RURAL AND LONG-DISTANCE TRANSPORT

I have just driven nearly 1 000 Km in the past few days to help neighbours whose cars had broken down and also to get a couple of basic medical services for myself – on the way, I dodged trucks obviously being driven under severe time pressures – over roads built and maintained by good workers but on a shoestring budget. There's a bus going in one direction a couple of times a week over in the next town, nearly an hour's drive away .... and that's the sum total of our public transport. Nobody drives a “Toorak Tractor” to big-note themselves around here; once you get off the bitumen, if you haven't got a 4-wheel-drive, you'll be up to your axles in mud as soon as it rains.

So I'm not in a good mood about transport out here in the bush.

i.. how do we get all the petrol-hungry old rust-buckets that are always breaking down off the roads and replace them with free or highly-subsidised small station wagons or vans in a one-for-one direct exchange? If India can have the One Lakh car then why can't “The Clever Country” do even better?

[If you are offended by somebody questioning the economics and purpose of “road safety” then please avert your eyes or seek a less confronting blog]. Now ........

Frequent blitz campaigns by police on unroadworthy cars do indeed get them off the cars off the roads, they do indeed raise revenue – by punishing even more those who cannot afford to pay the fines let alone get their cars up to standard – and they take workers and potential workers right out of the labour market. Now that is really stupid. Since bus companies are flat out making money running services in the bush .... how about some practical suggestions on how to provide transport for people out here in The Other Australia?

Ii,,Roads have improved a lot since I was a kid but we still have to put up with low, narrow, easily-flooded bridges and culverts – and even in 2008, fords! [no, not the brand of car but unbridged creeks and gullies]. Then are there are the problems of poor road drainage and of roads built on foundations that were adequate for horse-and-dray but not for B-doubles. How can we get better roads, roads that need less maintenance?

Iii,, Railways have always been an efficient means of moving large quantities of heavy material over long distance. Many railway lines were ripped up in railway-wrecking craze of the 20^th Century. The wild party is over, folks, so now, before the horrible hangover really hits hard .... how are we going to rebuild and revitalize our railways?

iv. Too many good people have died and too many families have been financially and socially ruined because the bread-winner tried to make a living by driving trucks. We cannot allow this situation to continue. What are we going to do about it?

URBAN AND SUBURBAN TRANSPORT

1. How do we get most private vehicles off the roads - at least on weekdays - and get more public buses, trolleys, trams, trains, monorails and ferries into service?

2. How do we get jobs and dwelling-places closer together?

BUREAUCRACY - both Public Servive and Corporate

This is the longest and most difficult of the topic-areas I have picked so I've made it the first.

An old definition .... “BUREAUCRACY [Hybrid word imit. fm. Aristocracy] A system in which government is carried on by irresponsible departmental officials”.

Not bad. The important part of that definition is IRRESPONSIBLE – to which we can add Malicious, Wastefiul, Soul-destroying, Corrupt .... no doubt you have your own adjectives. Nowadays, a definition of Bureaucracy has to cover both the Public Service [including the Defence Force and the Judiciary] and the Private Corporations.

Let's face it. For all our whinging about 'bureaucrats', Australians love bureaucracy. It's a hangover from the convict days; it's become part of our national tradition.. Never mind what Communist regimes were like, we can outdo them in bureaucracy – faster, more colourfully, with more purposeless changes, with greater destruction and waste..

It is the single biggest problem we have. It stifles innovation; it creates misery; it wastes a huge amount of money; it rewards inefficiency .... and it makes the Australia 2020 Summit and this blog necessary.

Now, down to business ........

...............................

a.. What can we do to stop clones hiring clones? How can we make Public Service recruitment and promotion more impartial? How can we make recruitmant to Corporations more open? How can we break the cycle of infestation?

b.. How do we reward diligent, honest, decent public servants and corporate officials. The ones who have the interests of both their own organization and the general public at heart ........ without also rewarding the yes-men, the bullies, the layabouts, the back-stabbers, the bribe-takers, the vicious sociopaths, the drunks-and-druggies, the pompous fools and the crooks?

c.. How do we punish absolute stupidity and criminality without making everyone in the organization too scared to be innovative or to deviate an inch from the supposed norm?

d.. Current performance evaluations seem to have made things worse rather than better – what can we do to make sure performance is monitored so as to warn of dangerous trends and destructive decisions without the monitoring being tangled up with trivia and with minor differences in individual work-style? .

e.. During my professional working life, far too often I got to hear appalling stories of bureaucratic idiocy and abuse of authority that was the direct cause of death, ruin, illness, family break-up and worse [and, by the way,like many others, I've survived bureaucratic spite and stupidity myself]. How can we make “Bureaucracy” a felony like robbery or murder?

f.. How do we train children now to assert themselves and their interests in the face of the bureaucratic abuse of power whilst training them too to be calm and polite and very observant when confronted by such nastiness?

g.. Governments and corporations do need to collect and analyse some data about individuals in order to function well and to meet our needs but .... How do we set real and vital limits about what data is collected - by whom, for what purpose and for the ultimate benefit or harm to whom?

h.. Once something goes onto a government or corporate record about an individual it is impossible to alter. No matter how inaccurate, how monsterously untrue, no matter how erroneous or spiteful or ridiculous, no matter how gross the omission of relevant additional information .... once it is there, it is there .... and nothing in the wide world can ever change it. Forget litigation – that's only for the waelthy with time and money to burn; forget “Freedom of Information” - that's a sick joke and it has often been called “Freedom from Information. [I found out indirectly that some records on me probably contained disgustingly wrong information about me – but I can never correct it]. These records, with their errors and their facts, have direct and great impact on our lives.

