Katy savages Zed over his office

Ian @ #48 = Mate, youv’e nailed it.

I’m sure both parties have assisted their coleagues during the Federal campaigns.

Can we get serious about time sheets? As a former Pub Serv, I discovered that these were a work of fiction. As a supervisor, practically EVERY underling was cheating like hell. Sure, only ten minutes here, and five there, but it all went one way, to the detriment of the Gov purse, to the tune of 20 – 30 minutes PER DAY, per employee. Yes, I brought this to the attention of the masters, and words were said, but I would bet London to a brick on that the same tricks are happening as we speak.

Katy can shriek all she likes, but this little storm in a teacup is nothing in comparison to the long list of money eating f#@% ups her government has presided over during the last 11 years.

And I do not vote Liberal!!

welkin31 said :

– and all the time taking too much notice of increasingly discredited CSIRO predictions of a dryer climate to come. Just listen to the ACTEW chief on that subject.

Such a shame, Welkin, that you spoil your entire argument by revealing yourself as a fact-denying climate-change conspiracist.

You’ll find CSIRO’s information about evolving changes in rainfall patterns here:
http://www.csiro.au/resources/State-of-the-climate

If you want to call any of it “discredited”, be sure to find some actual facts to support your assertion. (Do I need to point out that quoting Alan Jones doesn’t count?).

I do find it very intereting that 2 years of average rainfall can make somebody forget about 10 years of very much below average rainfall, though, and give them false impressions of future years’ rainfall.

Mr Gillespie said :

Ian said :

Mr Gillespie said :

Muck racking on the part of Katy Gallager and her cronies to try and discredit the Canberra Liberals so they can hold onto power if you ask me.

Not sure why Katy and co need to bother, the Libs do a great job of discrediting themselves.

I dunno…..Labor are the ones who have been in power the past 11 years, and they have done plenty to discredit themselves.
• GDE delays
• Neglect and mismanagement of Housing issues and availability
• Luxury “human-rights-compliant” jails for criminals, with free, taxpayer-funded health care and legal aid
• Reckless spending on artworks
• Shopping bag bans (tiny problem according to some, but part of a much larger Labor waste machine if you think about it)
The list goes on….

I have no doubt that the ALP has presided over gross incompetence over the years. The sad commentary on the Libs is that they cannot present themselves even as a remotely viable alternative to this gross incompetence. Even if they could elevate themselves to merely incompetent it would be a huge improvement over where they and Labor have been for years.

Zed has been committing fraud with regards to taxpayer money for how long now?

I have no love for Seselja, however, you do have proof for these allegations?

Of course you do…

If you aren’t submitting timesheets and you’re getting paid – that is in no way legitimate.

Ian said :

Mr Gillespie said :

Muck racking on the part of Katy Gallager and her cronies to try and discredit the Canberra Liberals so they can hold onto power if you ask me.

Not sure why Katy and co need to bother, the Libs do a great job of discrediting themselves.

I dunno…..Labor are the ones who have been in power the past 11 years, and they have done plenty to discredit themselves.
• GDE delays
• Neglect and mismanagement of Housing issues and availability
• Luxury “human-rights-compliant” jails for criminals, with free, taxpayer-funded health care and legal aid
• Reckless spending on artworks
• Shopping bag bans (tiny problem according to some, but part of a much larger Labor waste machine if you think about it)
The list goes on….

Re 27 mynym – thanks for that – I should have spelled things out with more clarity.
Because the mini old Cotter was spilling near 30GL of water a year – it was negligent of the authorities not to enlarge it early last decade, as I said.
An enlarged Cotter would have been great value even if smaller & cheaper than the current near 80GL soopah doopah model.
Why they delayed the obvious for over half a decade seems to me due to the then Chief Minister’s determination to find an alternative to a new dam, I suppose that would appeal to Green anti-damism. He was so keen to join the desalination club – remember this from 2007.
“Radical water proposal for ACT”
Actew is looking at a radical proposal to build a desalination plant on the NSW coast and pump water over the mountains to Canberra as the water crisis worsens.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/radical-water-proposal-for-act/281666.aspx
They could easily have had a better dam at Cotter built by then.
I do not know how much money was wasted on years of reports flailing around looking for a reason not to do the bleeding obvious – remember how close we came to drinking treated wastewater ? – and all the time taking too much notice of increasingly discredited CSIRO predictions of a dryer climate to come. Just listen to the ACTEW chief on that subject.
I missed out saying in my first comment, that I think the Angle Crossing to Googong pipeline will turn out to be a white elephant, more hundreds of millions wasted. Not useful often enough is my guess. Some of the money would have been much better spent enhancing the capacity of the Cotter to Googong transfer where we know there can be surplus flows.
I apologise if I gave the impression that “building a dam seem to be evidence of maladministration” – that was not my aim.
However if I wanted to nitpick – I would say it is a Rolls Royce of a water system we are building right now – built years too late – probably over-built because of ACTEW bowing to Climate predictions – and the cost over-runs are still in motion.
The last decade of water administration in the ACT has been appalling and IMHO should be the subject of a Royal Commission.

