Labor Cabinet IQ

Can you believe it? Apparently Della Bosca represented 50% of the Intelligence Quotient of the Labor Cabinet. Well if that's 50% IQ it doesn't say much about the failed minister nor the rest of the cabinet that remains in office!

Super Premier Man (aka Nathan Rees)

A hilarious and timely comic strip from the Daily Telegraph -- it is a hoot!

Selling the Lotteries - Hello, Anybody Home?

Could somebody please knock on the collective cranium of the NSW Labor Cabinet? I just want to be sure if anybody is there. I think that there is a "vacancy" sign displayed on the collective forehead of the Cabinet -- "for lease, vacancy, apply within". The empty-heads want to try and sell the NSW Lotteries. How are they going to pull that off? The Shooters Party wants to go "bang-bang" in National Parks, wants to over-turn the law that can whack a fool for aiming a laser pointer at aircraft, and what seems to be a fishing-free-for-all. They won't support Labor until they get their way with guns. So how can Labor govern in a hung Upper House? What a laugh, Hatzistergos doesn't want the health portfolio - yeah right after he supervised it from 2005-2007. And Hatzistergos is the key player who got The Greens to vote for his bill, and they said right John so long as the Shooters are stopped. Oh please why isn't he removed from office? When oh when can we vote this lot out?

Hatzistergos and Health Portfolio

Hatzi is back (for the time being) as Minister for Health, a position held from 2005-07. His track record back then is not something to cheer about. Presumably it will only be a short nanny-based appointment until someone fills the chair left vacant by Della Bosca. Hold your breath NSW Health and Hospitals!

NSW Planning Minister Hammered

For once, it seems, the cause of pro-development has suffered a set-back due to the findings of the Land & Environment Court. The findings sink more nails into the political coffin of Mr Sartor and they also put Kristina Keneally as the current minister on-the-spot.

The donor relationship between developers and NSW Labor does not look good at all in the eyes of the public: a party and government beholden to companies interested in making fast-dollars.

Yet one more factor to add to the Mt Everest high-pile of reasons for voting out the current state government!

Richard Ackland on Hatzistergos

A million thank-yous to Richard Ackland! He has had the guts to tell it like it is about John Hatzistergos' war against Nicholas Cowdery and the DPP. Ackland spells out the truth about the alleged wasted funds by the prosecutors who attended a conference in Brisbane. He points out how the numbers of prosecutors are down, how junior solicitors are carrying grunt work (when they should not), and that the District Courts are in a mess because of fewer employees. All of this reflects on John Hatzistergos and Laurie Glanfield -- it is not good policy or good administration at all. The NSW Attorney General's Department is in a mess and these two men are in charge.

Ackland describes Hatzistergos and his media effort to discredit Cowdery as the thorn-in-the-flesh:

"Hatzistergos represents a haunted, closed, suspicious, micro-managing sort of politics. And to leak against your public servants is, frankly, the pits."

Time both Hatzistergos and Glanfield resigned.

A Deficit for the DPP

Nicholas Cowdery has indicated that the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions is (once more) short of cash to the tune of at least $3 million, and the staffing levels are likewise a bother.
Meanwhile Mr John Hatzistergos the NSW Attorney General deflects the matter by saying something like "it's that time of year" concerning budget allocations. Yes it probably is! And we all know that the purse strings of Treasury are locked tight because the state is broke. We also know that the Attorney General's Department is in a state of acute crisis in all its sections and it agencies. They keep raiding coin-jars to prop up a system that is dead.

Greg Smith Defends NSW DPP

Some of the codswallop presented in yesterday's Sun Herald about Nicholas Cowdery and the DPP has been rebutted by the Shadow Attorney General Mr Greg Smith. In the Sydney Morning Herald Smith sees the recent joust about the DPP as part of a systematic vendetta campaign to remove Mr Cowdery from office.

Smith quite rightly says that Mr Hatzistergos has failed to publicly praise the Crown Prosecutors at the DPP, and that his negative remarks in public merely undermines staff morale. How true! Employees right across the NSW Attorney General's Department and its agencies seem to be enduring much.

Methinks Mr Glanfield will warble a different tune when he has Mr Smith as his next boss in 2011 or better still he could be gone from the department before then.

Hatzistergos' argument against Mr Cowdery is pathetic

Cross-posting my article from here.

On four occasions over recent weeks I have drawn attention to the yawning chasm that exists between Mr Nicholas Cowdery the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions and Mr John Hatzistergos the NSW Attorney General (one, two, three, four).

