Australian Senate Enquiry into Media
SNAPSHOTS OF SOCIETY, ECONOMY, POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS AND ALLIANCES CREATED BY KEVIN BECK, MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA Another web site within the Mosaic Portal Network |
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Australian Senate Enquiry into Media
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June 2010, watching the commentary on the demise of Kevin Rudd as leader of the labor party in government in Australia I noted the rush, by the commentators, to get on board and offer opinions and rationale. Perhaps one of the most common refrains from the "insider elite" is " no one knew" or "who could tell?" and "no one predicted this". Readers of this web site would know that someone definitely did klnow, and predict, the outcome. Similarly the economic watchers were caught flat footed, and out of the loop, on the global financial crisis, again justifying their lack of intuition by being part of the ignorant pack that claimed that it was not possible to predict. They simply did not know. Therefore generally the rest of us would not know. That also is not true. These are the things I do amongst others, assessing, analysing, predicting and implementing. Politicians, political parties, government agencies, businesses, and corporations, could save a lot of money by reading, and studying, the content of my multiple topic web sites or by simply sounding me out in a conversation. There is a lot more to our arsenal of utilities and skills than blogging and commentary on the internet. Soon I will begin to examine Australia, through the eyes and mind, of the Prime Minister Julia Gillard. (Kevin R Beck, Melbourne Australia, Australian Politics and Governmments |
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The Deepwater Horizon disaster caused headlines around the world, yet the people who live in the Niger delta have had to live with environmental catastrophes for decades... about that disater." |
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COMMENTARY: Kevin R Beck AUSTRALIA: OPINION, DEBATE, ARTICLES, PARLIAMENTS, BILLS, FEDERATION, INFORMATION PUBLIC VERSUS POLITICAL INTEREST IN PUBLIC POLICY |
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Australia needs a new political party with a membership of diverse and innovative thinkers. One that operate at federal and state levels. One that can take the country forward to new heights and noy back and forwards between hacneyed, insular policies and actions that are merely recycled by career politicians waiting on the merry go round for their turn. A party that is not inbred, and one that is not incestuous. I predict that in 2010 the decline of respect for Australia's two political parties (labor and liberal) will be extensive and spread quickly. The electorate has many sources of information and alternative opinions. They are tired of self serving egosa nd petty little men who think that they have all of the answers. Rudd and Abbott will learn the disdain the electorate has for them. The first term of Kevin Rudd will be marred by the lack of ability of the Prime Minister who may not know his limitations. I do not think that he and his team are the smartest guys in the room. (Kevin R Beck, Melbourne, Australia) Australia's Enron, Enron was a US based company that lead the market and was praised by all in sundry. It spectacularly fell, its history chronicled in a book, with a subtitle, the smartest guys in the room. Kevin Rudd and his people are not the smarets guys in the room, but who are? |
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Australia has an aging population. At least 40% of the nation's voters are in their fifties,
yet you could not tell this when you look at the policies of governments, corporate advertising and the behaviour of decision makers. It is as if they think the people with money are the teens and the yuth of the nation.
Government, employers, sellers of good and services, commercial FM and digital media, are focused on the twenty to thirty age brackets.
The focus is on an under educated, inexperienced and self absorbed lot whose ability to think deeply
about anything is watching commercial news, Big Brother and Australia's Biggest Loser.
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Australia is being consumed
by its own stupdity and an untehical power collective. It is a rudderless country
with poor, and corrupt, political and corporate senior people who lack the personal characteristics for inspiring, and
ethical, leadership.
