings are modest and do not come at the expense of jobs. The Greens believe that we should always be trying to identify efficiencies and get the best possible value for public funds,” Ms Hunter said.

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Gungahlin Al7:09 am 16 Oct 12

SnapperJack: I’ve been here all along. Maybe not as much as I’d like and certainly not as much as HenryBG, but it’s a bit hard to follow everything on RA when you’re out pounding the pavement on sore feet.

HenryBG: assertion with no backing in fact.
Here’s the link. You tell me where it says anything about slashing private school funding:
http://act.greens.org.au/content/education-2
No? That’s because it doesn’t. It supports the Gonski recommendations 100%. Which is all about equity of educational outcomes for everyone.

Madam Cholet said :

“We’re looking to reign in ballooning insurance premiums…..”

I think it should be ‘rein’ and not ‘reign’ – otherwise that part of the sentence has a whole different meaning.

Haha! Classic.

HenryBG said :

“The Greens would focus on reducing workplace injuries to reign in the ballooning costs.”

How do you rein in the incidence of imaginary injuries acquired by bored public servants with nothing else to do with their time?

I predict they’ll create a flurry of ridiculous pamphlets, visits to workplaces by oh-so-tedious OH&S staff, and all in all spend more than whatever it is they think they are trying to save.

The way to save money is to stop accepting dodgy doctors’ certificates presented by work-shirking malingerers and make it a requirement that anybody calling in sick call in the first instance a medical professional to explain why they are too sick to go to work.
Anybody that doesn’t comply gets the sack.
Then, sack all the consultants.
Then, make the permanent staff do the work the consultants were doing.
Any who refuse, sack them.
Pretty soon, the unemployed consultants will be applying for the vacated permanent positions.

Should be able to halve the army of pubes in this town and more than halve the wage bill.

As for what the Greens have *really* done to make their figure so much smaller – they’ve slashed spending on education. Retards.

On the face of it, a sensible suggestion, but since it comes from you it must be rejected as unworkable and idiotic

SnapperJack said :

Ah, Gungahlin Al finally surfaces. What’s wrong Al, Greens polling during the election campaign not looking so good, eh?

‘finally’? – what about the first response above, snapper?

SnapperJack said :

Ah, Gungahlin Al finally surfaces. What’s wrong Al, Greens polling during the election campaign not looking so good, eh?

The Greens have done their dash. Voting against the ETS federally did them almost as much damage as voting for the GST did the Democrats. They are simply not credible as the party of environmentalism any more.

thisnexus said :

HenryBG said :

As for what the Greens have *really* done to make their figure so much smaller – they’ve slashed spending on education. Retards.

Dude, how have the greens “slashed funding” on education?

44% of Canberrans send their children to non-government schools. These schools are almost all now enrolling at or above capacity, and each student at one of these schools costs about 23% of what they would cost at a government school.
The parties who *genuinely* accept the Gonski report are increasing the very much underfunded non-government education sector – a very good investment, considering the costs are lower and outcomes higher than investment in public schools.

The Greens on the other hand have declared war on non-government education, thereby alienating the parents and families of 44% of Canberra’s schoolchildren.

Presumably they’ve forgotten the lessons learned from the Catholic Schools strike – I for one would love it if the lefties had to eat humble pie once again.

Or maybe the Greens could just grow up and represent the community as a whole instead of a narrow fringe of ideologues and refugees from the various defunct communist activist groups.

Duffbowl said :

HenryBG said :

The way to save money is to stop accepting dodgy doctors’ certificates presented by work-shirking malingerers and make it a requirement that anybody calling in sick call in the first instance a medical professional to explain why they are too sick to go to work.
Anybody that doesn’t comply gets the sack.

HenryBG, how do you propose to:
– identify “dodgy doctors” in such a way as to not get the entire AMA offside?
– locate medical professionals to explain illnesses on a day of illness, when there aren’t enough doctors to do this now?

They did it in the UK, and absenteeism plummeted. To call in sick, you had to call a hotline and explain yourself to a medical professional. People stopped chucking sickies.

It can be done. It has been done. And if we weren’t so tolerant towards idle scroungers in the APS, it would be done.

No, I’m not an ideas man – these ideas came from others, were put into practice, and have proven to have worked.

Ah, Gungahlin Al finally surfaces. What’s wrong Al, Greens polling during the election campaign not looking so good, eh?

Gungahlin Al9:11 am 15 Oct 12

thisnexus said :

HenryBG said :

“The Greens would focus on reducing workplace injuries to reign in the ballooning costs.”

How do you rein in the incidence of imaginary injuries acquired by bored public servants with nothing else to do with their time?