Mr Gillespie said :

Muck racking on the part of Katy Gallager and her cronies to try and discredit the Canberra Liberals so they can hold onto power if you ask me.

Not sure why Katy and co need to bother, the Libs do a great job of discrediting themselves.

Hey wait a minute. Didn’t the then ALP candidate for Canberra, Gai Brodtmann, get financial assistance from Senator Kate Lundy in July 2010?
Under the electoral rules, public money cannot be used to promote unelected candidates. No big deal then was it so who cares about the current issue?

Muck racking on the part of Katy Gallager and her cronies to try and discredit the Canberra Liberals so they can hold onto power if you ask me.

trevar wrote:
The third clause in this sentence … [blah, blah, blah] …relatively common amongst those …

I ignored most of your pompous rant, though I couldn’t help but notice that you mixed a Middle English anachronism like “amongst” with modern English.

I wonder how carefully you choose the words you speak, as opposed to the ones you write, and whether you are ever ungrammatical, leave sentences unfinished, or say “um” or “er”. The rest of us have committed these offences, as has every political leader we’ve ever had.

I find it hilarious that the Liberal staffers that concoct the hack and slash plans for our public service are actually the ones ripping off the public.

Zed has been committing fraud with regards to taxpayer money for how long now?
I’m always shocked when Liberals claim to be sensible economic managers, it’s the complete opposite actually. The ACT Liberals are taking stealing wages and the federal Liberals can’t count. It’s like Tweedledum and Tweedledee at the moment.

Gungahlin Al said :

But to be fair, seems Katy is only giving as good as she would have got had positions been switched. How many absurd, petty and time wasting motions of no confidence have there been this term?

So how many were there? What were they for? I wouldn’t mind knowing the answer to that one.

mynym said :

Thanks for quoting me MysteryMan. I love to see myself in italics. I have been here 16 years and I must say that I have not seen any major signs of maladministration under any of the ACT governments. We have high incomes, good education, good health, good housing, fast broadband, lovely parks and gardens, the lot. It’s like Pleasantville here except for the knockers. What’s not to like?

The current opposition is another matter. Allowing for the fact that you are surprised this misbehaviour is happening in the opposition, do you feel they are Stanhopian enough to make them incapable of good government? Or can they become a good government despite their palpable lack of judgement? Or is it a ‘momentary lapse’ over several years in which – through the lack of contemporary records – the public will never know if and to what extent its money has been used for Liberal party campaiging?

I’m not sure I agree that health here is good. We have some pretty long waiting lists and we have the lowest rate of bluk bulling doctors in the nation. Then there’s also the money spent of works of public art (that the public were never consulted about and by most reports didn’t want), the GDE fiasco, the dam that’s running late and well over budget, the slow release of land that didn’t keep up with demand and has assisted in creating the current housing bubble, the bushfire saga that resulted in the loss of some 550 odd homes and 4 lives… There is more evidence of incompetence but it’s been touched upon by others already. I honestly don’t think the current government has done a very good job overall.

Salaries here are high, though. That’s true. But I suspect that’s more to do with the federal government placing so many well paying public service jobs in Canberra than anything the local government has done.

In regards to your question: despite slagging off the current government, I’m definitely sceptical of the opposition’s ability to govern. They don’t fill me with confidence at all and haven’t demonstrated that they can manage themselves. So what’s the answer? One group who have a proven track record of incompetence and mismanagement, or one that hasn’t yet proven their incompetence and mismanagement? I don’t know.

Sometimes I think removing self governance is probably the best option.

johnboy said :

it was well known in 2010 that staff were being seconded to federal campaign duties.

So whoever decided to kick this off has been keeping their powder dry.

The question is whether this is a Labor plot, or someone inside the party looking to get ahead?

It would help if the CT’s Noel Towell had included in his report what prompted him to go digging in this direction.

Indeed but don’t hold your breath…

I must say that I have not seen any major signs of maladministration under any of the ACT governments

You missed the GDE?

LOL! Only a few tens of millions wasted. Easy enough to forget, no?

But to be fair, seems Katy is only giving as good as she would have got had positions been switched. How many absurd, petty and time wasting motions of no confidence have there been this term?

