Savvy!

Extracts

- Even if we had Harry Hopkins in the Federal government working for the Prime Minister. I doubt whether he would last six months. I reckon he’d have a nervous breakdown. Unless something is done our nanny. or better our ninny state, may well be the final nail in the death of Western productivity and initiative.

- The canary in the coal mine is Indigenous affairs. If you worry about the outcome of Kevin Rudd’s 42 billion stimulus plan then spare a thought for Indigenous Australians. Since 1968 the Commonwealth has spent 69.3 billion in 2007/08 dollars on Indigenous Affairs.

- If the entire Aboriginal population in 1968 had created a term deposit account earning 5 per cent and put the accumulating per capita sum the Commonwealth spent in their names into that account they would have nearly $497,762 in their personal account in 2008. If the entire Aboriginal population of 1991 had done the same , each Aboriginal person would have $198,462 in their accounts in 2008. Can we really say that each Aboriginal person has derived opportunities and life services from the Commonwealth over this period worth this sum?

- The problem is stark. It is becoming far harder to do battle with the Commonwealth of Australia’s Aboriginal bureaucracy than the problems of Aboriginal people.

- It cost more time and effort in manhours to get the 20 per cent from DEEWR that it cost to deliver the life-changing training.

- But which employer and which dedicated trainer has the capacity to spend years working through the DEEWR bureaucracy to get relatively small sums of money? Which company is prepared to have a group of Canberra bureaucrats pore over the company accounts? Which company or trainer has the capacity to fly to committee meetings that last hours and usually result in another committee meeting? The DEEWR process shakes out 90 per cent of those who apply for funding. You reach the point where you want to kill the string of bureaucrats who are “just following procedure”.