The liberal Treasurer, Peter Cotsello, once commented on the shortage of skills in Australia due to the myopic tradition of getting rid of workers who turned fifty, suggested that we "should now work till we dropped". Poor human resource management and employment practices, and even poorer public policy, developed and implemented by a short term focused, semi - literate, political dupopoly (labor and liberal) brought us here. This is the quality of analysis, and commentary, from the person who aspires to be Prime Minister and whose stewardship of the Australian economy has created barriers to wealth creation and innovation through poor policy. Short term goals, and consumer riches, is the mantra of the Howard - Costello partnership. The Prime Minister said that older Australians might have to find other types of work and work and be managed by someone in their thirties. Over the years I have had a stint of being managed by wet behind the ears, thick, people of this vintage. Their experience, ability to think and to understand the world in which they are operating is limited to the concept that operate in a free - unfettered market place. In one organisation the Directors did not read newspapers, or educate themselves about the nation or the world. They generalised about their market sector and created organisational strategies, and actioned them, based on perceptions that had no research or factual base. They were adamant that the Australian economy, and workplace hiring practices, would move to large scale temporary employment. In their minds Australian employers would have a workforce, of the future (2006 and beyond) of contractors supplied by third parties. They would supply such workers. Based on their assumptions they hired, and sacked people, with regular monotony forever chasing their elsuive objective. This switch to tem[porary would, according to them take place in the first quater of 2006. Turnover of staff in the first half of 2006 is 100%. They often remarked to me that there was little work ethic in people today. They told staff that the new Work Choices Act of the federal government allowed them to sack them without the need to give a reason. I found most of their behaviour, propositions, comments, and their observations, about people who worked for them, to be an irony. There were no mirrors in the company. They were somewhat ignorant in general, the epitomy of the proposition that Australian expertise, in management and generally, is "dumbing down". They are not alone in the Australian landscape and are the norm rather than the exception. They mirror Australia's public policy makers in many respects. The Australian Labor party has a bare policy cupboard and the leadership is as narrowly focused as their liberal and national counterparts. Yet many of these people are in, or approaching, their fifth decade in life. Tell them where to stick their mendacious vocabulary and absurdity. The vocabulary of politics (politicians) and corporations (executives) is desiged to camouflage information, hide intent and alter perception of performance. It is interesting how "managerial speak" travels the world and we are confronted with the language of babble and sophistry borrowed as if it were a disease. The jargon of politics, and business, is laced with mendacity. They claim "core values" but when the pressure is on they demonstrate in droves that thesde values are non existent. Their values are different to civilised and honourable people. Their values are the values of personal survival at any cost. The government or the corporation over the individual/s. They have game plans as if life and employment, career and for some, simply existing, are some form of sport to be played on a field called "Australian economy". The economic commentators, and the money market gamesters, are like gamblers in the casino. They add no value but rather are destructive, through betting the price. Bet a dolar or bet a million the ffect is the same. It adds no extra value to the society in terms of shared income or profit. They love "lean and mean". They punish anyone who does not play their game. Their punishment can be career, and soul, destroying, yet they are not charged, and prosecuted, as the criminals many of them are. They do not have to be accountable. Governments emulate lean and mean. Spin manufactures our consent to accepting that failures of our governments, the politicians there in, the bureaucracy and the bureaucrats there in, the failure of boards and corporations and the performance of people there in are packaged as challenges, and opportunities, to be faced. Not by them, by others who wear the outcome. They can reinvent themselves much as a snake that sheds it skin, a grub can aparently become a butterfly and an incomeptent can go from one position to another as if the history is erased. These people are not prepared to exchange information but rather to demand that we interact on their terms yet they will all call us "clients" and "customers". High sounding words of hollow core, claims without merit or proof, "coproemes". These people are debasing our ability to think and treating us as commodities, the collateral of the small mind and the "30 second" media grab. When you add government policies such as Work Choices the environments these people create and operate become horrible places to work for they value very little, least of all the people.
Visit Canberra by all means but do not expect too much from Australia's capital. This city, through the federal government and its bureaucracy, has the principle say on the lives of Australians, and the future of the nation. Canberra, the capital of Australia, is really a small regional town (billed as a city) in southern New South wales, in the Austalian Capital Territory. In many ways it is a Machiavellian place of Orwellian conspiracies and fantasies concocted. The rules are made by senior departmental bureaucrats who are detached from commercial sensibilities. Their lives revolve around the whims, the foibles and the abilities of politicians. It is a closeted environment where the greater number of people here work for the Australian government, and the Embassies that create non Australian territories within the precincts. If not for the Australian government then for the Australian Capital Territory government, or they service those governments or the people who work in them. An extraordinary number are employed in government service. The population, of which a large part is itinerant, is probably about 350,000. It is closeted place isolated from the vagaries of other Australian locations because it is somewhat receession proof. A large number of people here make decisions for the nation without any real knowledege or awareness of real life in the remote area of the nation. The bureaucrats create simplistic models which they then treat as replicas of elements of Australia. To do busines with the buraucracy is to engage in a debilitating and wearing down. They sit in offices and guess what it might look like out there .... in far, far away Australia. Some times they make forays into the wider world. There is a version of consultation that they undertake. In Canberra the residents do not suffer land devaluations, down turn in the economy of the scale that others experience in Australia, they do not suffer privatisation of their assets and many of the realities of ordinary life. They do have a drug and crime issue like many places. They are short of water and public housing. There is an under class. There is a real class system of hierarchy and association. This is the diplomatic capital. It is also the realm of the Australian "Mandarin". The Secretaries of the public service, known as "Mandarins", are treated like demi-gods and they