Newsgroups: aus.politics
Subject: Re: Vic Ministers Get $20,000 pay rise.
From: mjp@itd.dsto.gov.au
Date: 3 Nov 92 09:31:56 CST
 <1992Oct30.005834.24819@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> <chris.720418919@suite.sw.oz.au>
Distribution: aus
Keywords: ministerial salaries

chris@suite.sw.oz.au (Chris Maltby) writes:

>I think this comment is fair enough, but it's worth noting that the
>ALP always cops the "jobs for the boys" worse than the conservatives.
>You see, it's assumed to be OK for the Libs to put some business magnat
>into some cushy position, but if the ALP puts a union leader into the
>same position there's a hue and cry. I wonder who owns the media,
>business magnates or union leaders?

Agreed.

What I find amazing is the sheer political ineptness of it
all. I mean suppose you had always intended to give that pay
rise, why do it within 3 days and just after scrapping leave
loadings.

As for leave loadings, I think the real danger here is
fooling yourself that that 1% or so will actually
make a difference. We are not going to be competative on
labor this century, when there are so many countries whose
salaries are < 1/10 of what we have today.

This country has an overall appalling record in management
skills and risk taking. Rather than invest in 5-10 R&D
projects knowing that if even 1 of them pays off it will
make up for the others and build a new industry these people
either do nothing until the world passes them by or
speculate (usually with other peoples money) on
non-productive investments. And if you look at the last few
years, it is this group of people who have been getting
higher than average pay rises. BTW no investment fund
managed by these managers outperformed the all ordinaries
index over the last 5 years. You would be better off
choosing 12 stocks at random and sitting on them.

There are of course some notable exceptions, and many of
them go unnoticed. For instance, last night I was reading
the annual report of MEMTEC. Which has grown a multi-million
dollar buisness out of a failed research attempt at creating
a dialasis machine. The membrane they used bioreacted with
the blood.
However they realised that they could filter water with it
which sounds both self evident and not terribly useful but
the potential applications are much wider than one would
guess. They are already using the technology for:

	Drinking water
	Sewage treatment (can do it well enough to drink the
			output but most dont specify such
			stingent standards)
	Process water (making chips, solar pannels)
	Pollution control
	Recycling runoff water from farms (cant normally because of
				spreading bacterial diseases and viruses).
	Removing disease and predators for aquaculture.
	Emergency water supply to natural disaster areas
	Showering 600 people with one small tank of water (army)
	Filtering of wines and fruit juices
	Concentrating results of fermentation, genetic engineering

given the possible infrastructure savings by processing the
sewage at each suburb, recycling the water and transporting
only the concentrated sludge, and the fact that most of
eastern Europe and a good deal of western europe needs new
sewage treatment plants in the next decade, that market
alone is enourmous.

We would only need 6-10 companies like this to make a huge
difference in our balance of payments. This is why people
have their head up their ass if they think leave loading is
either the problem or the solution.

Michael
--
Michael Pilling				Phone: +61 8 259 7017
Software Engineering Group		Fax: +61 8 259 5980
Information Technology Division		Telex: AA82799
DSTO Australia				michael_pilling@itd.dsto.gov.au