Child protection laws and the ineffable NSW Government

The NSW government will change the child welfare reporting laws to stop DOCS being crippled by the volume of trivial complaints (here), but will there be any examination of how things reached this juncture? Perhaps policy has been made thoughtlessly in response to headlines and spin rather than with careful consideration and development? Either the current reporting laws should never have been introduced, or the funding and structure should have been put in place right away to ensure they could be implemented successfully. A government that cared even slightly about good policy rather than polls would ensure that its agencies, particularly those of such immediate human importance, were fixed before they fell apart, not after.

Even more irritating for me personally has been the budget debacle. It seems Nathan Rees only goal is to keep the budget in surplus, regardless of any consequences to the state, at a time when any halfway competent government would be posting significant deficits. In a state choked by aging and inadequate infrastructure, caught in the fierce currents of a global economic downturn, after that state has posted surpluses for years consecutively, choosing to throw out spending for the sake of balanacing a one-off budget is baffling.

I refuse to believe that an individual could scale the heights of public administration that Nathan Rees or any of his ministers have without acquiring so basic a level of economic understanding, so that leaves only one explanation for this behaviour, that deficits poll badly and surpluses test well. The irresponsibility astounds me.

The Labor government in NSW has worked this way for over a decade, so it's unlikely to change anytime soon. All that really has changed is that Bob Carr, the man who was actually made it all look good, is gone, and the machine men who use the state government as a machine for milking developers of dodgy campaign contributions have advanced increasingly incompetent front men in attempts to extend their cosy situation. If Barry O'Farrell wisens up and avoids actually appearing in public or allowing any of his MPs to speak to the media before the next election, I might even find myself accidentally voting Liberal in a state election in the next few years.