enact, and reinforce, the worship psyche by structure and access. They have learnt the art of implying something different with their "codes of Conduct" and their mission statements published with cynical motive. These are people who revel in their own status. They are people whose whole power, and esteem, comes from the public purse. They sit in the Chairman's lounge at Qantas, fly business class while their colleague workers sit in the back. They carry the trappings of office as if they are CEO's of commercial enterprises. The systems they watch over are corroded and in some instances coruupted by political interest and lobbyists. Here the global corporations viw to take slices of the hundreds of millions of dollars on offer. This is a town of largesse and patronage where belonging to the ] club is a privielege not a right. This is not about democracy and government for the citizen it is about democracy and government in the hands of a few and those who prey upon the public purse. The secretaries of the public service departments stay in better grades of hotels. They are truly the elite, the intelligent and the ignorant, all packaged together, as one. Perhaps they are people for whom only those mired, and a part of the system, might hold respect. Many people with whom I come into cntact in the business world truly beleivev that the political and buraucratic systems of Australia are corrupt. Not in terms of taking bribes or such criminal activity but in terms of managing the democracy and managing government. The system is corrupt and feeds on itself. Obession with process and the maintenance of thes emblance of fairness and balance and the facade that all is proper and above reproach. The systems themselves and the practices act as barriers to rational sensibility and open and honest government. The weapon of choice against accountability and responsibility are the "commercial in confidence", the "cabinet privilege", the "efficacy of the tender process" and the "requirement to lodge an unrealistic gaurantee" that favours the rich and powerful conglomerates. Innovation is thus crushed in this town and the smaller players wait for the scraps from the table of the rich and powerful, the owners of democracy in a developed nation. Changing the government is of little conseqwuence in this place for the major party members of the parliament have conventions and have an understanding as to how things must work. Wtite to a Secretary of the Australian Public Service and you will only get a reply if they deem you to be worthy of the effort. At best it will be a non committal piece of diatrobe that would have occupied a dozen people in its writing, editing and approval. It is sanitised to the point of being worthless. This a system carefully nurtured and maintained. Class, subservience, acquiescence and knowing one's place (in the public service chain) is how to get ahead. The motto of the public service is to present what the Minister of the day wants to hear and read. If he or she refuses to believe the facts never divulge the hypocrisy of the politician to the public. Canberra is the town of "government service" not "public service". The machinery of government is brought to bear by the faceless on the citizen who may fall foul of their codes and principles. I have signed their codes of conduct document and it is a contraption of their making. It is a hypocrisy. They are vengeful types these mandarins and I, or someone I know, will pay the price for daring to challenge their world of respectability and dedicated to public service. Despite the cant about being on contract at the pleasure of the Minister, the secretaries and senior members of the bureaucrats, are guaranteed a pay rate and a sinecure, the average person in employment will not enjoy. They claim huge pay rates and status without having to accept accountability. What is their primary task? Public service. No. It is to protect the Minister and to implement government directions. Actually in the latter case it is also to frustrate where appropriate. The Australian Constitution mentions government, and politicians, but not the Public Service Mandarins. They do not rate a mention. Yet they dictate to the citizen and treat with them as they will. They are guarded by gatekeepers. They are always busy to the masses. They wait the call from the Minister, and the powerful from the big end of town. < The biggest scare in their collective lives occurred back in 1996 when John Howard came to power and cut 25,000 jobs out of the fat cats' world. But hey, they are resilient, over time they got them all back and more. The amount of drivel, as to the wonder and value of Canberra, that spouts from the full time political members of the Territory government and the senior power brokers, including public servants and corporate executives, is breathtaking. The "Canberra International Airport" is served by small jets and prop airlines most of the time but they are extending the runway in the self delusion that it will increase tourism. This is a regional country town with a city logo. It lacks the quality of hospitality, and facilities of a major city, such as Sydney or Melbourne. There is one five star hotel, the Hyatt. Semi five star because it is a heriage hotel with a limited scope, and capacity, by comparison to other Hyatt hotels. The things Canberra does have the public institutions, are truly wonderful and are all provided by the Australian government. Most privately provided facilities in this centre, hotels and restaurants, are extremely average. The satellite suburbs may have one or two interesting things but the city centre is a disgrace and shows neglect and lack of imagination. They do not match larger regional centres in quality and diversity such as Ballarat, Central Southern Highlands, NSW coast and the regional centres of Victoria. In many ways Canberra is a place of self delusion and extraordinary arrogance born of being around the seat of government. It has a highly educated population but it seems that the only thing they can apply themlesves to is the "world of the public service". They are unable to be innovative in creating a "live and social" community. They are however one of the nation's largest retailers, and distributors, of pornography, soft and hard core. It is said that the porn shops, and brothels, do a roaring trade when parliament sits. Visit Canberra for two maybe three days and you will have seen it all. It is a place that functions on a weekly basis. Almost everyting - government, institutions and businesses - are geared for out of town people who are there to do business. It has a few major events such as Floriade (if you like flowers) and Summernats, cheap production cars, bare breasted women and louts making a lot of noise around the parliamentary precinct. When parliament is not sitting it is a ghost city. The residents who can affford to do so, flock to their coastal abodes or to the big cities.  Contemporary issues, and themes within politics, governments, national security, international relationships, economy and society 
Emperors who have no clothes. Food for Oil Corruption UN Report Role of Australia Cole Enquiry Transcript Scandal enveloping Australian enterprise and government Safeway fined $9M for price fixing bread to damage smaller competitors Lessons in privatisation, creeping stupidity. Self absorbed, Victorian Labor Party Smart state? |
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KEVINRBECK argues that Australia's parliaments, and politicians, are failing their duty The degradation, and decline, in public governance, institutions, and public interest Australia's Governance, Parliament Links, Debates, Bills, Performance, Hansard |
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