How do we get free and uncomplicated access to all government and corporate records about ourselves and either correct them or add our own comments pointing out any lies, errors, misunderstandings, foolishness, ignorance and omissions in those records?

i.. How do we preserve continuity and organizational memory in the Public service and in the Corporations? Sorry but having it all down on paper or on hard-drives just isn't enough .... as quite a few Royal Commissions. inquests and major trials have made so painully obvious..

j.. How do we give Ombudsman real teeth and change the corporate "watch-puppies" into real watchdogs?

k.. How can we get at least some input by ordinary Australians into policy-making? The three-yearly election circus with its dancing-and-singing "mandates" is a rip-roaring failure .... and many policy disasters would have been avoided and thousands of million of tax dollars rescued if the general public had been aware of what ratbaggery and sheer lunacy was going into this policy or that. If some proposed policies had been run past a couple of kids in their school playground then the policies would have never got off the ground. Nobody their right mind would want a referendum on everything or policy-making by popularity contests - but the other extreme, the one we have now, excessive secrecy, is sending us into the abyss.

...........

What do you think and what are your suggestions?

A few ground rules

a. Use a nickname or use your real name. It's up to you. A nickname is probably safer though.

b. If you know someone with a good idea but they can't use a computer or if they are not on the internet, please write down their idea or suggestion for them and put it here on this Counter-Summit.

100. Warnings:

     1. If you do criticize someone else's suggestion, keep your comment short and to the point [if it is too long, I'll chop it down to size – and you won't like that]. A couple of words is enough. If it is a worthwhile explanation or a good hint on improving a previous suggestion, I won't have to alter it at all.

     2. Comment on someone else's ideas or suggestions, not on the person themselves. There's no need to be abusive or to incite abuse. As the saying goes "Be a real sport. Play the ball, not the man" [and yes, that does apply to females as much as to males].
        

     3. Be aware that some boofhead might pinch your ideas or suggestions and claim it as their all their own work – that's how those sort of people get promotion and credit: O.B.E. [Other Bas*ards' Efforts!]. If that worries you, better not write anything here – and especially if it is about a device you yourself have invented but not yet patented..

Policy making and the Sadim Touch - there are alternatives

Before you can make new policies – the purpose of the Rudd-Davis Australia 2020 Summit – you have to have a vision of what the future might be like with and without these new new policies.

You have to have a fairly clear vision of what the impact of these new policies is likely to be.

You don't want new policies that are made with the noblest intentions but in reality ruin lives, wreck industries, squander public money, destroy opportunities and put us in greater danger.

We have seen so many of these foolish policies that they have become almost an Australian tradition.

Just think, for example, of all the counter-productive policies in Aboriginal health, wool price stabilization, defence procurement, veterans' affairs, education & training, housing, job creation, consumer protection – there is hardly a field of policy making that hasn't suffered from the Sadim Touch {[King Midas touched sh*t and it turned to gold; the Sadim Touch is the reverse of that: touch gold and it turns to sh*t! :-) ].

We can do better than that. We can look at the future from our own point of view and our own experience say “If you do this – that's what will happen”. Or “If you don't do this – these are the things that will happen”.

Do not imagine that you have less common-sense and experience of life than the highly-paid policy-makers.

You've got a brain – use it. Don't be shy. If you've got a good idea – or if you are worried about a trend – just say so. Nobody is going to bite you.

This Counter-Summit here might not be flash .... but at least it is an alternative.

A warming shot into the stop-butts

If I couldn't afford to go over for my old unit's fiftieth anniversary reunion then I'm damned sure I cannot afford to go to the Professor & Director Show in Canberra this April.

The immensely wealthy Commonwealth government - which squanders billions of dollars of OUR money on dodgy war-toys and on dead-loss schemes - was too mean even to supply bus or train tickets for participants [never mind flying!]: too tight-fisted even to supply dormitory accommodation for each with a camp-stretcher, a blanket and a pillow; too cheap & nasty to put on a pot of stew and and an urn of boiling water. Expenditure cutbacks and slash-&-burn austerity campaigns are one thing but just how mean and miserable can you get?

I wasn't knocked-back for a seat among the Best & Brightest One Thousand at the Rudd-Davis Australia 2020 Summit.

I didn't bother to apply - the 2008 version of the "No Dogs Or Chinamen Admitted" sign was hung out for all to see.

No sour-grapes or resentment here .... but plenty of annoyance and skepticism about the whole show.

So here I am.

Others can whinge or cry into their beer or wallow in their apathy.

Not me. I'm doing something.

The basic concept of getting together a crowd of knowledgeable and interested people together to discuss important matters about our future is a terrific idea. Pity about how that wonderful concept is being implemented.

Never mind, we can take that great idea and do something better with it.

Let's hear what ordinary people and unique individuals from The Other Australia think their future should be or, maybe, what it shouldn't be .... and what policies will help and what will harm.

Instead of the Rudd-Davis ten topics, let's have two dozen. [I'll put up a list later].

Instead of looking just twelve years into the future, let's look 2 or 4 or 8 or 16 or 32 years into the future - or fifty or a hundred years if you like. Why restrict ourselves?

Go on. Have a go! I won't laugh at you if what you suggest sounds highly improbable or silly or wild or impossible.

For example: when I was a kid, not many people imagined that one day you would be able to walk around with a telephone in your pocket, one that took pictures and played games. Or again, who could have imagined our current immigration system and all that has come from it.

Go on. Tell us. What does your future - or your grandkids' future - look like to you.? What policies would make things better or worse.