I predict they’ll create a flurry of ridiculous pamphlets, visits to workplaces by oh-so-tedious OH&S staff, and all in all spend more than whatever it is they think they are trying to save.

The way to save money is to stop accepting dodgy doctors’ certificates presented by work-shirking malingerers and make it a requirement that anybody calling in sick call in the first instance a medical professional to explain why they are too sick to go to work.
Anybody that doesn’t comply gets the sack.
Then, sack all the consultants.
Then, make the permanent staff do the work the consultants were doing.
Any who refuse, sack them.
Pretty soon, the unemployed consultants will be applying for the vacated permanent positions.

Should be able to halve the army of pubes in this town and more than halve the wage bill.

As for what the Greens have *really* done to make their figure so much smaller – they’ve slashed spending on education. Retards.

Dude, how have the greens “slashed funding” on education?

Exactly. We haven’t. In fact the Greens support the Gonski Report recommendations.

Alan Kerlin
Greens Candidate – Molonglo.

HenryBG said :

“The Greens would focus on reducing workplace injuries to reign in the ballooning costs.”

How do you rein in the incidence of imaginary injuries acquired by bored public servants with nothing else to do with their time?

I predict they’ll create a flurry of ridiculous pamphlets, visits to workplaces by oh-so-tedious OH&S staff, and all in all spend more than whatever it is they think they are trying to save.

The way to save money is to stop accepting dodgy doctors’ certificates presented by work-shirking malingerers and make it a requirement that anybody calling in sick call in the first instance a medical professional to explain why they are too sick to go to work.
Anybody that doesn’t comply gets the sack.
Then, sack all the consultants.
Then, make the permanent staff do the work the consultants were doing.
Any who refuse, sack them.
Pretty soon, the unemployed consultants will be applying for the vacated permanent positions.

Should be able to halve the army of pubes in this town and more than halve the wage bill.

As for what the Greens have *really* done to make their figure so much smaller – they’ve slashed spending on education. Retards.

There are moments when I think HenryBG thinks logically, and has well thought out opinions. These rare moments, however, seem to get regularly crushed by the type of post above.

HenryBG, how do you propose to:
– identify “dodgy doctors” in such a way as to not get the entire AMA offside?
– locate medical professionals to explain illnesses on a day of illness, when there aren’t enough doctors to do this now?
– manage an semi-effective APS for the six months it will take churn through the staff using the methods identified above?
Or you an “ideas man”, and will leave the details to someone else?

and where is the comment i just made?

where is the slashing of education?

HenryBG said :

“The Greens would focus on reducing workplace injuries to reign in the ballooning costs.”

How do you rein in the incidence of imaginary injuries acquired by bored public servants with nothing else to do with their time?

I predict they’ll create a flurry of ridiculous pamphlets, visits to workplaces by oh-so-tedious OH&S staff, and all in all spend more than whatever it is they think they are trying to save.

The way to save money is to stop accepting dodgy doctors’ certificates presented by work-shirking malingerers and make it a requirement that anybody calling in sick call in the first instance a medical professional to explain why they are too sick to go to work.
Anybody that doesn’t comply gets the sack.
Then, sack all the consultants.
Then, make the permanent staff do the work the consultants were doing.
Any who refuse, sack them.
Pretty soon, the unemployed consultants will be applying for the vacated permanent positions.

Should be able to halve the army of pubes in this town and more than halve the wage bill.

As for what the Greens have *really* done to make their figure so much smaller – they’ve slashed spending on education. Retards.

Dude, how have the greens “slashed funding” on education?

HenryBG said :

“The Greens would focus on reducing workplace injuries to reign in the ballooning costs.”

How do you rein in the incidence of imaginary injuries acquired by bored public servants with nothing else to do with their time?

I predict they’ll create a flurry of ridiculous pamphlets, visits to workplaces by oh-so-tedious OH&S staff, and all in all spend more than whatever it is they think they are trying to save.

The way to save money is to stop accepting dodgy doctors’ certificates presented by work-shirking malingerers and make it a requirement that anybody calling in sick call in the first instance a medical professional to explain why they are too sick to go to work.
Anybody that doesn’t comply gets the sack.
Then, sack all the consultants.
Then, make the permanent staff do the work the consultants were doing.
Any who refuse, sack them.
Pretty soon, the unemployed consultants will be applying for the vacated permanent positions.

Should be able to halve the army of pubes in this town and more than halve the wage bill.

As for what the Greens have *really* done to make their figure so much smaller – they’ve slashed spending on education. Retards.

