VALUE for Taxes is a community attempt to influence our own future positively by identifying and articulating what people want independently of the biases of political parties.
Value for Taxes will be offering and pointing out a wealth of newsworthy stories showing how we are wasting billions of dollars on useless, counter-productive activities due to outmoded government systems. We also hope to show why our systems aren’t working properly and what Australians can do to fix them.
Anyone in the media must surely notice the excessive number of stories about government failures — our hospitals, childcare, infrastructures, skills base, education systems … the things we care about are faltering badly.
Government’s response to our problems is almost always the same … deny or play down the problems, if pressed make minor changes only, or engage in an inquiry and largely ignore the results. Meanwhile our payments demanded by government keep going up while the quality of service to the public goes down.
The federal government has told us that Australia cannot afford to look after our ageing population. They are saying this from a relaxed and comfortable position as public servants and politicians can rely on taxpayers looking after them well with generous benefits.
Government is also constantly outsourcing its work to the public yet no-one is measuring or assessing the total impacts and costs of government on Australia. We are therefore deprived of vital signals about the true costs of government.
In a world of rapid change and accelerating complexity, the approaches used by our various governments are not sustainable and will have to change. We argue that the time is now. We believe that Australians need the active help of the media to achieve useful change.
OUR BELIEFS are based on the fact that Australians pay for everything that
government does and consequently it follows that:
* Public money and assets are the people’s money and assets
* The freedom, health, safety, well-being and education of Australians should be government’s highest priorities at all times
* Public service should mean service to the public
* The public should be the main determinants of government service levels and quality
* Government methods and systems are too slow because they are rooted in the past and need to come into the 21st century to let Australia be competitive
* All Australians are equally entitled to benefits from being Australian
* Representative governments should represent our disparate needs both in policy and practice (pluralism).
WE ARGUE that the governments of Australia should:
* Assess impacts and costs of all policies and programs prior to their implementation
* Measure the actual costs created for the public by various government policies.
* Make costs to the public a key determinant of all decision making
* Measure and publish the total costs of government in Australia.
In short we want value for our taxes!
Full details on Value for Taxes at: www.valuefortaxes.com
