The main issue i have is that so much money is simply wasted, no one is held to account etc. ........ This kind of thing happens thousands of times at all levels, so much more could be done with the same amount spent if we had people who actually cared in the least, they don't.
This is anecdotal but to my mind explains a lot of the issues that have been raised in this thread.
At one stage in my varied and occupationally inconsistent working life I worked in (small country council) local government (counting the beans.)
The head of the administrative processes of the council was a 'career' public servant, with about 35 years in the saddle when I started as an underling. In conversation he once told me that he'd always wanted the life of an administrator in the public service and that he saw "public service" as an honorable career. He saw his job as enabling the wishes of the elected Councillors, ensuring that the ratepayers received the best possible value for the annual rates they paid, and as he put it, "making sure these clowns don't break the law when they raid the cookie jar". Meaning that there are (or there 'was') laws governing the processes and justifications of actions of the Council.
I saw this in action constantly, where a newly elected Councillor would come in with his hobby horse and try and commit funds to pet projects, and when my boss pointed out either, 1. not legal to spend the money without a necessary process, or 2. what works will not proceed instead, or what rate increase will be made for the project.
Now the point of this post is, my boss was retiring age, he'd been a pre-war baby, with a public service career dating from the 1950s. In the Council sessions, he was constantly supported by the conservative councillors and derided by the new, younger councillors. He was not especially conservative, however he was honest and upstanding. He saw a moral and responsible attendance to the local democracy and counted the dollars in his salary, and the dollars the Council spent as under his responsibility to provide honest outcomes and proper value. To him, overspending was like stealing from your neighbours.
When he retired, he was replaced by a man who took a new title "Chief Executive Officer", who was about 20 years younger. This man had been educated within the inner Melbourne councils and what was immediately obvious after working with him for a few months was that his ethics were flexible and money was for spending.
This was the first time I'd seen a clearly delineated generational difference to governance.
The new arrival found fans in those who wanted to pork barrel the electorate and with his annual bonus tied to projects (not budget management!) he quickly got the councillors on side (skills at inner melbourne politicking was handy!) and as a result of his various projects and his bonus, the ratepayers were hit with a 9% rate increase in his first year.
I may be wrong but this was to me first person experience of a generational difference in approach. The new CEO had little working knowledge of the various Acts which had kept local government relatively honest for 100+ years and he saw the ratepayers as a faucet of money that could be turned on every year when more was required. After he arrived annual rate increases were circa 9% from then on, and as you know, compounding is a bitch.
So anecdotally, I think that the changes from 'public servant' to employee and the introduction of distancing jargon (shareholders, stakeholders, etc etc) have allowed the various levels of government to be seduced by remote view of where the taxes come from and where they are directed. Working in local government we knew the families where increased rates might affect their daily bread, their kids' schooling etc. I was proud of the work I did there, the efficiencies found, money saved etc since the benefit was directly to my neighbours and the farms and houses I drove past on the way to work each day.
Not to put it on some anti-youth banner, but the abandoning of ethics and responsibility are what caused the circumstance I've written about above, and it seemed to me to get worse as the older, conservative public servants retired or were put out to pasture.
I don't know how you get an answer about the profligate spending of the public service and politicians now, but starting at the top, some culpability and responsibility at Ministerial level might be a start. Gold pensions are all very good, but let's see how wasteful the public service is if penalties for malfeasance were reintroduced and a few serial abusers of the credit cards and government cars were imprisoned.
There used to be a saying - "take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves."
