A report entitled, Not for Service, dealing with mental-health conditions in Australia, and released yesterday [by Health Minister Abbott], makes for distressing reading. A number of unquestionably impleccable organisations were involved in the extensive nationwide research leading to the comprehensive Report. On release of the Report Abbott was asked what he was going to do about what even he conceded made for sad reading. Well, yes, but it was a matter of how the health-dollar was spent, Commonwealth-State relations, etc. etc. So, probably very little, other than pious platitudes. For the practical issues which are a fact of life out there in Australia read a transcript of the "report" on the Report on The World Today program on ABC Radio National yesterday. You can even listen to the "report" or download it if you are so inclined.
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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