The two most recent national mega-failures – the 2013 WA Senate election and the 2016 census – show how unbalanced government is costing us dearly and presage worse in store. For 25 years, governments have been reaping a false ‘efficiency dividend, slashing services in most areas but delivering massively imbalanced spending in Defence and security areas.If the work of the Australian Bureau of Statistics can go pear-shaped after repeated slashing of budgets, it is obvious smaller cultural agencies like libraries, museums and art galleries must be in equally dire straits…but their gentle crumbling is not yet so obvious, though it will become so. It will also be apparent in the future how excessive concentration on anti-terror measures, surveillance, personal data retention, abandonment of privacy and infiltration of a police state attitude is changing the nation to our detriment. Like the census problem, it may be a quarter of a century before Australians wake up to how badly their current and recent governments of the early 2000s have betrayed them.
Other stories include:
- Trump’s abandoning of the TPP is a win for Australia
- Learning the lessons of ceding excessive, elite and secret power
- MPs abandon the rule of law
- Legal right needed to safeguard privacy
- Sue Neill-Fraser to get a day in court…next year
- New Justice head to tackle Indigenous jail problem
- Mandatory sentencing may be scrapped
- CLA to launch bid for next Charter of Rights
- China fouls fragrant harbour of Hong Kong
- Canada’s spies have been breaking data law
- Diego Garcians lose their home, forever
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