Today's article by Lisa Carty in the Sunday Herald shows that things have deteriorated. By anyone's reckoning the strong inference from this article is that Mr Hatzistergos dislikes negative publicity. Well, sir, that's too bad! Here the public has every right to stand beside Mr Cowdery in calling a spade a spade. Your department is in a state of perpetual crisis because:
1. Employees are under-resourced and over-worked and many positions remain vacant
2. Budgetary cuts
3. Extravagant expenditure on corporate consultants ($10,933,326.33 spent from 2000-2008), the blow-out in costs on building the Parramatta Justice Precinct, the blow-out in implementing the JusticeLink computer system, and so on.
4. The administrative policies and decisions to outsource work that ends up increasing costs and impeding services.
5. Both the Office of the Protective Commissioner and the Office of the Public Guardian were running in deficits in 2006/07, 2007/08 and in 2008/09.
6. Lawlink is not an efficiently organised website.

Need we go on because the woeful list gets longer?

How much money was spent by the NSW Attorney General's Department in hiring the 200-seat Metcalf Auditorium at the NSW State Library on 1 April 2009 and 5 June 2009 so that Mr Laurie Glanfield and his merger implementation team could speak to less than 30 "stakeholders" in the disability sector?

Mr Hatzistergos is quoted:''The DPP has always argued it should be independent … I think it is fundamental to that independence that they are able to manage their resources. I haven't had this problem with any other agency I have had to deal with where there are these constant demands for additional resources because 'We can't cope'.''

I beg your pardon sir! All of the agencies controlled by your department are in crisis and have not been given the employees and funds they need to serve the public. The man who wields the decision-making power about employee levels is the Director General Mr Glanfield. In various instances he also has the authority to authorise the budgets of some agencies inside the Attorney General's Department. One might infer that it would be far more interesting for the public to have detailed explanations from Mr Glanfield justifying the decisions he has made concerning restrictions on staff, outsourcing, deficiencies in the shared corporate services, and so on.

So before Mr Hatzistergos begins accusing Nick Cowdery of not being competent to run the DPP's budget, he ought to recall that "people who live in glass houses should not throw rocks".

The article incredibly includes this ridiculous bit of mud-slinging:

"Ironically, his [i.e. Cowdery's] performance in relation to proceeds-of-crime cases has been a sore point with Mr Hatzistergos, who says the value of property and cash seized from criminals has fallen despite Mr Cowdery being given a bigger budget."

What an imbecilic bit of mud slinging! Since when does the DPP have control over which criminals are successfully arrested by the NSW Police? Are the NSW Police somehow derelict for failing to bust "rich criminals"? The confiscation of assets gained by criminal activity is a matter that the DPP prosecutes and the proceeds upon conviction are placed in the hands of the NSW Trustee and Guardian (formerly Public Trustee NSW). However the facts of life are these: It is usually the small-time crooks who are busted and successfully prosecuted. That's why the level of value in property and assets seized is usually small. In the cases where rich criminals are under investigation those dudes often have hidden assets overseas and the resources do not exist for either the NSW Police or DPP to pursue. Who do you think you are trying to fool, Mr Hatzistergos?

Mr Hatzistergos has set Mr Laurie Glanfield the task of reporting on the DPP. Good grief!

One can imagine more disinformation about the DPP being distributed in future press releases.

NSW Ombudsman has no dough

Now the NSW Ombudsman is complaining that he won't be able to discharge his duties properly because of budget cuts. What else needs to be said: NSW Labor Government is about as useful as hiring a one-legged man in a soccer team.

Come to Asthma Country - Thanks NSW Labor

A power plant has been approved by the Planning Minister Kristina Keneally for Appin in the south-western part of outer Sydney. A wonderful site guaranteed to blow particles that cause asthma-attacks in that part of Sydney. Never mind asthma sufferers you can queue up in-between gasps for air at the wonderfully under-resourced debt-ridden hospitals in your region --- and all of this brought to you with the compliments of NSW Labor Government.

Pin-the-tail-on-the-next NSW Premier

The game goes on about who is about to replace Nathan Rees as Premier of NSW. Now we have the Deputy Premier Carmel Tebbutt brought back into the spotlight again. It is all very boring.

Della Bosca's New Job Application

John Della Bosca's latest endorsement for the high office of premier comes from his infamous wife Belinda Neal. What a hoot! I reckon that the staff at Iguana could do a better job of running NSW!

