From Amanda Vanstone

 

The National Commission of Audit report does much more than give the government some ideas on where savings can be made to put our budget back in order over a reasonable timeframe. It also outlines lots of things we might do to make our government, both at a federal level and in its relationship with the states, much more efficient. My guess is a lot of the infotainment media will focus on the former. I hope significant attention is given to the latter.

A seminar on vertical fiscal imbalance is not the sort of thing many of us would sign up for. But if we can find ways for the states to have more of their own money and not be reliant on federal grants with strings attached we will have achieved something really important.

Understandably, when the Commonwealth gives money to the states it attaches strings, which bring reporting requirements, often overlapping with the states. The overlap reporting means a headache for everyone involved, including all the public servants landed with the task of seeing where the money goes. We can start to clean up that mess.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/an-audit-of-the-present-a-vision-for-the-future-20140501-zr2lg.html#ixzz30XlvNls4


Yes, the bunch of retired Mr Magoo who did the useless audit of services and how to fix an inexistent problem need some socially adjusted glasses. So does Amanda, of course. Hey, the overlapping of duties between state and federal governments is never such a problem as to actually be a plus by minimising stuffups and fucups... It provides opportunity to double check and stop devastating developments.
But I suppose if having to supervise where the benefit money goes is a problem, the solution from the old kooks (careful Gus, you are an old kook) is not to give any money away. Problem solved. Saved money: create two poor people instantly, including an unemployed lazy public servant. For most of these old kooks and free-enterprise capitalists, public servants are lazy and do nothing apart from playing with red tape all day, to justify their employ. 
No Amanda, if the Commission of Audit report is THE blueprint for the future, it's a future that's already stinking of wet sewer rat and of old piss. I don't want part of it...

 

 

The head of the government’s Commission of Audit made a $1,500 donation to the Liberal party which was allegedly paid into a slush fund currently being examined by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac).

Tony Shepherd, who released the Commission of Audit's report with the government on Thursday, faced a Senate committee hearing into the Commission of Audit on Friday morning.

Icac documents reveal Shepherd made a $1,500 donation to the Liberal party in 2010 which was then paid into the slush fund the Free Enterprise Foundation set up to help bankroll the NSW 2011 Liberal election campaign.

There is no suggestion Shepherd knew the money was going to the slush fund.

Shepherd was chairman of construction company Transfield when he made the donation.

It was around the time property developers were banned from making donations to the NSW Liberal party. Although Transfield did not technically fall into that category, it decided to halt donations from the company.

Labor senator Sam Dastyari asked Shepherd about the donation during the Senate committee hearing into the Commission of Audit, and Shepherd said he did not remember the donation, though his understanding would have been he was giving to the federal Liberal party.

“Transfield made a decision it would not make any donations at all to political parties and I as chairman endorsed that position. I believed the issues regarding corporate donations to political parties was becoming so vexed it was better to quit the field altogether so that was not because we were a property developer but because I felt the issues regarding corporate donations to political parties too vexed and we should not do it,” he said.

When Dastyari suggested the $1,500 was inadvertently coupled with an illegal donation, Shepherd replied: “That is something for others to deal with.”

The $1,500 is understood to have been the cost of a ticket to a Liberal party fundraiser.

“Frankly I can’t remember the donation. I can’t remember going to the event,” Shepherd said.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/02/commission-of-audit-tony-shepherd-grilled-liberal-slush-fund

---------------------------------

Impressive. This shows that some people are either careless with their cash or have too much of it... If I loose two bucks, I know about it. Actually I remember, I gave it to a beggar in the street. I suppose my two bucks is about three-grand for a rich man... There is no need to remember one's own generosity.... 

 

 

 

Labor's agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon is scathing of the report.

"I haven't spotted anyone on the audit commission with a rural background and I think it shows," he said.

"Their recommendations for trimming fat, if you like, in agriculture are ill-conceived and fail to recognise some of the challenges our farming sector faces, and in particular the vagaries of the weather they have to deal with."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-02/nrn-rural-audit-reax/5425678

---------------------------------

Gus: They're BANKERS! Not farmers... The only tree they know is the sheltered tropical money tree in the Bahamas.

