More Federal Funds??

Dear Editor,


So the writer of the NT News Editorial of 31st January, 2011 seriously believes that more “Federal Funds” is the answer …….. In the writer’s own words: to “solve the Territory’s terrible social problems”.


Is the person who wrote this Editorial for real?


The Northern Territory now has more expenditure on bureaucracy (17,000+ on the taxpayer-funded payroll and growing) than probably any similar size jurisdiction in the Western World!


And to make matters worse, Clare Martin and Paul Henderson have added at least 5,000 extra taxpayer-funded employees since Labor was elected in 2001 – at an ANNUAL cost to the NT budget of around HALF A BILLION DOLLARS!


Even if extra Federal Funds could somehow “solve” the problems that are described in the Editorial (which of course I very much doubt), could it be that the lions share of the NT Government’s funds are gobbled up by their massively overstaffed, poorly managed, wasteful and scandalously inefficient bureaucracy – leaving only a pittance for expenditure at the “coal-face” where it is claimed to be needed?


In Health, Education, Police, in fact everywhere within the NT Government, it seems that the first priority of available funds is to hire more and more unnecessary staff, accommodate them in bigger and more salubrious surroundings, and pay them salaries way over what they would ever hope to receive in the REAL world - in the market-place!


And finally: the suggestion that this incompetent debt-ridden Martin-Henderson Labor government should ask the also incompetent “Drunken-Sailors” from the now deeply (and unnecessarily) in debt, Rudd-Gillard Federal Labor government for more funds has to be the biggest joke of all!


Yours truly,


Dave Wane