New Blog

Check out the new blog from Jane Bartlett -- looks like fun!

Labor Impasse on Lotteries

As indicated before, the Liberal Party's objections to the sale of NSW Lotteries appears to have been overcome. See this piece in today's Sydney Morning Herald.

Shooters Party Still Peeved!

As I said last week the parlour games will continue over the role of the Shooters Party in the Legislative Council. Today's Sydney Morning Herald simply reconfirms much of what I've said (except for failing to join the dots below)!

As it has been pointed the stalemate in the Upper House was caused by John Hatzistergos the NSW Attorney General and Mr Laurie Glanfield Director General of the Attorney General's Department playing hard-ball lobbying to get through the NSW Trustee and Guardian Act in late June.

The intensity of that lobbying because of public resistance to the proposed Act was really bizarre and disproportionate to the issue. Somebody was obviously on a power-kick to prove a point just for the sake of it. That lobbying alienated the Shooters as Labor did its deal with the Greens on the new Trustee organisation. So if the Premier wonders why there is a stalemate, I reckon he ought to ask Hatzistergos and Glanfield to "please explain".

NSW Health - efficiency = sacking workers

Yes welcome to the weird world of George Orwell's "double-think" in the NSW public sector! Orwell put it this way in chapter 9 of his novel 1984:

"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth."

The NSW Labor Government keeps on telling us it is working to create "jobs, jobs, jobs". At the same time it has told us, via the November 2008 mini-budget, that it is working to make the public sector efficient, less bureaucratic, save money etc.

So how, pray tell, do we improve public services and simultaneously save money and protect and create jobs? The latest axe-wielding in NSW health is a bright-spark outcome from the idiotic mini-budget and the septic tank rhetoric of doublethink. Read this and weep!

Parlour Tricks and Shooters Party

The spotlight in NSW politics continues to shine down on how Labor will continue to govern from September 2009 until it is booted out of office in March 2011. It has been noted that the Labor government's deal with The Greens to pass the NSW Trustee and Guardian Act in June precipitated the loss of support from The Shooters. What a wonderful triumph that was for Mr John Hatzistergos -- deal done on merger at the price of The Shooters' continuing support. Great political judgment!

Earlier this week Labor was putting out feelers to see if the Coalition will support the sale of NSW Lotteries. Labor feels it has now removed the Coalition's objection after reassuring the Newsagency network of its continuing role in the sale of lottery tickets. Both Greens and Shooters will not support the sale.

So it is interesting to see how both Labor and Coalition may now seek in the current climate to moth-ball the Shooters. It would be to both major parties' advantage to sideline this single-issue party. Right now the Coalition is trying to drive a wedge into Ian Macdonald's credibility over favourable decisions concerning the Game Council. Conservation groups are likewise turning the screws. Meanwhile Nathan Rees keeps up the facade of being in control!

NSW DPP Under The Gun: Right Question, Wrong Target

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) is under the gun in a Sydney Morning Herald article. The NSW Attorney General John Hatzistergos is apparently unhappy with the DPP. One reason is probably because Nicholas Cowdery speaks his mind and he frequently embarrasses Mr Hatzistergos' administration.

The SMH reports:

"there was great pressure on the Crown prosecutor and the judge to ensure cases were resolved quickly yet this expediency was often at the expense of those affected by the crime."

What the SMH reporter has not followed up on in that observation is where does the "great pressure" emanate from? It is certainly not Mr Cowdery.

The tap-root source of the problem lies in the public administration policy at the Attorney General's Department that has emerged in recent years. It is reflected in the abstract and often fatuous "performance indicators" used to measure "efficiency" throughout the entire Attorney General's Department and all the agencies that have been swallowed up into its Napoleonic belly.Performance indicators are so artificial and usually yield statistics that have no context. Ever heard of the sad case of the statistician who drowned while trying to cross a river that had an average depth of only three feet?

It is reflected in the "shared corporate services" policy where functions have been stripped off agencies and handed over to under-resourced and over-worked small units at the Parramatta Justice Precinct. The "great pressure" can be traced to Senior Executives who have to justify their own existence in having their contracts renewed: so every once in a while some blinding flash of light occurs - presto I have an idea to justify my existence and another layer of red-tape is created.

If the money spent by the Attorney General's Department on corporate consultants each year was applied to employing new staff and supporting infrastructure well things would be much better.

