iServ - The One!

iServ is Australia's eminent source of news, politics and commentary. iServ is your trusted Centre-Right resource for accuracy and the good old Aussie fair go!

The Forum

It's back to the good old days

In tonight's Commonwealth Budget Labor will announce the death knell for the Work for the Dole scheme introduced by the previous government to get serial dole bludgers off their arses and into some meaningful work.

Labor criticises Work for the Dole by saying that it does not provide recipients with any formal qualifications. The Liberal point of view is that neither does sitting on one's arse watching telly all day or going to the beach. If people cannot find work they should be studying for formal qualifications instead of just expecting a handout.

Labor's destruction of Work for the Dole will be coupled with increased welfare payments to various groups of people and it will not be long before we see Labor forcing employers to provide women with paid maternity leave - a situation that will make employers, particularly small employers, think twice before employing women.

Labor will also formally introduce at least two new taxes tonight. The first is the much discussed extension to alcohol excise - all premixed drinks will now carry a surcharge of $1 per 375ml bottle. The reaction by the community has been indignation, putting it as mildly as I can and many pubs have now stopped selling these products. The second new tax is a new 33% supertax on motor cars valued at more than $57,000.

The only concession, if you can call it that, is an adjustment to the Medicare Levy surcharge threshold lifted from $50,000 to $100,000. Personally, that will benefit me but what about the private hospital industry and the fact that the previous government's policy on Health was in place to protect the state-owned public hospital systems from collapse under the weight of patient numbers.

Current Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, obviously knows nothing about how hospitals operate or the sheer expense involved in building and equipping them. If she did then the last thing she'd be doing is launching an attack on the viability of the private health sector. I will have more to say about this after the Budget is delivered.

Welcome back to socialism in the highest everyone.

Written at 08:41 on 13 May 2008 by Lord Watchdog.
Posted in the Politics section. Comments: 0|Chat Live

Labor's rail plan stinks of another broken promise

NSW Premier, Morris Iemma, has been hit with another blow, this time from his promise to construct an underground rail line using single deck trains between St James, an existing underground station located under Hyde Park and Rouse Hill, 40km to Sydney's north west fringe.

This plan, put to the people of Sydney about six weeks ago has replaced a number of other projects including a $9bn plan to construct an underground heavy rail line between Epping and Rouse Hill.

There is much speculation about why Labor has gone down the route of constructing a rail line that is seperate from the CityRail network and some community angst from the fact that they will have to change trains at either Epping, St James, Martin Place or Wynyard to get to their destinations as the line from Rouse Hill will occupy platforms at these stations that have never been used rather than connecting to the existing network.

One other issue has to be resolved too and that is Mr Iemma's statement pertaining to staffing levels. It sounds like Mr Iemma wants driverless trains and stations with no staff. You buy your ticket from a vending machine or use a periodical ticket, get on a train that drives itself and whose doors open and close without human intervention and hope that you arrive at your destination before your brains are bashed in by thugs or before the train's autopilot develops a fault and an accident occurs.

So not only are we talking about a promise that replaces yet another broken promise by the NSW Government but we are probably talking about a latest promise that is also never likely to be honoured. The chances of the St James - Rouse Hill rail line ever being constructed are quite slim going by Labor's track record on delivering infrastructure over the last 13 years.

All this whilst RailCorp is rocked to its foundations by numerous corruption scandals including RailCorp receiving a bill from a strip joint for business lunches.

Relevant links:
http://www.smh.com.au/...98.html
http://www.smh.com.au/...52.html

Written at 20:47 on 7 May 2008 by Lord Watchdog.
Posted in the Politics section. Comments: 0|Chat Live

Power station sell-off will mean disaster

NSW Premier, Morris Iemma, could be choking on his last gasps of time in office as the Left Wing of the Labor Party put the wheels in motion to seek his expulsion from the Party for defying Labor's policy on selling off State-owned power stations. Treasurer, Michael Costa, who is in the bad books for his choice of words to fellow Party members, is likely to go as well, if Mr Iemma's head ends up on the chopping block.

The Opposition is still exploring whether to support the sell-off or not and this may take a while since a change of leadership has sometimes meant a change of policy on privatisation. Peter Collins wanted a sell-off, Kerry Chikarovski wasn't as keen, John Brogden seemed to not support a sell-off whilst Peter Debnam placed the issue on the table again. Current Opposition Leader, Barry O'Farrell is looking at the issue.