And perhaps think about the upshot of paid staff working on the federal campaign – did their efforts help squeeze Gary Humphries across the line? On the surface – maladministration. But did it change an election result and thereby contribute to stopping a balance of power change months earlier than ended up happening?

“It would help if the CT’s Noel Towell had included in his report what prompted him to go digging in this direction.”

Reporters rarely concede that, more often than not, their own behaviour is part of the story – at least from the readers’ perspective.

But very few reporters write for their readers.

Creating = certain

Sounds like Katy is trying to make this bigger than it actually is. If it just relates to submitting time sheets, then it is a relatively minor administrative issue and I highly doubt it will a police issue. If the staff members were paid based on time recorded on the time sheet and didn’t submit it, they wouldn’t have been paid. If they took leave without a form, then the individual staff member would be required to repay anything above their leave entitlement. Fault generally lies with the individual and I’m fairly creating there would be many cases of the same across all of the public service.

damien haas said :

Replacing ‘which’ with ‘that’ is a common microsoft word software suggestion, when one runs the spellcheck/grammar check on a document.

An American view of spelling or grammar is like a vegetarian’s view of steak or the Pope’s view of sex* – it’s something they don’t do. 😉

* Unless you count little boys.

mynym said :

Thanks for the lists of stuff-ups, welkin, dungfungus and thumper. Pity you missed the fatally botched demolition of the Acton hospital, but I guess that doesn’t go well with your side of politics.

I do take one lesson from your lists, however, which is that someone who cannot run a small office accountably is not remotely likely to be able to do better when it comes to big, important things.

Just as an aside, I like the way you try to make both not building a dam and building a dam seem to be evidence of maladministration, Welkin31. Nice work if you can get it.

On the contrary, I was against both the closing of the then Canberra Hospital at Acton peninsula and the gala demolition of the site. In fact, I told all my family and friends to stay away from the event as they could get injured or killed. Appears my judgement was better than Ms Carnell. Allowing the grotesque (inside and out) National Museum to then be built there was another administrative disaster but that’s another subject to argue about. Now that you mention hospitals though, how about the Calvary/Labor saga and the new “non-acute” election year hospital Labor are now promising?

mynym said :

Thanks for the lists of stuff-ups, welkin, dungfungus and thumper. Pity you missed the fatally botched demolition of the Acton hospital, but I guess that doesn’t go well with your side of politics.

I do take one lesson from your lists, however, which is that someone who cannot run a small office accountably is not remotely likely to be able to do better when it comes to big, important things.

Just as an aside, I like the way you try to make both not building a dam and building a dam seem to be evidence of maladministration, Welkin31. Nice work if you can get it.

Oh, you were serious?

I take back the bit about comedy genius and replace it with severe delusion.

Replacing ‘which’ with ‘that’ is a common microsoft word software suggestion, when one runs the spellcheck/grammar check on a document.

Thanks for the lists of stuff-ups, welkin, dungfungus and thumper. Pity you missed the fatally botched demolition of the Acton hospital, but I guess that doesn’t go well with your side of politics.

I do take one lesson from your lists, however, which is that someone who cannot run a small office accountably is not remotely likely to be able to do better when it comes to big, important things.

Just as an aside, I like the way you try to make both not building a dam and building a dam seem to be evidence of maladministration, Welkin31. Nice work if you can get it.

This just looks like standard boiler-plate political bullying to me… except for this quote, attributed to Katy herself:

“There is potentially thousands of dollars of ACT taxpayers’ money which is unaccounted for and which no amount of attempts by Mr Seselja to casually brush aside these serious matters should be allowed to occur.

The third clause in this sentence, led by a ‘which’ but not adding detail nor extending the concept of the initial clause is a cause for concern. The clause begins with the indicative mood, but moves to the imperative mood and loses meaning entirely. Under the National Curriculum the ACT Government is now implementing, coherence is a year 4 concept and extension is year 5. If Katy did indeed utter this sentence, it reveals that the head of the government implementing the National Curriculum here in the ACT is not actually literate to a year 5 level. So how could she possibly be qualified to accuse anyone of anything?

The second clause is problematic too. The first ‘which’ should be a ‘that’, because it leads a defining clause. Not an uncommon problem; substituting ‘that’ with ‘which’ in a defining clause is relatively common amongst those who are not highly trained in English usage, so I’ll forgive that, but beginning a clause using the indicative mood, but then moving to the imperative mood before adding any detail or extending the concept of the initial clause is just plain, old-fashioned illiteracy. I don’t know what year it should have been learned when Katy went to school, but under the current curriculum it looks like she needs some help from a year 4 teacher before she opens her mouth.

dungfungus said :

I must say that I have not seen any major signs of maladministration under any of the ACT governments

You missed the GDE?

