On the failures of Closing The Gap

Lesley Graham writes: Re. “How Closing The Gap fell apart” (friday) 

The money that is being pumped into it must be accounted for. This is the problem with taxpayer funding, too many people think that they can charge huge fees and it doesn’t matter. The employment “support” networks are another example, — many are actually private bodies functioning within a sales consultancy philosophy, but playing along as a “public service” entity, which means these companies are being given huge amounts of our money often for doing diddly squat and even when they’re shown up for their dishonesty the government does nothing.

This is why these types of projects need not only to be overseen by an independent body, but also politicians need to be disallowed from either meddling or even changing the processes around or in departments. The funding needs to be long term accounted for, regularly audited with a well set up approach to improving the indigenous peoples lives they are meant to be supporting. Unfortunately until the politicking & the ridiculous nature of how this government functions works out it is the problem, nothing will change. as most politicians it’s been shown clearly over the years that have taken on portfolios more around gaining brownie points than actually having a clue about what they’re taking on. No matter how much hard work is put in, or the good intentions of those on the ground, nothing will change until the government fixes it’s problems.

On AGL’s profits

Roger Clifton writes: Re. “So that’s where all your energy money has been going!

A lot of us would be very happy with AGL paying a lot of that profit as carbon taxes, and for its talk to be about which non-carbon sources will replace coal or gas on the sites of old power stations.