I do not support a sell-off of the family silver. It doesn't make sense and never will. Power stations were originally built by private interests when municipal electricity supplies were a new thing and later they were gradually taken over by the NSW Government who managed generation themselves and allowed local councils to own the right to manage retail distribution by way of County Councils.

Labor stole all of the County Councils off the local level of government and created the three corporatised retailers we now have; Energy Australia, Integral Energy and Country Energy; although we are able to buy power from a dozen or so interstate companies as well.

With this recent series of events have we saved any money? No. Has network maintenance improved? No, it has actually got worse and no matter what street you drive down, not one lamp post will be standing straight in the ground. It will either be leaning over, suffering dry rot or both and because of the tighter margins experienced in a competitive market, no urgency is taken in replacing defective infrastructure, despite the obvious dangers of electrocution or a person being struck by falling cables or mounting hardware.

Then there is the economic extinction of a government that simply doesn't want to own any assets or manage them. If our current State Government can be content with sitting in Parliament dreaming up new ways to fleece the taxpayer then they will do just that whilst flogging off the assets that WE paid for whilst service standards and network reliability fall.

It would be a breath of fresh air to see a political party want to protect the public ownership of utilities instead of going out of their way to conduct fire sales.

Relevant link: http://www.smh.com.au/...47.html

Written at 14:53 on 5 May 2008 by Lord Watchdog.
Posted in the Politics section. Comments: 0|Chat Live

KRudd impresses Time magazine but...

Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has made the Time magazine top 100 influencial people list and Mr Rudd definitely has a big smile on his face.

In the lead up to the Australia 2020 Summit, Mr Rudd said:

For years, Australia's government refused to apologise to Aborigine [sic] for past wrongs done to them - most notably, the systematic removal of children from their parents.

Okay, now Mr Rudd has had his fun - it is now time for him to move away from the lecturn and start running the country instead of impressing the American media with his shallow displays of round-table diplomacy.

Former Prime Minister, John Howard, was a far better international statesman for Australia than Mr Rudd could ever hope to be. This is because Mr Howard was not only a man of his word but also a man of gumption. If he said something he did it and it was for the good of everyone, not just Aborigines or other minority groups.

Written at 09:56 on 2 May 2008 by Lord Watchdog.
Posted in the Politics section. Comments: 1|Chat Live

The latest woes with PayPal and Bigpond

It is sad that we once again see two large companies with exceptional market power fiddling whilst Rome burns. At a time when Bigpond's parent company, Telstra, wants to completely dominate Internet access wholesaling and retailing and when PayPal wants to dominate the online transaction industry we see the managements of both companies twiddling their thumbs whilst many Bigpond subscribers are unable to access their PayPal accounts to make payments and check account balances.

Bigpond and PayPal both claim that only a handful of customers on one IP range are affected and due to them using very old versions of web browsers. Yet on Australian IT and Whirlpool we see Bigpond subscribers stating that they are using Internet Explorer V7.0, Microsoft's current browser version, and despite being on various IP ranges, they still cannot access their PayPal accounts.

Obviously there is a rather substantial lack of communication between Bigpond and PayPal but also a substantial lack of communication internally in each company. I have no problem with people being blocked for using old software. Using old software is dangerous in many ways. It has an adverse effect on the efficiency of the Internet as a whole and it leaves the computers that host it vulnerable to attacks by hackers and automated malicious software.

Blocking people and simply inventing excuses for it is considered a restraint of trade however. At the same time this is an example of why no company should have more than a 30% share of participation in any one industry. The Internet itself and the industries that utilise the Internet for their existance and survival clearly must be subject to far more competition than currently exists.

Both Telstra and PayPal's parent company, Ebay, are going out of their way to abuse their dominant positions and it is quite clear that a lot of people are suffering because of it. Large companies need to LISTEN to their customers instead of dictating to them.

My suggestion to Bigpond and PayPal: Get the issues sorted out right now and stop bullying people.

Relevant links:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/...t=961088
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/...00.html

Written at 07:51 on 30 April 2008 by Lord Watchdog.
Posted in the Business section. Comments: 0|Chat Live