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NSW Election 2011

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Scotty

David Codey (61)
I think more Government ownership is better. Private sector a lot of the time can not be trusted to provide reasonable prices. I'm talking industries like Banking and Electricity. Government ownership provides for sufficient competition. Banks have posted billion dollar profits. While privatization of electricity will really fuck homeowners around, and people will be paying a lot more. Why have the money hungry private sector dictate the price of electricity and mortgage rates, when you can have directly elected governments control those prices. Being said, my ideal society is long gone, ever since Comm Bank, and now electricity in a lot of States are being privatised.

I think you are a little insane, Chief. There is no doubt that private ownership is better, as long as there is competition. Why? Because privately run organisations are much more efficient than government run ones. Therefore, provided there is competition and not monopolies, then we will get better pricing from private institutions, not worse.
 

Scotty

David Codey (61)
The trick is not to have the government regulate, dominate or subsidise a market which will result in lack of competition or innovation. Like aiding the rent seeking robber baron retailers like Solly Lew, Gerry Harvery and Bernie Brookes. Or subsidise a crap local car making industry, resulting in a lack of innovation. The straight-six engines that we produced locally for the shitty Falcadore cars, for example, were a prime example of lack of local innovation and not even bothering to try to improve quality through research thanks to government grants subsidising the industry. This means that eventually international innovation will highlight just how bad our product really is, making it uncommercial even with the government subsidy - which is what eventuated.

I have digressed to the point where we arrive at Australia's embarassing lack of innovation and research and manufacturing. The Scandinavian countries have companies like Nokia, Saab, Volvo, Ikea, and more. The Dutch have Philips, etc. Hell, even NZ has Fisher and Paykel. These countries are all much smaller than we are. And we have nothing.

I agree whole-heartedly with this. The governments are there to regulate, and ensure everything is run 'fairly'. They are not there to pick winners. Picking winners ultimately leads to decreased productivity and lack of innovation.
 

Scotty

David Codey (61)
I think the key is what you mentioned: sound economic management. Something we sadly lack as we prop our country up by selling rocks overseas, and selling houses for ever increasing amounts by borrowing ever increasing amounts of money from overseas. I am not saying that we should curtail our mining efforts at all, but we should be using our windfall mining profits (like Norway did) to secure our nation's future, whilst taking steps to keep our economy balanced. Which is why I was actually in favour of the resources rent tax (which I guess you probably aren't, being in WA and related to the mining industry, which is fair enough), but the proceeds from the tax (which prevents a two or three speed economy) should have been set to growing other industries for life after mining (like Norway). I fear for our nation's future once the mining boom peters out.

But did you actually believe that the Labor government was proposing a mining tax to prevent a 2/3 speed economy, and build for our future. It is highly likely that they actually proposed it to ensure they could keep spending at the same rate while also getting the budget back to a (small) surplus. It was fairly obvious that they picked what would most likely get them re-elected (surplus) out of the Henry tax review, and threw out the rest (most of which were harder to sell). I think they just underestimated the backlash from the mining companies.
 

Scotty

David Codey (61)
The MRRT tax is a fair tax. I may remind us all it is a super profits tax, all it will affect is Gina Rienhart, and Clive Palmer's television ads against the tax. Why not have a tax on an industry that is incredibly bad for carbon emissions, and destroys the environment. I'll sleep fine tonight knowing Palmer and Rienhart, from hopefully next year have to pay for a Carbon tax, and an MRRT. It's a fair game they were originally Australia's (Aboriginal's) land, and they should receive the profits. My beef with the MRRT, is that it's paying off a surplus when the surplus could be simply cut by abandoning basic services.

I choose not to listen to the Greens on many "serious" things, basically only the environment I listen to them. I don't want to make this a rant on The Greens, but they are incompetent on issues such as the economy, education, defence. This "free" education rubbish is not sustainable, and the MRRT isn't the way to go about it.

If you want to tax emissions, then tax them. That is not a reason to implement an MRRT.

And by the way, how do you define 'super profits'? Don't forget that the government is defining them as a number, not a percentage. Surely you need to define super profits as a percentage, otherwise it doesn't mean anything. And they only affect Rienhart and Palmer? Please, are you telling me that you or anyone you know doesn't have any shares in BHP or RIO etc? Are they super rich people that should have their investments into these companies taxed further?

The only real reason for a resource tax is the same reason for the state royalties, and that is that mining is a finite resource, and that once gone we aren't going to get it back (therefore you need to use additional funds raised from this tax for investment into the future). If you want to add a resource tax, then you need to remove state royalties, but the feds don't have the power to do this and the states won't agree to it.
 
