Pollies Lose their Flight Perks

[medhead]

If you believe the committe that was paid millions to come up with that conclusion.
First rule of politics-if you have an enquiry first pick your committee,judge,consultant.

Actually it wasn't a committee. It was a joint study by KPMG and McKinsey. Of course firms like that get paid and they aren't going ti risk their reputation for one political party. First rule of politics don't let the facts get in the way of a good story, hey?

As fir this comment about the public being upset about debt. What public?most of the public understand that the debt has saved us from the hardship experienced by the rest of the world. It was advised well in advance and it is reportedly coming down quicker than forecast, to be confirmed by the budget today. The only people pushing upset about debt message are the Liberal party.

Finally and back on topic, the savings of this were reported as being 8%. If i go to the qantas website and look up corporate deals I see a business can get upto 8% as a rebate. Doesn't seem that special or unique to me. But good on the government for getting the same benefits that business enjoy.

 

[medhead]

VividWireless is getting faster speeds than the NBN in Perth currently for less money so imagine what it will be like in 5 years when the NBN is ready, the govt is building yesterdays network with tomorrows money.

ejb

Ohh yeah? And can i get this service in Adelaide? In fact how much of Perth does it even cover? And what happens to to speeds when 1000s or 10000s are using it instead of 100s?

Oh and I believe the finding of major consultancy firms that have been used by all political parties. According to wikipedia KPMG is one of the largest professional service firms in the world. Yep they are going to bend over for the ALP, not. Goolge it on you vivid service

 

[ejb]

Ohh yeah? And can i get this service in Adelaide? In fact how much of Perth does it even cover? And what happens to to speeds when 1000s or 10000s are using it instead of 100s?

Oh and I believe the finding of major consultancy firms that have been used by all political parties. According to wikipedia KPMG is one of the largest professional service firms in the world. Yep they are going to bend over for the ALP, not. Goolge it on you vivid service

My point is still valid. A private company is getting faster speeds currently than the govt is planning in 5 years at a cost of $40B+. It may not be available in Adelaide but neither is the NBN, it is available, I beleive, to one street in Tasmania.

The govt should stay out of this area and let the market find the solution.

ejb

 

[oz_mark]

The govt should stay out of this area and let the market find the solution.

The do it becaues after years of pushing the deregulation barrow, they now decide that a legally mandated government owned monopoly, with penalties for building anything that competes, is the way forward!

 

[medhead]

My point is still valid. A private company is getting faster speeds currently than the govt is planning in 5 years at a cost of $40B+. It may not be available in Adelaide but neither is the NBN, it is available, I beleive, to one street in Tasmania.

The govt should stay out of this area and let the market find the solution.

ejb

Sorry but one small ISP in one small city is nothing like a national system covering 90% of the population. Do vivid have any plans to cover Adelaide? No? Unlike the nbn. We also know that the speed of vivid's service is dependant on the number of people using it. Really you are having a joke aren't you?

As for the market finding a solution. That hasn't worked fir the last 18 years what makes you think it'll suddenly work now. Howard, michin and that silly woman pushed their version of deregulation and look what that got us. The 3 amigos. You can have any broadband service you want as long as it is provided by Telstra. I got burned big time by Telstra and their momopoly games. If I'm going to be subject to a monopoly I'd rather something that might consider my interests rather than the whims of some stupid yank.

The market has done nothing since the foxtel optusvision fiasco. The market might work in other countries but australia just doesn't have the population distribution and density for that to work here. This is nation building stuff and the market doesn't do that, rightly so, they do profit. If we want what they have else where then it is only going to happen if we pay for it with our taxes.

 

[CthulhuDreams]

I'm actually one of the Deloitte consultants who worked on the orginal strategy and did the business case. The FF points thing wasn't part of the orginal savings case I helped develop.

Discussions at the time indicated that FFP limits are a natural upshot of the fact that you're not supposed to privately profit from tax payer dollars.

It can be difficult to totally prevent this from happening (status credits -> loyalty bonuses for example, though status credits in and of themselves are not a breach, as the government is totally fine with enjoying prefered customer status), but yeah, thats why its in, not because it's expected to save money.

 

[simongr]

Discussions at the time indicated that FFP limits are a natural upshot of the fact that you're not supposed to privately profit from tax payer dollars.

