SH> the problem remains that the politicians interfere when they
SH> should get the hell out of what they know nothing about.

I'm not convinced that really is the problem myself. Take the
last federal budget. Treasury had to make predictions on what
the economy was up to and hence what should be done in the budget
in response to their predictions on where the economy is headed.

Turns out its a damned hard thing to do. Treasury predicted that
business investment would grow by 14%. Everyone fell around laughing
and thought that was quite preposterous, particularly the media
economic commentators. What actually happened was twice that 24%.

It isnt even that easy to say decide what effect adjustments you
make to interest rates will have on the housing industry and thats
a hell of a lot superficially simpler problem than the whole of the
Aust economy.

So when its very difficult to predict how the economy is going
to behave, its even more difficult to adjust the economic levers
to get the result you want.

The problem isnt usually interference by politicians. Sometimes it is,
particularly those utter debacles seen in the southern labor states of
VIC, SA and WA, where they just decide that a particular approach will
work and are so hidebound in their ideology that they cant even see it
all coming gloriously unstuck until its far too late, but that isnt
actually that common.

And sometimes a politician gets it right, like John Button, taking some
industrys like steel etc and shaking the sh*t out of it and making them
wake up to themselves. Or say the introduction of competition in the
phone industry which was very much just a political will to do it.

SH> So my point about a contract with australia remains,

I'm not convinced it can work. Mainly because it locks you into what
looks like the right thing to do at a particular point in time and you
are stuck with that even if things change and it needs some changes.

Like those tax cuts that labor said were L A W LAW, I think it would
be quite mad to actually continue with those right now. I also think
it makes considerable sense to reverse some of the stuff they did do,
particularly the stuff on non means tested handouts, particularly on
child rebates etc. They are a classic example of just cycling money
thru the bureaucracy, tax people, mostly give the money back to those
you just collected it from. Quite pointless IMO and one way to do
something about the much too high deficit is to scrap a lot of that stuff.

I'd also scrap that $1B land purchase scheme ala Mabo and really shake
the sh*t out of the vast amount of money that just gets wasted in ATSIC
bureaucracy and never actually gets delivered at the bleeding edge in
sewerage and water supply etc.

I'd also scrap most of the expensive military stuff, particularly the
submarines and surface navy stuff.

All stuff which is arguably stuff which would be in a 'contract' but IMO
should be tossed in the bin as just not being possible in the current
economic circumstances. The current account deficit is far more important,
mainly coz if that doesnt get fixed we wont be able to afford any of this
other stuff if we choose to do it.

SH> the fightback proposal was not the same thing at all it was an overly
SH> complicated concept which did not "roll back" the feather bedding of
SH> the political establishment

Yes, it was indeed different in detail. BUT it did actually have a
very substantial component of extensive cuts in government bureaucracy
and government outgoings, particularly on welfare and medicare, and
THAT was actually a large part of what scared the electorate witless
and they just werent going to take the risk.

SH> as does the GOP's contract with america, which is a direct
SH> attach at the heart of the political old boy/girl establishment.

Yes, but we largely disposed of most of that we had ourselves quite
a while ago. The Country Party used to comprehensively rort the system
like that and the vast bulk of that is long gone now.

SH> it is a real attempt to dis enfranchise the politicians who
SH> feed on and off each other ad nauseum and never remove their
SH> snouts from the publicly funded trough....

Yes, but our system works very differently. We dont OTW have anywhere
near as much of that stuff. We dont have the massive defense industry
the US has and that was always a large part of the US trough system.
We do have similar stuff like the frigates and submarines, but they
arent just flagrant snouts in trough stuff like the US does it OTW.

We do have a bit of it, but its not a very important part of the federal
budget and I cant see it making much difference to the Aust economy whatever
we do about it. Even something quite dramatic like say the entire ATSIC
Mabo etc etc vote isnt actually that big a part of the total budget.

--- PQWK202