C

chief

Guest
I think you are a little insane, Chief. There is no doubt that private ownership is better, as long as there is competition. Why? Because privately run organisations are much more efficient than government run ones. Therefore, provided there is competition and not monopolies, then we will get better pricing from private institutions, not worse.

I'm afraid we'll have to disagree here. I really don't understand what governments obsession is with privatisation only to make a quick buck or two. Look at Health insurance both here and America, it's a load of shit in the Private sector, and I know people from both countries who have had a money driven agenda absolutely screw them around.

In Australia it's far better to have a monopoly such as electricity owned by the government. As it effectively becomes a private sector monopoly. I suppose electricity is simply one example though, however this can be used on other privatised goods and services.

As for more efficient organisations, I'm afraid we'll have to disagree, governments run incredibly efficient organisations with the Productivity Commission, ACCC and the scrutiny of parliament ensuring that the appropriate amount of jobs are created (a lot of the time, it ends up having far more jobs than Private Sector competition) with still the same price or even better.

Scotty do you believe we should go down America's line, and privatise everything, from Garbage collecting, to Medicare?
 

The_Brown_Hornet

John Eales (66)
Private sector monopolies are a bad thing and should be discouraged, even if it means putting them in the hands of the public sector. Another method is the forced break up of large organisations, as has happened with companies like Standard Oil and AT&T in the US.

I've experienced the health system in both Australia and the US as a customer. I'll tell you that the quality of care in the US is absolutely first class, but agree that its more expensive than in OZ. There are a multitude of reasons for that and not all of them are related to "teh evul corporayshuns", as many there and here seem to believe. You can lay equal blame at the feet of an overly litigious legal system and much government interference too.

As far as government instrumentalities being efficient, I totally disagree. Having worked in both the public and private sector, as have nearly every member of my family, I'd have to say my experience runs totally counter to that. But the plural of anecdote is not data, right? There are many things that can be privatised and your example of things like garbage collection is a good one: why not in that case? I guess the question is: should the government be in the habit of creating make-work programmes? I say no and that public works should be for things that are needed (like roads, schools, ports, hospitals etc) rather than purely job creation. A bloke named Henry Hazlitt wrote a great book on this kind of Keynesian economic policy called Economics in One Lesson

http://www.fee.org/pdf/books/Economics_in_one_lesson.pdf
 
C

chief

Guest
I actually have Henry Hazlitt's Man vs Welfare book. Not sure if you've heard of it though. I'll confess I haven't actually read more than a few chapters though.

Public works should primarily be about creating infrastructure, and not about jobs, I agree with you there. But if it brings a lot more jobs along with it then that's an extra bonus. I'll point out that some privitisation has allowed for plenty of jobs to be created, both within the industry, but also with construction. And I'm not 100% against it. For example QLD sold of a lot of forests this year for 600 Million dollars as part of their privitisation program, which sounded like a pretty good idea, and made a quick buck.
 

Elfster

Dave Cowper (27)
One issue whether something should be government run or private is the quality of those running it. My perception of the general quality of government (state and federal) is that over the last 50 years the public service has been politicised leading to inferior outcomes. Once in NSW there were visionaries like Cahill. We had federal governments building grand infrastructure...these days government is merely full of self-serving party apparatchiks resulting, in the very least, of the perception of inefficient government run services.
 

Scotty

David Codey (61)
I'm afraid we'll have to disagree here. I really don't understand what governments obsession is with privatisation only to make a quick buck or two. Look at Health insurance both here and America, it's a load of shit in the Private sector, and I know people from both countries who have had a money driven agenda absolutely screw them around.

In Australia it's far better to have a monopoly such as electricity owned by the government. As it effectively becomes a private sector monopoly. I suppose electricity is simply one example though, however this can be used on other privatised goods and services.

As for more efficient organisations, I'm afraid we'll have to disagree, governments run incredibly efficient organisations with the Productivity Commission, ACCC and the scrutiny of parliament ensuring that the appropriate amount of jobs are created (a lot of the time, it ends up having far more jobs than Private Sector competition) with still the same price or even better.

Scotty do you believe we should go down America's line, and privatise everything, from Garbage collecting, to Medicare?

No, I think I made it pretty clear that I don't support private own monopolies.
 

