JBP posted:

they might have some dignity.

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

GrandMaster posted:

I think someone said this ages ago, but the prime minister's house looks pretty poo poo, doesn't even have a proper home theatre.

Konomex posted:

Awww drat it, I really liked his music. Can we deport him back to South Africa for hate speech?

quote:

Let’s go now to examples, the standout being the National Disability Insurance Agency.

“Here we have a new agency, the NDIA, responsible for delivering the biggest social reform in decades, and it has had its public service staffing allocation slashed, and the gap is being filled with a mishmash of contractors and labour hire,” Flood says.

Figures provided by the government to a Senate estimates committee in March bear out her claim, showing the workforce trying to implement the new scheme comprised 2329 APS employees and 1105 contractors, as well as 2054 “partners in the community”.

Under questioning in the committee, senior bureaucrats conceded repeatedly that the agency continued to face “substantial” challenges, which amounts, given the circumspect language public servants tend to use in such situations, to an admission of big trouble with the implementation process. It does not take a great deal of reading between the lines to understand that they were very concerned about their ability to make accurate calls on the 200,000 assessments that must be made in each of the next two years about individual needs for National Disability Insurance Scheme support.

Flood says those concerns are amplified by frontline NDIA staff.

“I have met with staff in a number of states who tell us how concerned they are at the damage being done to people with disabilities and their carers as a result of the use of low-paid, poorly trained labour hire staff to do this work.

“Many of the people they deal with have complex needs and psychosocial disabilities. Carers have incredibly difficult situations they’re trying to navigate. And the assessments done by labour hire staff, face to face, feed directly into how much assistance a person receives.

“Those staff have told us they received no training apart from a short script to introduce assessment. To make this legal government then gets a public servant to tick off the assessment.”

While the government would take issue with the claim that these contracted staff are inadequately trained for their roles, a growing chorus of complaint from the disability sector indicates otherwise. The seventh and most recent quarterly report on the progress of NDIS implementation, released this week, recorded 4146 complaints in the third quarter of 2017–18.

This was a record number, and brought the total to 17,352 total complaints made since scheme “transition” began in July 2016.

The report conceded, in copybook bureaucratese: “The NDIA is concerned about the level of complaints it has received. The challenges experienced in implementing the scheme are recognised and work is proceeding on the participant and provider pathway review to address the issues that underlie the complaints.

“In addition, the NDIA’s complaints management approach is under review.”

The report also showed only about 60,000 support plans had been approved to the March quarter since June 30, 2017.

Therese Sands, the co-chief executive of People with Disability Australia, told Pro Bono News this week that she was not surprised by the latest findings.

“People with disability are reporting to us that they are frustrated with plans that aren’t right, delays in getting reviews and with the NDIA getting the basics wrong,” she said.

To Flood and the CPSU the level of complaint and the slow implementation of the NDIS highlighted the need for the staffing cap to be lifted. Labor’s shadow social services minister, Jenny Macklin, concurred.

“It’s clear that the agency doesn’t have enough staff to roll out the scheme on time,” Macklin said, “[and] if we are going to sort out the problems with poor-quality NDIS plans the staffing cap on the NDIA needs to be lifted.”

Impartial, non-partisan analyses have reached similar conclusions. The Commonwealth ombudsman has also expressed concern about the level of complaints. The Productivity Commission – an agency not known for its endorsement of big-government solutions – was critical of the inadequate funding and staffing of the NDIA. It warned that capping staff levels “could lead to poorer outcomes”, particularly in the rollout phase of the scheme.

The Senate estimates examination of the NDIS has served, too, to highlight another aspect of the move to greater outsourcing: the high cost of outsourced advice.

Senator Derryn Hinch, with an old tabloid nose for the outrageous example, singled out one of the NDIS contractors, asking NDIA chief executive Robert De Luca:

“Could you tell me about Canberra-based Aquasora Pty Ltd? Apparently, one special adviser from Aquasora was paid more than $800,000 in one year as a special adviser, which is about $300,000 more than you earn. I’d like to know who the adviser was advising. And what was the advice.”