And Rhodium Asset Solutions which chalked up losses that still have not been calculated (in the millions of dollars)
And ActewAGL’s investment in TransACT wich cost us over $54 million plus the interest forgone. And I hear the ACT Government super funds are in bad shape – anyone retiring soon?

Don’t forget trashing revolve and giving the recycling contract to a shonk who took our money and declared himself bankrupt, as he had done elsewhere before.

Actually, some might argue this wasn’t actually mismanagement, but something else.

I guess “mynym” and his fellow apparatchiks are crossing their fingers that Noel Towell doesn’t take too close an interest into why John Hargreaves announced his retirement.

mynym said :

I have been here 16 years and I must say that I have not seen any major signs of maladministration under any of the ACT governments.

This is by far the funniest thing I’ve ever read on this site.

Pure comedy genius. Hats off to you sir.

welkin31 said :

If we want to look at waste of money.
From a Govt who could not maintain an oversight to see concrete was poured correctly – more than once.
Could not buy a hospital over a period of years.
Prevaricated for years over building the Cotter Dam – where some sort of dam enhancement was a drop dead obvious no-brainer since about 2004.
The territory’s unfunded liabilities have blown out by more than $1 billion in the past two years as borrowing to fund Actew’s expenditure on big water projects continues – work out the effect of that on your hip pocket nerve.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/politics/acts-1b-blowout/2401149.aspx
I will leave it there.

You have said it all welkin31.

I must say that I have not seen any major signs of maladministration under any of the ACT governments

You missed the GDE?

And Rhodium Asset Solutions which chalked up losses that still have not been calculated (in the millions of dollars)
And ActewAGL’s investment in TransACT wich cost us over $54 million plus the interest forgone. And I hear the ACT Government super funds are in bad shape – anyone retiring soon?

If we want to look at waste of money.
From a Govt who could not maintain an oversight to see concrete was poured correctly – more than once.
Could not buy a hospital over a period of years.
Prevaricated for years over building the Cotter Dam – where some sort of dam enhancement was a drop dead obvious no-brainer since about 2004.
The territory’s unfunded liabilities have blown out by more than $1 billion in the past two years as borrowing to fund Actew’s expenditure on big water projects continues – work out the effect of that on your hip pocket nerve.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/politics/acts-1b-blowout/2401149.aspx
I will leave it there.

Thanks for quoting me MysteryMan. I love to see myself in italics. I have been here 16 years and I must say that I have not seen any major signs of maladministration under any of the ACT governments. We have high incomes, good education, good health, good housing, fast broadband, lovely parks and gardens, the lot. It’s like Pleasantville here except for the knockers. What’s not to like?

The current opposition is another matter. Allowing for the fact that you are surprised this misbehaviour is happening in the opposition, do you feel they are Stanhopian enough to make them incapable of good government? Or can they become a good government despite their palpable lack of judgement? Or is it a ‘momentary lapse’ over several years in which – through the lack of contemporary records – the public will never know if and to what extent its money has been used for Liberal party campaiging?

So how long until Zed pulls FOI on the Labor party books?

Anyone running a book?

If a crime is suspected, call in the AFP.

Wasting the Assembly’s time on it is only throwing good money after bad.

mynym said :

So, from the exclusive focus on Katy’s english expression, I gather that we are all very blase about the Zed’s position? We would be happy, I gather for the sort of leadership shown by the opposition to be transferred to government? Small matters of accountability should be handled this way? Comments like “In many other similar workplaces timesheets would simply not be required” demonstrate the appropriate level of judgement and responsibility in someone aspiring to public office? Nice way to flag how you intend to run the place if you had the chance. Nice evasion about how people were on leave, but it was just that no records were made of it. If the records showed the people were not on leave, were they on leave? Of course, without records, we have no way of knowing. None of this strikes anyone as a poor qualification for running an opposition office, let alone the entire ACT? We go into howls of outrage over a stray pothole, but long-running and apparently systematic failure to account for taxpayer money is ho hum? A bit of nudge nudge, wink, wink as a way of running the budget?

Maybe it would spoil the fun to acknowledge what this really tells us about the likely quality of public administration should the opposition form a government. I guess as long as that is a distant possibility, it is easy to have a laugh.

Are you new to Canberra? Did you miss the last 10 years of Stanhopian governance? I too am surprised that this sort of behaviour has been linked to the leader of the opposition, because I completely expected it to come from the CM and her government.

My biggest worry is what the 10 staff in Zed’s office are doing.

