I have a piece this morning’s Herald Sun, Australia’s largest circulation newspaper, focussing on the need for that very Jeffersonian but forgotten goal of good government, frugality.
The Victorian Baillieu Government has disappointed almost everyone in its break-neck crawl to wind back the regulatory and expenditure excesses built up over 11 years of the Bracks/Brumby administration. So far it has been a seamless transition largely confined to a very gradual changing of the guard in the ministerial appointments to advisory bodies.
Some movement is foreshadowed with a committee to prune the excesses of public service growth but even that is fairly modest and does not appear to be focussed on the escalation of job gradings that also occurred. And we have seen no real assault on regulation.
Perhaps there is a lot bubbling under the surface but you’d have to be an optimist to think so.
Well done.
Very good idea to show the average punter a comparison of Victoria to a similar foreign state such as Wisconsin
JamesK
10 Feb 12 at 11:41 am
There was a great article in The Age after the 2010 election on why the ALP lost. I can’t honestly say there has been any change.
Sinclair Davidson
10 Feb 12 at 12:26 pm
I was always suspect after the silvertail Baillieu family got their own private bushland reserve near their estate.
What Victorian Liberals need is a brazen, ballsy, gutter running scum bag like their very own Paul Keating, who can make tough choices.
I want more throwing of staplers etc in cabinet meetings.
Was there a “Sorrento Agreement”?
.
10 Feb 12 at 12:29 pm
Baillieu’s essential and inherent weakness is on full display with the porn teacher debacle. Anyone with a skerrick of courage (not to mention political savvy) would have announced to the world that the so-and-so will never work as a teacher for the state of victoria again. let him sue and let the chips fall where they may (can always have a confidential settlement later, if need be). but what does teddy the toy bear do – not a damn thing. talk about squander a gimme, he hasn’t even got the wit to fake it. what’s he afraid of? that someone might accuse him of being a conservative?
larrikin
10 Feb 12 at 1:26 pm
Sounds like this watched pot will never boil. Time to turn up the heat?
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
10 Feb 12 at 2:12 pm
Yes, Lizzie – and if red ted can’t stand the heat, he should be forcibly removed from the kitchen.
Rabz
10 Feb 12 at 2:43 pm
Elect a politician, and get a Lefty.
All we get are people who are too afraid to go down in the history books as ‘mean’
Winston Smith
10 Feb 12 at 2:45 pm
Clearly I am not:
.
11 Feb 12 at 9:37 am
All Victorian can be thankful of one thing. They got Red Ted rather than Robert Doyle. Doyle was seen as the Great White Hope by some sections of the Liberal Party when he took over the leadership in 2002, only to lead the Party to its worse defeat ever.
They got rid of him and he bobbed up as Melbourne’s Lord Mayor in 2008 and has been bloody useless.
Had he been Liberal leader when Labor lost the 2010 election, things could now be worse in Victoria than they are now!
johno
11 Feb 12 at 5:41 pm
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/seven-roads-to-ruin-20101203-18jwh.html
yes sinclair, it was great piece, they have all gone to Canberra as advisers and some are now back in state govt today.
cheers thanks for putting that up there, i remembered the piece but forgot the title to google it.
john
11 Feb 12 at 6:47 pm