How re-assuring to hear PM Howard tell the people of Australia [well, those in employment - bearing in mind that working for 1 hour a week qualifies as being employed!] that the new IR laws will, in effect, readily allow employees to go and look for another job. In what orbit the PM and his side-kick, Kevin Andrews, live is debateable. More to the point, how far are they removed from the real world? To say the least Australia is on the cusp of needless disputation, anguish and division in the community as the proposed IR laws are debated. And to proceed on the basis of the PM's assurance that people should rely on his record is down-right scary. Wasn't this the PM who invented core and non-core election promises? See what even the SMHs' blogger has to say on the whole IR matter.
Only a gigantic bureaucracy could get away with spending of such dimensions - and the amazing waste involved in part of that ginormous spend. Think US Pentagon..... "From spending $150 million on private villas for a handful of personnel in Afghanistan to blowing $2.7 billion on an air surveillance balloon that doesn’t work, the latest revelations of waste at the Pentagon are just the most recent howlers in a long line of similar stories stretching back at least five decades. Other hot-off-the-presses examples would include the Army’s purchase of helicopter gears worth $500 each for $8,000 each and the accumulation of billions of dollars' worth of weapons components that will never be used. And then there’s the one that would have to be everyone’s favorite Pentagon waste story: the spending of $50,000 to investigate the bomb-detecting capabilities of African elephants. (And here’s a shock: they didn’t turn out to be that great!) The elephant research, of course, represe...
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