|
Sir Coq of Nandos posted:Whoops, just confirmed with the creator. We're still within the window of Bob Ellis' prediction, right?
|
#
¿
Jun 5, 2014 23:05
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 10:20 |
|
|
Re: privatisation, I remember hearing a story from some guys who used to work on (I think) the F-111 program in the RAAF. Sometime in the late 90s / early 2000s they privatised the support contracts for the planes. Whoever the contractor was immediately poached all the RAAF engineers that worked on the planes with the incentive of an immediate 20% pay rise. No-one could figure out how the privatisation idea got through: supply costs are the same, the contracts had been written to ensure the same level of support, labour costs were 20% higher, and the contractor was no-doubt making some bank. Turns out the cost benefit analysis for privatisation included all the costs of training engineers from scratch on the ledger of the government. In some cases this is pretty goddamn expensive, especially for some of the electronic and avionic systems that need to be retrofitted to a 1960s airframe. So despite the fact that the fleet was scheduled for retirement in less than a decade, the cost benefit analysis stated that personnel costs for the Commonwealth included all education and lifelong training costs, and was something that private enterprise would have to look after in order to continue to fulfill the contract. Of course the contractor didn't bother with training any new engineers and just pocketed the difference. From memory it came back to bite them in the arse a bit, as the pigs ended up flying a lot longer than originally planned. A lot of the dudes doing avionics were well into their sixties when the airframe was retired, although I guess that with the extension of the life of the fleet the government would have to renegotiate the contract on pretty unfavourable terms: you're not negotiating from a position of strength when you no longer have the expertise to maintain them yourself.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2014 17:53
|
|
|
Not always. Although it's easy to think of the Libs as moustache-twirling cartoon villains, a lot of them truly believe that they're doing the right thing for Australia. Almost no-one wakes up in the morning thinking "I'm an evil person, let's see what dastardly things I can do today!".
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2014 18:06
|
|
|
Gough Suppressant posted:At the absolute best they are guilty of wilfully maintaining ignorance of the consequences of their actions. At the worst they are guilty of literal treason and should be put up against a wall and shot. Don't think I'm trying to excuse their actions. It's just that automatically defaulting to "they're greedy evil fucks!" really simplifies their motivations, and that of the people that vote for them. It's at the same level as "they hate us for our freedom!". If it was as simple as that then it wouldn't be too hard to convince Australians to never vote for LNP ever again. Unless of course you think that roughly 50% of Australians are also greedy evil fucks, in which case why bother yourself with politics at all?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2014 22:04
|
|
|
John Birmingham suggested in one of his earlier books to apply for executive level jobs listed in those quarter page ads in the newspaper. Helps to pad out your numbers and unlike small business they're almost guaranteed to send you a formal rejection letter.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2014 07:47
|
|
|
Gough Suppressant posted:Look he's probably doing what he thinks is best. It is typical leftist hysterics to paint him as some sort of moustache twirling villain when all he is doing is lauding the torture he supports over someone who had to deal with the consequences of it face to face without training while being intimidated against reporting it. gently caress, that comment really got under your skin, didn't it? I wasn't saying it to in any way excuse the horrible poo poo that the Libs are doing. It's simply that by reducing the things that drive them to do pursue these policies down to "because they're evil fucks!" makes you less able to really understand what drives them and makes you less able to convince them (or more importantly their supporters) to change their mind. Know thy enemy and all that. If you disagree, can you explain how it differs from Americans who believe that al qaeda hates them for their freedom? For the record, one more time, I'm a greens supporter and have been for almost a decade. I don't know why I always feel the need to state that every time I say something that goes against the grain of this thread.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2014 12:06
|
|
|
Gough Suppressant posted:I believe he is suggesting that we would give so much more charity(scholarships) if the government would get off our backs with taxes(fee ceilings) Yeah and he's helpfully declined to point out that the fee ceiling repeal is policy while the scholarship increases is his good idea in an editorial piece. Somehow I get the feeling that his support for the former isn't contingent on the latter.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2014 12:13
|
|
|