Scotty

David Codey (61)
As far as government instrumentalities being efficient, I totally disagree. Having worked in both the public and private sector, as have nearly every member of my family, I'd have to say my experience runs totally counter to that. But the plural of anecdote is not data, right? There are many things that can be privatised and your example of things like garbage collection is a good one: why not in that case? I guess the question is: should the government be in the habit of creating make-work programmes? I say no and that public works should be for things that are needed (like roads, schools, ports, hospitals etc) rather than purely job creation. A bloke named Henry Hazlitt wrote a great book on this kind of Keynesian economic policy called Economics in One Lesson

I once worked on a 6 week contract for Sheffield City Council (England). I took it pretty easy, but had finished my 6 weeks of work within 3 weeks, and most around me were astounded. It was disgusting seeing some guys sit in a corner and do nothing all day (yes I appreciate the irony of me being at work at posting this at the same time). It seemed to have got to the point that they were so used to doing nothing they'd even have massive pauses in their conversations (normally if you don't have anything to say, you'd actually just go and do some work) - but they'd have these long pauses, staring into space and then starting talking about something else.

How governments, with no real motive to efficiency, can beat private sector in this area is beyond me.
 

kambah mick

Chris McKivat (8)
The classic case in Australia is Medibank Private, run much more efficiently than most if not all its private rivals. I would add Aust Post, which despite a perception among some is recognised around the world as an industry leader.
I agree that the Public Service has been politicised, but disagree strongly that it has ocurred over the last fifty years. It has only ocurred incrementally over the last 20 years since Ministers and others have been able to appoint large private staffs in their offices. It probably reached the apogee of disreputableness under Howard who removed all possibilities of parliamentary or any other scrutiny from the private offices of ministers.
If you think that many of our politicians are a morally unattractive lot, you should have a look at the kind of reptiles who make up the bulk of members private staffs, they are all would be politicians but without any appearance of attractive features like morality, honesty, empathy etc.
 

kambah mick

Chris McKivat (8)
Scotty, I have seen several people who behaved as you describe at Sheffield City Council, but I have also seen the opposite. I have also seen people in large private operations do the same, it is a disease of large bureacracies, not necessarily of govt enterprises. In Canberra there was a large campaign of privatisation of govt operations in the early days of the Howard govt when John Fahey boasted that he compared the govt operations with the yellow pages and wherever there was an overlap the govt operation was privatised. It has taken most of the intervening period to remedy such anti intellectual policy making, most notably in the IT area where the Commonwealth had a world wide reputation for innovation and efficiency. No one would claim that now about the govts IT operations. Many of my acquaintances moved across to the new contractors on privatisation and were scathing of the lack of industry, innovation, diligence and often basic honesty, traits that were taken for granted within the PS.
I dont believe in govt competing with private industry, for instance I was all in favour of privatising Qantas, but definately not Sydney Airport, perhaps one of the greatest blunders in business policy for several decades.
 

Ash

Michael Lynagh (62)
But did you actually believe that the Labor government was proposing a mining tax to prevent a 2/3 speed economy, and build for our future. It is highly likely that they actually proposed it to ensure they could keep spending at the same rate while also getting the budget back to a (small) surplus. It was fairly obvious that they picked what would most likely get them re-elected (surplus) out of the Henry tax review, and threw out the rest (most of which were harder to sell). I think they just underestimated the backlash from the mining companies.

No, of course they were going to do just as you said - they were going to use the minerals resource rent tax to cut company tax and churn out a small surplus. But there's no reason to target Labor alone here - Costello used the profits from the mining boom to cut employee taxes, and Howard used it to fund his middle class welfare and pork barrelling. Welcome to Australia's economic management 101:
Step 1: use short term profits to fund ongoing liabilities (primarily to win votes)
Step 2: ???
Step 3: profit!
 

Ash

Michael Lynagh (62)
The other problem with government (and to a lesser extent private) has been the swing in industrial relations. Firstly, I'll put myself out there, and say honestly: I fall pretty much into centre-left. You need protection and workplace laws to protect employees. But, currently it's just too hard in private industry to (legally) fire staff who simply don't perform, and in the public service, it's damn nigh on impossible. Several members of my family and several of my friends work / have worked in varying roles / departments in the public service, and the amount of stories they have on staff who not only do no work, but also simply do not show up to work 50%+ of the time. Yet these staff are not fired, and in one case a friend who is the manager of one such recalcitrant has nearly torn his hair out for two years trying to get a guy who frequently didn't show up to work, frequently showed up extremely late to work when he did, and did absolutely no work whilst at work, fired, and still it hasn't happened.

Part of the problem is the unions as well - I think the unions are necessary, but somehow the unions have gained too much power, plenty of them became corrupt (and several involved in organised crime), AND somehow some have even swung to the right by being run by those from the right faction - how the hell a fundamentally left ideal swung to the right I'll never understand. Additionally, some of the collective bargaining done by the unions is obsene - the pay levels of poorly educated workers was higher than university educated workers in some industries (there were stories floating around 5 years ago of staff who worked the ticket booths in Circular Quay getting paid $80k per year!).

