Bureaucracy as a Social Problem!
Australia’s Mandarin Mafia
Nation Builders or National Problem?

Since about 1975 federal government revenue collection has gone from A$15 billion a year to over A$200 billion now. Bureaucracy and government empires have grown steadily without stopping every year for 30 plus years and the trough feeders have increased in numbers and demands on the public purse. It’s too bad they do not put anything back in! While this was going on Australian government was pouring more and more into Industry Assistance and public funded R & D and so forth. Universities increased in number from about 10 to over 30 now. During the same time frame the nations foreign debt went from a modest harmless A$50 billion or less to over A$650 billion now.
Their latest contribution to nation building is the renewed ongoing stifling of interactive digital TV. They, as typical Australian government knows best bureaucrats and politicians, squandered the past 10 years of unprecedented opportunity in all things digital. Naturally they are not going to explain how much of a stuff - up they have made of it. And in fact as usual will spruik their initiatives and leadership instead. (Over the media monopoly assets of course.)
However the economic data exists to expose them as being the inept failures they are. But the one stable constant Australia’s bureaucrats have is their ability to live off and prosper off instability.
They have essentially stifled the natural evolution of digital technology across Australia through impeding the application of technological advances in broadband to protect their media mates and Telstra and this is and will have increasing economic impact on the nation now and in the future.
For example it is estimated the value at stake of optimal development of digital technologies is considerable and research has shown that closing the productivity gaps between current and best practice could raise GNP by an astonishing 300 percent. These gaps are significantly influenced by management practices, but given the dominant counterproductive (and corrupt) role bureaucracy has across too many aspects of Australia’s economy it is also clear that these gains can be undermined and destroyed by the stupid policy, ignorant gutless politicians and their sycophantic dual career path bureaucrats are continually dictating. Too many shifty bureaucrats with too many profligate empires is a formula for what Australia has. And increasingly doesn’t have!
The latest is digital TV! The fact is that if Australia wants these available economic gains and benefits then broadband must be maximized. Simple! But that means analog TV and the media oligarchs and their media monopoly, including corrupt Telstra, would be subject to the immediate threat from infinite bandwidth. Something Howard, Coonan and the rest of the propaganda peddlers are either unaware of or are aware but choose to bury it to satisfy their own agenda, which includes continuing to protect the media monopoly and their power as the political status quo. Therefore they must prevent broadband but convey the impression through propaganda, again, that they are delivering DTV for example to the majority. But that’s all it is, PROPAGANDA!
Broadband would also be of more value to the economy than IR reform. It would also be of greater value if all analog and digital broadband infrastructure was auctioned off and the proceeds used to get rid of the media oligarchs and their inefficient narrowband thinly disguised as an analog form of wide band.
The A$10 billion plus Telstra shareholders have lost since the governments T2 scam (with their investment banker mates who also used their cut to donate to the coalition to keep the show going) would have been enough to do the job and led to a world class free digital infrastructure, including iDTV (and a 4th network). But no these ignorant hypocritical (Australian lawyers as politicians spruiking free market forces is an oxymoron) political transients and their infrastructure of nameless faceless corrupt protected bureaucrats persist in playing games where they believe they have a birth right passed on from generation to generation to dictate what the majority should have, despite their track record over decades of ineptitude and waste but continuing empire building.
Once again it is clear we need an Economic Bill of Rights. The sooner the better!