This is too funny. Whoops, it slipped down the back of the sofa :lol: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-31/nsw-27s-surprise-surplus-after-241bn-budget-error/4343752
Not sure if this is incompetence, or genius..... a surplus by accident? Maybe the Feds should sit down and have a chat with them.
And I thought my accounting was bad... And my 'accounting' somewhat resembles Bernard's (Dylan Moran, Black Books) attempts at doing his tax return... [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtxUdbNKpK0[/youtube]
Just goes to show that people mostly go into government because they would get fired in the private sector.
Lets not ignore the fact that Barry O'Farrell and his Government are at war with his public service. Another Audit may well reveal a completely different figure. Treasury may be 'playing possum' with "Temp Teacher". If you recognise how outdated the business software (timesheets, accounting HR etc) is in Govt. you'd understand how this situation has developed. You might also begin to comprehend why Govt is so inefficient. Lowest bidder contracts means lousy software/hardware solutions. My last "High End" desktop took 20mins to boot up in the morning. Everyone kept their machines turned on despite a 'Green Policy' to switch them off each night. Eventually a software update demanded a reboot and there was nothing left but to grab a coffee (no spare workstations). The Qld Govt still uses Lotus Notes!!! Even Lotus said they won't be supporting the Govt. anymore and told them to move on. IBM couldn't even set up a payroll system for Qld Health because the supporting systems were so outdated and poor.
In conclusion in both the private and the public sector there is people doing billion dollar miskates
Ironically, the bill for those mistakes in both cases are passed onto the tax payer in this 'too big to fail' world we live in now.... :/
QLD Health still uses Lotus Notes, you mean Their stuff is so backwards it's not even funny. We're actually doing pretty well for a Gov Dept at the moment, Windows 7 and Office 2010!
I know a few people who applied for government jobs. The interviews and pre-selection tests were all about psychology, and nothing about jobs skills. They're after people who easily conform to the status quo, and don't question authority.
Only if it Immeadiately goes straight to its creditors to pay down debt IMHO. A budget surplus should only ever be run to pay down debt. Or when that is achieved, to build up a fund for projects that need to happen in the future ( water and road infrastructure for example). If a government is running a surplus outside of those two exceptions they are simply taxing too much.
Ah, but if they'd been applying for jobs in the private sector they'd have to talk around their core competencies in adding value to B2C relationships because, moving forward, finding synergies in the new paradigm of a globalised marketplace is really about fostering a culture of innovation and championing a solutions based approach in a fast-paced, task-oriented work environment. Of course both the private sector and the public sector want compliance from employees, but the only real difference is the required bullsh*t-to-obedience ratio is a little bit higher in the private sector.
Lots of the big private sector companies also want all this psychological assessment wankery. A couple of my mates have recently been doing a bunch of these IQ, personality and other random tests in order to get pre-selected for a face to face interview. Basically I reckon the in-house HR departments got down sized (right-sized?) back in the 80s and 90s but with higher mobility the number of applications increased so they resorted to outsourcing the pre-selection rounds to a bunch of other recruitment "specialists" who simply chuck a bunch of stock standard electronic exams to applicants to whittle the number of applicants down from 5000 to 50. Add a bunch of Big A.D.'s example language to justify their existence and bingo. A couple of years ago one of the big 4 accounting firms headhunted me to a fill a very specific role that they couldn't fill via the recruitment "experts" and they were getting desperate. After a few months negotiation on salary etc we finally shook hands and agree I'd start in 4 weeks. But then once they asked their HR department to draw up the contract they made me submit detailed CV's, personal histories and sit through all these totally unrelated psychometric wankery exams simply so they could tick off their recruitment checklist. It was such frickin brainless bureaucracy that I told them to stick the job and I stayed where I was (thank god).