Sorry for not responding earlier - I've got somewhat limited access to the net and didn't wanna phone-post on a topic I find really important. Regarding your response a few pages back, fair cop about conflating the mindset of elected LNP members vs their supporters. You're right in that they're two separate issues. Even still, by your reckoning 98.6% of parliament (I'm assuming Bandt and Wilkie get a pass) are better thought of as Gargamels driven solely by their hatred of smurfiness than as people influenced to various degrees by their own personal beliefs, those of their party, those of their powerful friends, and those of their electorate. (n.b. this position of giving agency to the LNP doesn't apply to Bernardi, Morrison and probably Brandis and Pyne). So let's look at each of these and see where we can influence them. Changing their personal beliefs is difficult but not impossible. If you buy Kevin Rudd's story on his conversion on gay marriage, it went pretty much exactly as how Fruity just described the approach being pushed at ACOSS. A personal acquaintance told Kevin his own story about the pain he felt about not being able to marry his soulmate, which forced Kevin to face up to the fact that his personal view was half-formed and contradictory to other values he held more dearly. Changing party platform is off-limits except if you want to do the change from within, and given the bile-inducing poo poo that comes out of the Young Liberal conferences that option can gently caress right off. It's almost as hard to counteract special interest lobby groups, but not impossible - it's easy to get cynical about GetUp campaigns and other slacktivist efforts, but they wield special interest-level power for the good guys and can occasionally achieve results. Although my own personal opinion is that this is pretty drat inefficient as for the big battles progressives are gonna get hella outspent. Finally there's the influence of the electorate. We're already seeing some massive pushback coming from the electorate on some parts of the budget and we are absolutely going to see some of the harshest measures get dropped. If you'd told me that the ALP's primary vote was gonna be above the LNP's less than a year after the election I'd have told you to ease off the jenkem, but here we are. The trick is now to talk to people in such a way that their gut reaction to the unfairness of the budget is solidified into part of their belief system so that their disgust stays with them through to the next election. As ewe2 pointed out, the contrary position (i.e. that 98.6% of politicians are actual no-poo poo soulless husks driven solely by a hatred of poor people and browns) is actually a really scary thing to consider, given that Australia is going to remain dominated by the two parties for at least another generation. If this was the case the only logical things to do would be to top yourself, riot in the street, or disengage from the political process entirely, as nothing you, the Greens, GetUp, or the electorate do could in any way affect the course of Australian history over the next few decades. Sadbrains people please don't top yourself though - I've got a few mates up in Brisbane that pretty much hold exactly this position, so they've chosen to continue to vote Greens but otherwise disengage from federal and state level politics. They're pursuing an odd mix of eco-survivalism and hyper-local community building and while I disagree with their view that they can't change federal and state politics, I can't fault their logic that's led them to focus on (and make demonstrable gains with) local issues instead. tl;dr stop otherizing politicians you monster.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2014 19:52
|
|
|
quote:I've lost my heart to Greg Hunt Hang on, I thought the press gallery had a don't ask / don't tell approach to Pyne?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 16, 2014 13:51
|
|
|
CrazyTolradi posted:They have the EXACT same "career progression chart" as the other scam mob, except it's red and not blue. Aside from that it's the same drat PICTURE. These places have been around forever, and usually fly under the radar of the authoritahs because they recruit backpackers, fresh year 10 school-leavers, and poorly educated people who don't know enough about their rights / the goddamn law to question how they operate. They often go FULL cult as well, and use a shitton of behavioral psych tricks to squeeze the most out of naive workers - mandatory team building exercises every morning, usually for over an hour (unpaid), in which some guy acts like a hype man for whatever poo poo product they're marketing, another charismatic bloke talking about how much money he makes thanks to this wonderful system, followed by some stern fellow saying how much you'll let yourself, your team, your parents, etc. down if you don't make your sales quota, etc. etc. The pressure they put on young kids to sell their lovely trinkets is unbelievable and often they'll try and keep whatever pissy commissions a kid is owed, because the kids burn out after a few weeks and stop showing up to work. I'd almost forgotten that these things exist. They were rife in hostels when I was backpacking around Australia years ago, this seems like an evolved version. The whole concept of MLM is a loving scam and it's criminal that it's allowed in any form.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 17, 2014 15:38
|
|
|
The changes to foreign aid sound really loving ominous but private companies have had their snouts in the aid trough for a long time. A bunch of construction / engineering companies (offhand including Cardno, Coffey and Sinclair Knight, I'm sure there's others) have had international development arms for ages. They're usually better skilled at providing whatever service is being delivered through a given aid project (i.e. water, sanitation, roads) than local counterparts, less corrupt,more likely to comply with reporting and transparency regimes, and are easier to oversee than foreign companies. Of course, AusAIDs ability to provide oversight of these contracts is certainly up for question now that they've been merged with DFAT and likely substantially downsized, but that's a different argument.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 18, 2014 07:52
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 10:20 |
|
|
Ab implants. Not even kidding.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2014 13:01
|
|