So they should work for free then? They are directly profiting from tax payers dollars through their remuneration. They also indirectly benefit through long term employment opportunities through connections made in government.

FFPs are simply and easy political target that doesn't tackle the root causes of waste in the public sector (and don't start me on the multi layers of government for such a small country).

 

[serfty]

Welcome to AFF CthulhuDreams

Thankyou for the insight.

Going by that it seems the FF points/SC removal was inserted by "Spin Doctors" or their ilk for political capitol.

 

[Dee Thom]

Finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner, has just announced that through central purchasing of all travel, the Government will share it Air travel budget between Virgin, Qantas, Rex, and Jetstar, saving $160 million.
At the moment there are 200 Govt Agencies handling their own air travel arrangements separately, loosing the benefits of collective buying, causing inneficiencies and waste.
Looks like DJ will be the big winner of the four if this goes ahead.........

Cheers Dee

 

[UP4014]

Discussions at the time indicated that FFP limits are a natural upshot of the fact that you're not supposed to privately profit from tax payer dollars.

Thanks for that, yes, I guess you receive your renumeration/consideration then points become an untaxed benefit not part of your salary package.

Good one.

 

[CthulhuDreams]

So they should work for free then? They are directly profiting from tax payers dollars through their remuneration. They also indirectly benefit through long term employment opportunities through connections made in government.

FFPs are simply and easy political target that doesn't tackle the root causes of waste in the public sector (and don't start me on the multi layers of government for such a small country).

Because their is a clear difference. Your salary is paid so you execute business for the government. FFPs are just a kickback from a supplier to divert tax payer dollars to them.

Just as taking a cash payment, or a free PC, or a discount on a PC from Dell to give the contract for supplying computers to Dell is against the terms of the FMA act, taking a payment from Qantas to give government travel business to Qantas is against the terms of the FMA act. I think you might think it was pretty dodgy if Dell started giving free flights to procurement employees if they made sure that more expensive Dell PC contracts beat out more competitive contracts from altenative suppliers.

But that said, I don't really care what you think about it either way. The FMA act says it is illegal to get FFPs as a result of government travel (If you could, in theory, get people to use FFPs accuring only (and only) on government travel that would be okay, but that is impractical). Making this not so requires an act of parliment.

However, as I said, we didn't even include this in the report. The actual terms of the report restructure government travel procurement in line with industry best practice.

To be clear, I have no idea who inserted it and why. It wasn't covered in our report as it's a very tough legal issue because of the FMA act limitation. To the poster complaining about 'if you recieve renumeration' - you need to check out what a fringe benefit is, and then you need to understand that the public service regulations are very much tighter than the ATO fringe benefit rules!

 

[oobi doobi]

Sorry but one small ISP in one small city is nothing like a national system covering 90% of the population. Do vivid have any plans to cover Adelaide? No? Unlike the nbn. We also know that the speed of vivid's service is dependant on the number of people using it. Really you are having a joke aren't you?

As for the market finding a solution. That hasn't worked fir the last 18 years what makes you think it'll suddenly work now. Howard, michin and that silly woman pushed their version of deregulation and look what that got us. The 3 amigos. You can have any broadband service you want as long as it is provided by Telstra. I got burned big time by Telstra and their momopoly games. If I'm going to be subject to a monopoly I'd rather something that might consider my interests rather than the whims of some stupid yank.

The market has done nothing since the foxtel optusvision fiasco. The market might work in other countries but australia just doesn't have the population distribution and density for that to work here. This is nation building stuff and the market doesn't do that, rightly so, they do profit. If we want what they have else where then it is only going to happen if we pay for it with our taxes.

Very good summation medhead.

 

[drron]

Actually it wasn't a committee. It was a joint study by KPMG and McKinsey. Of course firms like that get paid and they aren't going ti risk their reputation for one political party. First rule of politics don't let the facts get in the way of a good story, hey?

The consultancy goes on the facts they have been given.As has been pointed out by several commentators some of the assumptions may be quite optimistic.Even that bastion of anti ALP rhetoric the ABC has questioned the assumptions.Page 356 of their report has uptake scenarios of 70.80 and 90%.Here in Tasmania the NBN people wont even commit to a 30% uptake.Even with the most optimistic scenario the return on investment is 8.5%.Good for a government but i cant see private investors queuing up to buy that sort of return.The most likely scenario has a return of 7%-just 1% above the government bond rate.So no I haven't let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Back on topic I agree 100% with Serfty.The loss of FF points was to give the story a good spin.Nothing more,nothing less.

