The tender trap set by Government mired in enmity

marley says:

08:26am | 04/04/12

@acotrel - so, if the result is the one you want, the hell with how corrupt or mismanaged the process is?  Hmm, and here you claim not to be a supporter of authoritarian decision-making.  Can’t get much more authoritarian than have a Minister throw out the results of two consultation processes and make the decision on his own.

TimB says:

08:29am | 04/04/12

No they don’t, and no it isn’t.

Super D says:

08:33am | 04/04/12

“voice of the average Australian”.  What utter utter nonsense.  The ABC is the preferred broadcaster of the inner urban cultural elite. 

Also if you’ve ever seen it, the Australia network is totally rubbish.  It is totally dysfunctional.  One minute its a news channel, the next its kids programming, then educational and then suddenly they show an AFL match.  It’s as if programming is decided by some bureaucratic committee who need to ensure the work of every sub department of the ABC is included so they can get extra funding from DFAT. Hmm that is probably exactly what is happening.

Borderer says:

08:36am | 04/04/12

Acotrel,
That statement in itself encompasses the problem the government has, must be wonderful knowing you’re right and that no matter what you do it is always with the best intentions and for the best.

jg says:

08:48am | 04/04/12

So corruption and mismanagement are okay as long as it is what you believe in?

Fantastic. Is this what ALP voters believe?

You truly are an idiot.

No wonder you’re down to 27%.

iansand says:

09:47am | 04/04/12

Most of these comments show the urban base of the commenter.  Have they ever listened to rural ABC stations?

acotrel says:

10:23am | 04/04/12

We could do worse than beam all the UK BBC channels directly into Australian homes.  Then we might actually learn something about the rest of the world !
There have been plenty of efficient government owned businesses crippled by the greed of private companies in their desperation t o grab a piece of the action.  It’s the reason Australia no longer manufactures aircraft !

acotrel says:

10:26am | 04/04/12

@marley
It is the correct result for Australia.  Too bad about the process !
Some thing are much better when government owned, even tkough your warped ideology might suggest otherwise.  Globalisation and privatisation is not the answer to everything !

acotrel says:

10:30am | 04/04/12

You can claim that the ABC is politically biassed, but at least it is not full of poisonous crap !  Imagine Murdoch managing the output from our country - the mind boggles. Bolt and Jones speaking for Australia - GET STUFFED !

Rosie says:

11:18am | 04/04/12

acotrel

Congratulations, your mind in top gear as usual. I don’t blame you I would have said exactly the same thing if I weren’t smart enough to realize that this govt is stuffed but must somehow keep defending it until its dying day.

Ordinary Australians don’t have the time to listen to all the excuses used in defense of the many ‘stuff ups’ by this incompetent Gillard Labor Govt. The majority have made up our minds - Australia has a bad Govt and the quicker they are booted out the quicker the nation can get back on track to good governance.

What really happened in this one of the many ‘stuff ups’ is Conroy and Gillard didn’t want Rudd to have his way and therefore covering up their moves hoping the public wouldn’t suspect anything. We don’t have to suspect anything we just know that everything they do now until the ballot boxes open has an ulterior motive.

Borderer says:

11:43am | 04/04/12

On another note Acotrel, the government managed to waste 2mil on a process that could have been done with a memo (assuming you are correct of course). So good on them for reaching the right decision, burning up 2mil of taxpayer money and earning the ire of the A-G in the process. Ham fisted and incompetant barely covers their ineptitude, I suppose Julia has Tim take the bins out at home in case she somehow spends 3mil getting to the end of the driveway and back?

marley says:

11:43am | 04/04/12

@iansand - I live in rural Australia and don’t have an issue with its regional reporting.  But that’s not the point.  The point is that acotrel is trying to justify a ridiculous and expensive process on the grounds that the right decision was achieved.  I happen to think the ABC should have had the contract, but if the Minister thought so as well, and he obviously did, why not just give it the damn contract instead of going through this farce?

Robert Smissen of country SA says:

05:54pm | 04/04/12

Surely ye jest! ! First define the average Aussie, that would be the latte sipping Sydney office worker would it? ? ?

Yes but says:

08:45am | 04/04/12

I have to agree.