Seriously, he is the opposition leader for a 350,000 person jurisdiction and he has 10 staff.

Surely, a media adviser, a policy adviser, a policy assistant and 2 admin staff would be more than sufficient.

Why we as the public tolerate, politicians at all levels and sides of parliament having so many media advisers that produce inept crap beggars belief.

This responsibility falls under the chief of staff. Being in public office and open to scrutiny it should have been rectified earlier – clearly there is an issue here. Stephen, if you are reading this (I know he will be – big RIOTACT fan), give yourself a double uppercut and pull your head in.

it was well known in 2010 that staff were being seconded to federal campaign duties.

So whoever decided to kick this off has been keeping their powder dry.

The question is whether this is a Labor plot, or someone inside the party looking to get ahead?

It would help if the CT’s Noel Towell had included in his report what prompted him to go digging in this direction.

How many timesheets? How many staff? How many dollars? Is it only Zed Seselja’s office?

If this is real, then the lack of ability to manage what is basic corporate hygeine is very worrying. If he can’t get his team to keep some simple paperwork in order, how will they go if in power?

(Not that it will matter, it’s a Labor town).

JessP, you make my point for me. The alternative CM shows he cannot run a small office responsibly and you want to make this about anything but that. And no, I don’t work for Katy, but I do sympathise. How could I not given the contrast of decency that we are seeing hereabouts?

It’s the nudge, nudge, we all know what really goes on and a bit of flexibility in the political use of taxpayer funds is all right crowd that increases my sympathy. Once again, is that level of maturity and moral responsibility what we want to see in government?

Looks to me like Zed might do better employing staff who are competent to perform their jobs rather than relatives and Liberal party officials.

And as far as Katy is concerned, have you got the paperwork for the GST submission in yet? That might just be several orders of magnitude more significant than this.

mynym said :

So, from the exclusive focus on Katy’s english expression, I gather that we are all very blase about the Zed’s position? We would be happy, I gather for the sort of leadership shown by the opposition to be transferred to government? Small matters of accountability should be handled this way? Comments like “In many other similar workplaces timesheets would simply not be required” demonstrate the appropriate level of judgement and responsibility in someone aspiring to public office? Nice way to flag how you intend to run the place if you had the chance. Nice evasion about how people were on leave, but it was just that no records were made of it. If the records showed the people were not on leave, were they on leave? Of course, without records, we have no way of knowing. None of this strikes anyone as a poor qualification for running an opposition office, let alone the entire ACT? We go into howls of outrage over a stray pothole, but long-running and apparently systematic failure to account for taxpayer money is ho hum? A bit of nudge nudge, wink, wink as a way of running the budget?

So you work for Katy then?

Maybe it would spoil the fun to acknowledge what this really tells us about the likely quality of public administration should the opposition form a government. I guess as long as that is a distant possibility, it is easy to have a laugh.

So, from the exclusive focus on Katy’s english expression, I gather that we are all very blase about the Zed’s position? We would be happy, I gather for the sort of leadership shown by the opposition to be transferred to government? Small matters of accountability should be handled this way? Comments like “In many other similar workplaces timesheets would simply not be required” demonstrate the appropriate level of judgement and responsibility in someone aspiring to public office? Nice way to flag how you intend to run the place if you had the chance. Nice evasion about how people were on leave, but it was just that no records were made of it. If the records showed the people were not on leave, were they on leave? Of course, without records, we have no way of knowing. None of this strikes anyone as a poor qualification for running an opposition office, let alone the entire ACT? We go into howls of outrage over a stray pothole, but long-running and apparently systematic failure to account for taxpayer money is ho hum? A bit of nudge nudge, wink, wink as a way of running the budget?

Maybe it would spoil the fun to acknowledge what this really tells us about the likely quality of public administration should the opposition form a government. I guess as long as that is a distant possibility, it is easy to have a laugh.

What on earth is she huffing on about? You’d expect her to make her best points in the first few sentences, but no, she just goes on and on. Opportunity missed. maybe she hadn’t read the article yet.

dpm said :

I like this:
“Let’s be very clear about what these documents reveal.”
then, next:
“On the surface they appear to reveal “

So, we’re ‘very clear’ that ‘on the surface’ they ‘appear’…..? Glad we got that sorted! Hahahaha! 🙂

Clear as mud award has it’s first nominee

Isnt an election coming is there?

I like this:
“Let’s be very clear about what these documents reveal.”
then, next:
“On the surface they appear to reveal “

So, we’re ‘very clear’ that ‘on the surface’ they ‘appear’…..? Glad we got that sorted! Hahahaha! 🙂