So the "great pressure" to clear up court cases quickly has a lot to do with the public administration policies in the whole department. Who leads and drives the policy is easy to identify: it is the Director General of the department. Pity the SMH journalist failed to chase the Director General Mr Glanfield to question his public administration strategies!

NSW Attorney General and UN Convention

See this stinging piece of criticism concerning the failure of the NSW Labor Government to undertake simple legislative reforms concerning the rights of disabled persons.

Parliamentary Inquiry: Substitute Decision Making

See Sophia Stannard's piece on the Parliamentary Inquiry underway into legislative reforms affecting the disabled and Acts like the Guardianship Act 1987 and NSW Trustee and Guardian Act 2009.

More Bad Press for NSW Trustee and Guardian

Read today's article in the Daily Telegraph by Gemma Jones on the problems of financial losses and alleged mismanagement of case files in the protected estates division of the NSW Trustee and Guardian. The problems about case files are typical of the woes that have beset what used to be the Office of the Protective Commissioner for more than a decade.

In May 2009 the Auditor General reported that the Protective Commissioner's common fund had been reduced in value by $197 million due to the global economic crisis. The linking of it to the Public Trustee NSW gives it only a small breathing space with access to some monies that will run out probably around the time of the next state election.

The picture about the Attorney General's Department just continues to worsen.

Super Reform or Super Idiocy?

Check this out:

The 13 Super Departments for the NSW Public Service is already coming unstuck as the Rural Fire Service and four Labor parliamentarians squabble with the Premier. Read John Washbourne's biting criticism - check it here.

Is Mr Laurie Glanfield Out of Touch?

The daily routines for a busy departmental Director General must involve many committee meetings, liaising with senior employees who have delegated authorities, and of course consultation with the Minister and members of Cabinet.

The public expects that a person who is a departmental Director General is up-to-date on what is going on in the organs of the Government that she/he advises. The public also expect a Director General to be directly accountable to the people for what happens on their watch. After all, better service delivery is the new marketing slogan and the buck stops with the Director General.

In March 2006 a letter was addressed to the Chairman of the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART). It was dated 9 March 2006 and signed by the Director General of the Attorney General's Department, Mr Laurie Glanfield (see the letter in PDF (Click here) at IPART's website).

The letter states, among other things, that:

"My department prepares a significant proportion of the government's legislation and in addition comments on the legal policy implications of all legislative proposals submitted to cabinet ... As required by the Subordinate Legislation Act 1989, my department prepares regulatory impact statements to assess the costs and benefits of making (or repealing) statutory rules that relate to legislation administered by the Attorney General ... Statutory rules are finalised following public and stakeholder consultation, then reviewed by both the NSW Executive Council and Parliament's Regulatory Review Committee."

So what's the big deal?

The problem is the last sentence quoted shows that Mr Glanfield was in March 2006 apparently unaware that as of 1 Janury 2004 (26 months prior to his letter) that the Regulation Review Committee no longer existed.

NSW Parliament's website states:

"The Regulation Review Committee is a completed joint statutory committee, established 24 Nov 1987, and ended 1 Jan 2004."

Small factual errors like these do raise the eyebrows. If the Director General is to be respected as a figure of authority and expertise and skill, and is to be trusted by the people of NSW as a crucial adviser to Cabinet, then how is it that he was apparently unaware in March 2006 that the Regulation Review Committee ceased to exist in January 2004?

Perhaps it is time to insist on some closer scrutiny of this particular public servant's work and for greater accountability from the Director General towards the public that he is supposed to be serving. Perhaps the public should be asking the Attorney General Mr Hatzistergos to answer openly and directly specific questions about the affairs, bureaucracy, repeated restructures, and budgetary expenditure of the department and of its reporting agencies.

Attorney General's Department Fiasco

Check out Michael Pelly's "Island Sojourn" article in today's Australian, what a hoot!

Check out the companion expose here on the Minister's weird lobbying last month to push through the NSW Trustee and Guardian bill. Weird deals, a stalemate in the Legislative Council, and maybe some bully-boy tactics behind the scenes! Priceless stuff!

Director of Public Prosecutions (Again)

Yesterday I drew attention to the problem the Director of Public Prosecutions faces with a shortage of funds and hence of staff.

Today the Sydney Morning Herald has run with the story (click here). The Herald quotes Nicholas Cowdery (DPP) as stating bluntly:

"The Government commonly responds to these crises by shooting the messenger, in this case, me ... Anything to take attention away from the truth: which is that it has not accorded high enough priority in its spendingto this essential function of government ... This is not a Newcastle or Hunter problem, it is statewide."