In saying all that, I still support the government owning national infrastucture (like Sydney Airport as well), and running important key services. Some stuff you just don't want entrust outside of the government.

BTW, agree that inefficiency is a disease of large bureaucracies. My partner works in an extremely large multinational. The local (Australian) management are so top heavy that it's farcical. There's just loads of inefficiencies at her company. I couldn't work there; it'd drive me nuts. What's more, they've even had a few rounds of lay-offs, and the middle and senior management ignored nearly all recommendations from the private contractos auditing the company to lay off upper management, whilst laying off the much much cheaper bottom of the tier staff, and shuffling many roles, making some overworked. The result is actually that less work gets done by overstressed staff and the place gets more inefficient.

Australia is also a great example of what happens to a country without a recession in 20 years: many uneconomic practices and companies don't get corrected / forced out, and our productivity drops.
 

The_Brown_Hornet

John Eales (66)
Much to agree with the above. I think there is need for a large amount of reform if the Federal and state governments have the courage to do it. Firstly, I think the Henry Tax Review should be made public and debated. I am 100% certain that there are some ideas worthy of implementation. Secondly, we have this diamond called the Productivity Commission that should also be involved in these matters.

I would like to see us move away from petty partisanship and debate some real reform and not simply rely on soaking whichever industry is making the most cash at present to fund the government of the days preferred constituents. Part of this reform process should be a good hard look at the size and scope of our government services and their associated bureaucracies.
 

Gnostic

Mark Ella (57)
I just have to mention the irony that the once State Owned Telstra's main competitor, Optus is majority owned by the Singapore Government via Singtel. Note also that one of the few profitable airlines is also majority owned by the government in Singapore Airlines. There is nothing wrong per se with government ownership, just legislate the proper separation and make the government non-voting shareholders or require upper and lower house votes to dismiss or interefere with the running of the company (and that can only be done as a shareholder just as any other shareholder does). The other option is that the Government ownership of these companies is managed by the Sovereign wealth fund with no government intervention at all.

Another point I should have mentioned in my earlier rant regarding the power sell off is that the main reason to dispose of these entities is not the enhancement of competition but the disposal of the employees to the private sector along with the massive liability for their superannuation. Governments since the 1970s have failed to actually pay Super into the State run funds preferring just to shuffles the numbers and rack up a liability. How to fund that, sell the entity and fund those in defined benefit funds that they cannot get out of off load those in Accumulation funds.

TBH - I note your argument regarding Health Care in the US V Oz and whilst the care for those who have access to funds or Health Insurance is first class as you say, Universal Health Care is not present and even many middle income citizens cannot access proceedures that persons in similar financial positions in Oz can. What set Oz apart has been that egalitarian approach and I hope it never gets bartered away.
 

The_Brown_Hornet

John Eales (66)
Singapore has a system that you'd almost call state capitalism in parts, but as a country they are very high on the economic freedom index. It's one of the best places in the world in which to do business. They are a funny mixture of authoritarian government and very free market.

http://www.heritage.org/index/country/Singapore

As far as health care goes, there will I think always be a safety net of some sort in Australia. I've got no problem with that and no problem with my taxes paying for it. What I do object to is being coerced into paying into private health insurance *and* paying the Medicare levy. There has to be some sort of reform possible there. BTW, the US does have some socialised medical care, which is mostly run by the states themselves. They don't let people die in the streets, don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise. If you front up to a public hospital there, you will be treated regardless of your ability to pay.
 

Rob42

John Solomon (38)
TBH, you're right that public hospitals in the US will treat you regardless of your ability to pay, but there's a remarkable number of people there struggling with paying off a medical bill in the tens of thousands of dollars after an unexpected trip to hospital. And I think NSW public hospitals are excellent by comparison. If you've got good insurance in the US, it's a great health system - I worked there for a couple of years for a large employer, and between what the employer paid and my contribution, health insurance (family) cost around $1000/month. If I'd been self-employed, it would have cost around $2000/month. Yes, we need to improve the system here, but our system is fundamentally better balanced I believe than theirs.
 

The_Brown_Hornet

John Eales (66)
My co-contribution was about $220 a month, but that is about 5 years ago. When my wife gave birth to our twins, we paid $25 for the entire pregnancy and delivery in out of pocket expenses. The insurance paid for the rest. We had the top level coverage we could get with my employers health plan. I think employer sponsored health insurance is part of the problem, actually. It distorts the insurance market, but its well entrenched and hard to move.
 

kambah mick

Chris McKivat (8)
Employer sponsored health care is a huge problem in the US. It is part of the reason that the big car companies are going broke whilst european and east asian car companies that manufacture in SE US are going ok.
 
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