De Luca’s deputy answered for him, although she didn’t reveal much.

“That was an individual with a great deal of experience who had worked with the scheme from the outset of the scheme and had previously held a very senior role in the Commonwealth.”

The deputy chair of parliament’s joint committee of public accounts and audit, Labor MP Julian Hill, says increasing recourse to outside experts – often former bureaucrats – is one of the big false economies of the ranks of public servants and one of the hardest to quantify.

Notwithstanding an inquiry his committee began last November into government contracting, Hill says, “the issue of former public servants becoming independent contractors with ABNs [is] opaque.

“We have no idea how much of that goes on, but there’s a lot of it, particularly in Defence.”

His committee is gaining some insight into the costs of the loss of what he called, in a very blunt speech to the House this week, “internal capability”.

He cites evidence from the Bureau of Statistics, which had a disastrous glitch that delayed the 2016 census.

“They admitted, in evidence, that the cost of a labour-hire IT contractor – IT workers do computers, which is why the ABS needs them – is 200 per cent more than just employing that person as a public servant.”

But decades of outsourcing had left the bureaucracy with “no internal capability”. Not only did the bureaucracy lack the capacity to do its own IT; it lacked the capacity to assess the value of outsourced IT services.

“As someone in the private sector told me, the problem with government departments now is that they’re not an informed purchaser; they have no one left who understands this stuff and knows whether they’re buying $200 million of crap or not. That’s a direct quote…”

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

https://twitter.com/TheNTNews/status/1003238282845548545

hooman posted:

Good read in the guardian today:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jun/04/the-big-con-how-neoliberals-convinced-us-there-wasnt-enough-to-go-around

Lid posted:

Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce boasted of lobbying the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to support his friend Gina Rinehart's National Agriculture Day months before he received a $40,000 personal cheque from the mining billionaire.

Documents obtained by Fairfax Media under Freedom of Information laws show Mr Joyce wrote a personal letter to Mrs Rinehart in April 2017 in which he said he "had made a direct representation to the Prime Minister expressing my strong support for this [National Agricultural and Related Industries Day] proposal."

Two months later in June 2017, Mr Joyce's own department donated $60,000 to the event on behalf of the Australian government. It was staged in November that year.

An audience at the event's gala dinner was shocked when Mr Joyce accepted the "champion of farming" cheque from Mrs Rinehart. He said he was "humbled" and was going to use it fix up his farm, but later returned the cheque following a public backlash.

LIVE AMMO ROLEPLAY posted:

So he gave her $60,000 in goverment money and she gave him a personal $40,000 award

Recoome posted:

Extremely pro click

hooman posted:

Good read in the guardian today:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jun/04/the-big-con-how-neoliberals-convinced-us-there-wasnt-enough-to-go-around

The Peccadillo posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/RMorrison9/status/1003462425054597121




... (he tried to kill a lady yesterday)

The Peccadillo posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/RMorrison9/status/1003462425054597121




... (he tried to kill a lady yesterday)

aejix posted:

IPA stooge john lloyd has resigned has head of public service.

I presume only so they can parachute someone far far worse into the role

aejix posted:

IPA stooge john lloyd has resigned has head of public service.

I presume only so they can parachute someone far far worse into the role

bandaid.friend posted:

Christopher Pyne's website address is pyneonline.com.au which I like

G-Spot Run posted:

Vicky Campion's 18 weeks are nearly up...

Zenithe posted:

Today I learned that your home address along with other personal information can be accessed by people without your knowledge or consent unless you go to a website and specifically ask that they remove your information.

The website to do so is http://www.propertydatacodeofconduct.com.au/ttsvr/n/Application-for-Suppression-Form-/qvas-189

This is hosed, and I'm amazed that it's allowed.

e. Specifically if you are a QLD homeowner

Beetphyxious posted:

but what about the electoral roll?

Cleretic posted:

With the electoral roll, only political parties can get access to it. I'm getting the idea that this is more accessible.