How the government operates...

[muffinmum]

i am aged pensioner ,i live from fortnight to fortnight , we own our home , that we paid for by buying only what we could afford i had my children ,No paid leave, No bonus and when we built our first cheap home No first home bonus we never had a chance to save much, and all i can see the current gov doing now, with these big first home bonus is letting young folk get into debt $21000.00 of the price of a lovely big home is nothing is it,would only be a couple of years interest

[Cas98]

The government goes on about huge "surplus".. Is't that just another name for "profit"? And business wants "profit".

[Croman]

"They may be slow and sometimes incompetent, but at least they're not trying to rip me off on top of it all."

More like, incompetent lots of times. Some of them rip you off quite a bit with various over the top fees and then provide very poor service. They are also ripping you off by being incompetent and inefficient because you pay them to do a better job.

Last week My wife and I each spent half an hour each on the phone with RTA to have a userid set up to check our driving record. The were supposed to send details to our email addresses. They didn't do. We had to go through the whole thing again yesterday. They said that it would be in our emails immediately. Still not there.

And I don't even want to talk about local government and the Councils.

So you can understand that right now I am not a big fan of anything government owned.

[derat]

Qantas? What are you on about?

There were a couple of Govt. banks - no more.. the rest are listed companies - so which banks are you speaking of?

[deref]

The business of government is not business.

To those of you who think that running government as if it was a business would improve things, I have several words:

Telstra
Qantas
Banks

How many more would you like? Of course there are inefficiencies and stupidities from government, but many of those result from the thoroughly discredited ideology that governments should be run like businesses. That idiocy has resulted in the abominations of privately-owned toll roads and the selloff of natural monopolies like airports and telecommunications infrastructure. Then there's the criminal neglect of the little remaining public infrastructure like the railways.

Look at the top gripes. As I read them now they are Harvey Norman, Scenic Tours, Railcorp, Big W, Hogs Breath Cafe, Computer Parts Land, Foxtel, eBay, Allegro Networks and KFC: one government instrumentality out of ten.

I don't love dealing with government, but give me that over dealing with business any day. They may be slow and sometimes incompetent, but at least they're not trying to rip me off on top of it all.

Visit your local school; borrow a book from your local library. Then tell me how much better business is.

[shillard]

Explain to me again what this has to do with STATE Government responsibilities - "public schools, public health, public ammenities"?

Oh, and libraries are largely LOCAL Government responsibilities (in NSW at least - YMMV).

[kyakudaiichi]

I thought the previous government made it very clear that it was in the business of business. Anything with the word 'public' in the title seemed to be a target: public health, public schools, public amenities. I'm surprised we're still able to enjoy public libraries.

Rudd's government is hitting the first real hurdles of leadership, and it's all about money. It may seem like it's just more of the same but give it time. My feeling is that Rudd appreciates that the economyy exists to serve society rather than people being disposable tools to Mammon.

[muffinmum]

i believe that if it was run as a business, then when one is "sacked" because they were not doing a good job eg. as in loosing the election or their seat in power , then they join the ranks of unemployed like every one else ,not handed a multi $$$ payout and a $$$ job overseas as beattie has done .why do they get paid because they were not doing their jobs ,if the average joe doesn't do a good job he doesnt keep being paid does he ? and they should be means tested as well

[john123]

If they were trying to run it as a buiness they would have to sack all the useless senior fat cat public servants ,then get rid of most of the pollies as they are useless, and incompetent.

[derat]

If its a business plan they forgot some key ingredients - particularly the key performance measurements.

[shillard]

If only.

Were they to run the country like a business, the taxpayer might finally get some value for money, accountability and focus on services that actually matter.

Keep on dreaming.

[Cas98]

Is it me or do others here get the feeling that the Australian Government is trying to run this country like a "business"?

Cost cuttings, increase income through taxes and levies (which are the same thing really)... Doesn't this sound like a business plan?