It sounds like a good thing – unlimited holiday time, still meeting budget, making bonuses. Here’s a recent piece on the topic. It might work for some, perhaps not others.
It will be clear if it isn’t working. Customers will suffer, other colleagues will complain about being overworked to make good the leave, budgets will not be met. It will be a shambles, obvious very early on. Continue reading
Has anyone else noticed that there have been a number of media reports about shark sightings closing beaches in Victoria this summer? More than usual? The NSW coast, the Eyre peninsula and waters off Cape Leeuwin are more typically the favoured locations for sharks and subsequent attacks on swimmers and surfers. Victorian waters feature far less frequently – until now. This activity generates a buzz in the media offices as journalists have something to write about at a time when usually not much else is happening. Continue reading
What happens when people are appointed to leadership roles in organisations such as the World Economic Forum and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry? Ostensibly, these organisations should favour free markets over regulated, free enterprise over Government-sponsored monopolies (and monopsonies) and have faith in the individual consumer to know best what they want rather than a bureaucrat or a political insider. Yet these leaders make speeches that call for action exactly in opposition to normal perceptions of free markets. Continue reading
With Sussan Ley, the federal health minister, now the subject of an internal investigation over misusing taxpayers’ funds in excessive and dubious expense claims, it is time to recognise that a ministerial scalp and a tightening of the rules will not work. It hasn’t worked before and it will continue to not work unless a different approach is taken.
This is how to do it: each parliamentarian (cabinet members, ministers, shadow ministers and backbenchers) should be granted a fixed allowance. The allowance should be on a sliding scale, backbenchers at the lowest level. The aggregate value of all such allowances should be no more than the current annual claims for travel, accommodation and office expenses of all parliamentarians. In fact, the aggregate should be set at around 80% of the current actual expense claims. Each parliamentarian would then be free to use that allowance as they see fit in fulfilling their duties. Expenses would be deductible for tax. Any amount not used by the end of the year could be kept by the parliamentarian and taxed as personal income.
That would result in a much more efficient use of taxpayers’ money and the whole concept of expense claims would disappear.
The Vendee Globe is the pre-eminent yacht race for singlehanded circumnavigations. Solo sailors race south from the west coast of France, they leave South Africa, Tasmania, New Zealand and Cape Horn to port and return to the west coast of France. The leaders complete the race in about 3 months. The race is held every four years and the current race is about 2/3rds complete. Meanwhile, I have just completed my own mini-version: 3 days, not 3 months and around Port Phillip, not the world. I sailed from St Kilda, leaving the Popes’ Eye and the Hovell Pile to port then returned to St Kilda.
Australian Actuary 