The Herald article gives space for the usual obfuscating spin from a departmental spokesperson defending the Minister and typecasting the DPP in a bad light. The article states:

"The Government expected the DPP to manage its budget efficiently to maintain services around the state 'at all times.'" The spin also trots out the rubbish details of how the mini budget provided cash so as to employ 14 solicitors. Yesterday I already pointed out the idiocy of the mini-budget as a band-aid solution to a gaping wound.

The rest of this spin is so pathetic it is brimming with weasel words. Of course the DPP manages its budget and does so on the smell of an empty ledger. That of course is precisely the problem highlighted by Nicholas Cowdery. The word "efficiency" simply acts as an in-house cipher that is really referring to dire circumstances: more and more work devolves onto the shoulders of fewer employees. The entire network for the DPP, and thence the whole Attorney General's Department, is so fragile because every specific part that makes up the whole is stretched to the extreme limit. This means that everyone works in crisis conditions, works longer hours than they are actually remunerated for, and they are expected to maintain optimum services. The problem is not so much the structures or work-flow processes at the DPP. The problem does not arise from the staff.

The problem is the idiotic corporate culture that comes from the top-down that spews out meaningless jargon as if it conveys profound meaning. The problem is the public sector is in crisis because of the unrealistic expectations the Government has. The problem reflects on the incompetent mismanagement of NSW over many years. The extravagant and wasteful spending of the public purse by the Government. As the debt is large and the coffers are empty, these calls for "efficiency" are just a bureaucrat's mascara designed to deflect attention away from the real problem.

East Maitland Court, the AG & DPP

It is hardly earth-shattering news to hear that the Director of Public Prosecutions in NSW is asked to fulfil extraordinary tasks while simultaneously being under-resourced.

The 2007-08 Annual Report of the DPP made that point very clear when the Director Nicholas Cowdery (who has to be rated as one of the most intelligent and lively legal minds in NSW) stated:

"Budget cuts, in bureaucratic language, are described as 'efficiency improvement dividends' and therein lies a clue to the way they are to be addressed. When required to develop an Efficiency Improvement Plan the Office was unable to identify any reductions in expenditure that would not have the effects of transferring work and shifting costs elsewhere. As a demand-driven agency working to capacity the Office has no 'fat' to cut when requirements of this kind are made."

The "illustrious" 2008 mini-budget was supposed to allow for the employment of 14 extra solicitors for a period of two years commencing 1 January 2009. Sounds like a band-aid measure to cover over a gaping wound.

Now a minor skirmish is erupting in East Maitland as there are simply not enough Crown Prosecutors available to appear in court. Of course in comes the spin that there is really not a problem at all.

What on earth is the NSW Attorney General Mr Hatzistergos and his Director General Mr Glanfield doing to the Attorney General's Department? Why is there so much spin injected into the press to persuade the public that this department is in ship-shape condition? Perhaps it is time that the Minister and his Director General were called to account for their administrative decisions.

Public Trustee NSW Merger Under Fire

Check this intriguing commentary on the state of NSW politics and the Attorney General's Department. The financial journalist Tony Boyd has delivered a stinging commentary on the bizarre wheeling and dealing that led to the amalgamation of the Public Trustee NSW and Office of Protective Commissioner in June 2009. The new organisation is called the NSW Trustee and Guardian.

Boyd questions the wisdom of the merger, doubts its future financial viability and calls into question the whole rationale behind the merger. So a serving of criticism is dished up to NSW Attorney General John Hatzistergos for the rushed nature in which legislation was prepared and pushed through the Parliament in the closing days of June.

Boyd likens the merger to short-term raids by corporations that seek to prop themselves up when under pressure. See the whole piece here.

"What's My Line" Inspiration

A classic American game-show was What's My Line where a 4 member panel had to guess the occupation of various guests.



One of the sharpest and wittiest American comedians was Groucho Marx. Groucho appeared on the show a few times. On one occasion he was a panel member. The first mystery guest was a "jail warden" from New Jersey whose physical appearance was uncannily similar to that of the USSR's president Nikita Krushchev. At the time that the Groucho episode was broadcast Krushchev was visiting the USA.



When it was Groucho's turn to pose a question to the Krushchev lookalike he asked (see the youtube clip):



"Are you a corrupt politician - or am I being redundant?"



Here we will have the audacity to explore this question:

"Are the ministers of the NSW State Government confused and clueless about how to administer the state - or are we merely being redundant?"