Assuming you don’t meant teachers and nurses (who are never employed as consultants), but the administration arm of the PS, you might not be too far off the mark from some of the projects we see around town. Armies of consultants to do the job of a handful would be an appropriate description.

The Greens policy here does nothing to address the real wastage. It doesn’t cost must to play around the edges, which is perhaps the reason they can claim ‘fiscal conservatism’.

Maybe they mean the Rudd-style fiscal conservatism, where you hand out $800 cheques to everyone whether they need the money or not.

Masquara said :

Madam Cholet said :

“We’re looking to reign in ballooning insurance premiums…..”

I think it should be ‘rein’ and not ‘reign’ – otherwise that part of the sentence has a whole different meaning.

Quite. The ACT Greens, Shane Rattenbury, Meredith Hunter and Caroline LeCouteur, are illiterate!

Your rabid Liberal support gets very boring.

I have noticed that the Greens proposed spending has been far more modest than either Labor or Liberals.
I don’t necessarily agree with all their proposals, but they have shown restraint.
For example, the Greens WiFi on buses policy was a $100k trial [1], whereas the Labor policy announced a week or so later was a $2.9 million trial [2].
I don’t personally agree that we should be spending money on WiFi on buses at all, which is in line with the Liberals, but if the choice was between the two above, I’d side with the Greens on this one.

The Greens have also announced $200 million for light rail [3], which I think is probably reckless spending, but then compared with the Liberals promising to spend $700 million on roads [4], and Labor $30 million just to think about building it (with a $614 million build cost, without public ownership of the asset at the end) [5], the Greens could again be considered the fiscally responsible one out of these choices.

I haven’t picked out any examples of recurrent spending above, but they were just examples that came to my mind as I have been paying more attention to public transport priorities as that is an area where Pirate Party ACT feels needs work [6], but they did fit into the claim of the Greens promising to spend less, and they appear to have supporting evidence from Treasury that backs up their claim.

Glen Takkenberg
Pirate Party ACT for Ginninderra

1. http://act.greens.org.au/content/greens-pledge-wi-fi-better-connected-canberra
2. http://www.katygallagher.net/?p=1538
3. http://act.greens.org.au/content/light-rail-government-jump-board-green-line
4. http://www.canberraliberals.org.au/LATEST-NEWS/ALISTAIR-COE-MLA/LIBERALS-TO-DUPLICATE-WILLIAM-SLIM-DRIVE.asp
5. http://simoncorbell.com/2012/10/04/election-policy-capital-metro-light-rail-project-to-be-delivered-through-canberras-first-large-scale-private-partnership/
6. http://actpirates.org.au/index.php/policies/connecting-the-city#Rebuild-a-successful-bus-transit-network

“The Greens would focus on reducing workplace injuries to reign in the ballooning costs.”

How do you rein in the incidence of imaginary injuries acquired by bored public servants with nothing else to do with their time?

I predict they’ll create a flurry of ridiculous pamphlets, visits to workplaces by oh-so-tedious OH&S staff, and all in all spend more than whatever it is they think they are trying to save.

The way to save money is to stop accepting dodgy doctors’ certificates presented by work-shirking malingerers and make it a requirement that anybody calling in sick call in the first instance a medical professional to explain why they are too sick to go to work.
Anybody that doesn’t comply gets the sack.
Then, sack all the consultants.
Then, make the permanent staff do the work the consultants were doing.
Any who refuse, sack them.
Pretty soon, the unemployed consultants will be applying for the vacated permanent positions.

Should be able to halve the army of pubes in this town and more than halve the wage bill.

As for what the Greens have *really* done to make their figure so much smaller – they’ve slashed spending on education. Retards.

Madam Cholet said :

“We’re looking to reign in ballooning insurance premiums…..”

I think it should be ‘rein’ and not ‘reign’ – otherwise that part of the sentence has a whole different meaning.

Quite. The ACT Greens, Shane Rattenbury, Meredith Hunter and Caroline LeCouteur, are illiterate!

Madam Cholet12:32 pm 13 Oct 12

“We’re looking to reign in ballooning insurance premiums…..”

I think it should be ‘rein’ and not ‘reign’ – otherwise that part of the sentence has a whole different meaning.

Gungahlin Al11:24 am 13 Oct 12

Jazz these are not the whole ACT budget, if that’s what you are getting at – just the changes proposed by the Greens to the current budget. Ditto for the amounts quoted for the other parties.
Remember that all Greens policies were submitted to the Treasury with plenty of time to validate them.
The take-home from this is that way more spending is proposed by the other parties – money that has to come from somewhere.

not implying that it is the whole budget Al, only that committed to recurring spend as submitted on 11 october. Still its a notable difference.

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