And by the way when I say "one has too much money if one remembers not where it went..."  I also mean that one could have a touch of Alzheimer's for not remembering where $1500 went... In both cases, having too much dough to remember where it went or having a diseased memory syndrome, one should not be in a position to make decisions or recommendations about other people's money or even that of the government.

 

In politics, perception is everything. It’s critical for the Coalition to create a sense of desperation around the state of the nation’s finances, because their vision for Australian society is so deeply unpopular that without it they don’t stand a chance. After all, it’s a tough job to advance a position that benefits those with wealth and privilege at the expense of ordinary people, to ditch Australian egalitarianism for a dog eat dog dystopia.

The Abbott government’s political strategy is all about theatre, and in their Greek tragedy the Liberals are the heroes rescuing our sinking economy from the clutches of the incompetent former government, preventing us from meeting the fate of modern Greece. The numbers that demonstrate the real facts about our economy have been reduced to props in the play. Privatisation, cuts to services and the transfer of wealth to the big end of town are a necessary evil because the villains (read: Labor) have bankrupted the country. If the political equivalent of a good opening night is success at the ballot box then this play was a sell-out.

To continue the fiction in government, the Coalition established a National Commission of Audit. To ensure they got the answers they wanted they handpicked the actors – a who’s who of corporate Australia – and wrote the script, which went something like this: we have a structural budget deficit that can only be fixed by drastically cutting government expenditure, our high debt means this deficit must be reduced urgently, we cannot add to the already high tax burden, we must tighten our belts and make deep cuts starting with health, welfare and the public service.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/08/commission-of-audit-political-theatre-trumps-budget-facts

 

The man who helped provide the blueprint for Treasurer Joe Hockey's austere first budget has lashed out at ''narrow sectional interests'', including his ''good mate'' David Gonski, for the hostile community response.

The head of the Abbott government's Commission of Audit, Tony Shepherd, said the commission had ''agonised'' about spreading the burden of repairing the budget across the community but no single sector, including education, had accepted it must sacrifice.

''I think it's a sad reflection on the modern Australian attitude that they can't see that all areas have to make a contribution and they look at it as a narrow, sectional issue,'' he said.

Advertisement

''People will protect their sectional interest, that's understandable, but I wish people could also stand back, look at the overall picture of the Commonwealth budget and rather than say 'don't touch me', say 'what can be our contribution to a sustainable surplus'.''

It comes as Liberal backbencher George Christensen, the LNP member for the Queensland electorate of Dawson, posted a photo of an impoverished child on social media and suggested complaints about the budget lacked perspective.

"Aussies should do a tour of Asia & live like locals to put these 1st world complaints re budget in perspective," he wrote. He followed up his original tweet with: ''Try getting any serious form of welfare in Thailand or other SE Asian nations.''

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/stop-your-complaints-says-budget-architect-tony-shepherd-20140522-38rv2.html#ixzz32UBtcTDQ


Tony Shepherd now lives in kookooland, after an illustrious career in digging tunnels and other commercial enterprises. To mention the "narrow sectional interests" when he basically hits 70 per cent of the population with a sledge hammer with the help of deliberately crafted porkies from Tony Abbott before the election, makes us feel a bit like tenderised steaks. The rest of the population, the rich are getting away with a small "contribution" which can easily be offset with tax fiddle and a few concession on the price of Mercedes. So ho great Mr Shepherd don't hold against us if "we're not happy, Tony"...

Your "good mate" Gonski, worked his guts out with a panel of both Labor and Liberal heavies to deliver a fair and progressive blueprint of education for this country, that idiot Pyne is trying to destroy and replace with a ill-thought out unfair reformulated way to cash up private schools to the detriment of public education. As well Pyne wants to push proselytising into public schools and revise the curriculum  (see rewriting history...) to "white out" the proper history of this country. Gonski is right. Your budget stinks.

In regard to the destruction of medicare with a small tax every time one goes to see the doctor, that is beyond the pale. I know, you engineered the constructions of toll-ways and pay as you enter tunnels — but going to the doctor is not like crossing the harbour bridge.

And as far as the rabid-right Backbencher Christensen and his image of poor kids in third world countries to compare with us having it too good out here, is totally outrageous and irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the price of fish. 

Your budget is a grand deception. Go back to your day job, Mr Shepherd, and dig more tunnels for cash tolls. 

See mischief at top.