 

[oz_mark]

Back on topic I agree 100% with Serfty.The loss of FF points was to give the story a good spin.Nothing more,nothing less.

If you read the article in post 2, I don't think it was the politicians that spun the story - the whole FF thing was a sideline to the other arrangements. I think people on this board put more emphasis on it than the government did!

 

[UP4014]

If you read the article in post 2, I don't think it was the politicians that spun the story - the whole FF thing was a sideline to the other arrangements. I think people on this board put more emphasis on it than the government did!

Oz Mark, agree.

 

[drron]

If you read the article in post 2, I don't think it was the politicians that spun the story - the whole FF thing was a sideline to the other arrangements. I think people on this board put more emphasis on it than the government did!

The link from post 2 has this quote from Mr Tanner-

In addition to these new new arrangements, all domestic and international airlines now contracted have agreed to turn off frequent flyer and equivalent loyalty reward points for business related travel.
"This has been an issue of particular importance to me as the Government has previously been unable to extract full value from such programs, with loyalty reward points acting as an incentive to travel," he said.

Sounds like spin to me.

 

[oz_mark]

The link from post 2 has this quote from Mr Tanner-

Sounds like spin to me.

...and not mentioned till the 10th paragraph in the story. Not in the headline either - which shows how much importance the newspaper placed on it.

 

[CthulhuDreams]

...and not mentioned till the 10th paragraph in the story. Not in the headline either - which shows how much importance the newspaper placed on it.

It has a place, just consider the people on here doing 'status runs' for reward points. While I have not looked into in a professional capacity, it is not difficult to imagine that some people consider where they schedule training or whatever to the same ends, rather than what represents 'best value' to the tax payer.

 

[medhead]

The consultancy goes on the facts they have been given.As has been pointed out by several commentators some of the assumptions may be quite optimistic.Even that bastion of anti ALP rhetoric the ABC has questioned the assumptions.Page 356 of their report has uptake scenarios of 70.80 and 90%.Here in Tasmania the NBN people wont even commit to a 30% uptake.Even with the most optimistic scenario the return on investment is 8.5%.Good for a government but i cant see private investors queuing up to buy that sort of return.The most likely scenario has a return of 7%-just 1% above the government bond rate.So no I haven't let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Back on topic I agree 100% with Serfty.The loss of FF points was to give the story a good spin.Nothing more,nothing less.

So commentators who don't have the full facts, think that it may not work have more credibility that an independant consultancy (not a government controlled committee). Gee well I better believe that then
As for ROI yes it is good enough for government and guess what it is being done by government. No commercial returned needed. Your comments about ROI are exactly why government has to do this. Then there is the reporting by news limited that says the plan is to pay it off in 15 years at this poor ROI and then it will be sold to industry. So industry isn't being asked to wear this government level of return.

The link from post 2 has this quote from Mr Tanner-

Sounds like spin to me.

Spin? That quote says exactly what many posts here say - that the pollies don't spend their points on government travel and earning points makes them prefer to travel with one particular airline even if at a higher cost.

 

[drron]

So commentators who don't have the full facts, think that it may not work have more credibility that an independant consultancy (not a government controlled committee). Gee well I better believe that then
As for ROI yes it is good enough for government and guess what it is being done by government. No commercial returned needed. Your comments about ROI are exactly why government has to do this. Then there is the reporting by news limited that says the plan is to pay it off in 15 years at this poor ROI and then it will be sold to industry. So industry isn't being asked to wear this government level of return.



Spin? That quote says exactly what many posts here say - that the pollies don't spend their points on government travel and earning points makes them prefer to travel with one particular airline even if at a higher cost.

But the newspapers are reporting what is in the independent assessment that is that the government will be able to sell it off.I have at least read the summary released by the consultants.
Now have you bought shares in an IPO.All have an independent assessment and i have certainly seen a few with KPMG.Quite frequently that assessment is nothing like what happens.I am glad you feel large organisations such as KPMG are infallible-funny none of them saw the GFC coming.