While I would slice out my own vital organs and cook them and eat them rather than countennance a single federal liberal of the current batch of reverse gear, rear-view mirror gaggle of bottom-feeding slime… I do think Conroy has failed his way to a position where he can do the most least damage.
Most aspects of communications policy already have independent regulatory bodies… except print of course, free speech can be regulated over broadcast airwaves but not in print because harrumph.
Anyway. Conroy’s a nob, but when the alternative is federal liberal, I’m afraid he has to stay.

Mayday says:

10:18am | 04/04/12

Conroy doesn’t hold a stick to Barnaby.

Barnaby is a true character and his own man.

His “explanation” on the ABC of how Craig Thompson had his house burgled, licence and credit cards stolen by an ace forger who had lots of fun then returned them to Thompson’s house non the wiser is a classic.

Conroy is a pup.

Barnaby should be into the House of Reps and continue to say it as it is.

Richard says:

01:09pm | 04/04/12

Barnaby Joyce is far from incompetent. He is portrayed to be as such by the far-left ABC interviewers and reporters who mock and dismiss him out of hand, but history has shown us over and over again that Barnaby was right.

Take his warning about the dangers of Sovereign debt 2 years ago when he was shadow finance minister. The bien pensant chattering latte sippers crucified him for it. Subsequently, within a few months, we saw the European Sovereign Debt Crisis unfold, the Debt Ceiling Debacle the United States, culminating in Standard and Poor’s stripping the US of its Triple A Credit rating, an outcome which was unthinkable to all the bien pensant chattering latte sippers.

Barnaby Joyce it turned out was 100% right to be warning about the dangers of Sovereign Debt, and had the prescience to speak up about it before everyone else even realised it was a problem! But did anyone give him his credit where it was due? No. They continue, like T-rev, to be clueless as to the absolute genius of the man.

Bear says:

02:07pm | 04/04/12

@Richard “far-left ABC interviewers”. Who!?? I’m regularly tuning in and getting neutral or non govt sympathetic commentary, rarely are the Labor friendly. (Is Albrechtsen still on the board?) But I get spat in the face through the airwaves from the gutteral, rabid and often wrong (not disagree wrong, often his ‘facts’ are total righty imagined rubbish) carrying on of Hadley for example.

RyaN says:

02:25pm | 04/04/12

@Bear: So you admit then that you are so much further left than the far left ABC presenters that you cannot even identify that they are far left!

SimonFromLakemba says:

02:41pm | 04/04/12

@Richards

Anyone could see that coming, wasn’t exactly an over night phenomenon. Barnaby is a loose cannon and you would have to be an absolute rusted on not to see that, but I didnt notice your boltesque mud slinging of the left so that wouldn’t come as a shock.

The same Barnaby whose economic credentials you lauded, did say this:

“The Australian Government would never be allowed to buy a mine in China. So why would we allow the Chinese Government to buy and control a key strategic asset in our country?.”

“I want to be absolutely clear about this, the Coalition supports existing plans for spending on foreign aid. The Coalition supports the public service”

Well yes, we all know how the coalition loves the PS and foreign aid.

@Mayday

“Barnaby is a true character and his own man”

You could say the same about Katter, doesn’t mean he is not a nutjob.

acotrel says:

08:12am | 04/04/12

You just have to admit that there are some things that government bodies do better than private organisations, regardless of the globalisation ‘free market’ bullshit ! !

marley says:

08:29am | 04/04/12

@acotrel - well, it’s manifestly obvious that one thing government’s don’t do better than private industry is run tender processes.

Or did you miss the point of the article, which isn’t about whether the ABC got the contract, but about the waste of public funds and the complete lack of transparency in trying to make the process arrive at the decision the government wanted.  They should have saved time and money and just awarded the contract in the first place without the sham theatrics of a tender process.

TimB says:

08:35am | 04/04/12

How the hell has the government handled this ‘better’ Acotrel?

We as taxpayers now have to foot the bill for yet another example of stunning goverment incompetence. Do you understand that at all?

Brian says:

09:48am | 04/04/12

The thing is, acotrel, there aren’t many people who disagree with who got the tender in the end - either your comprehension is poor or you’re deliberately trying to misconstrue what others are saying. The problem is that there was a tender in the first place! The government should have just given it to the ABC, without going to tender and wasting millions. If they insisted on having a tender, they should have followed through with it.

marley says:

11:45am | 04/04/12

For once, I agree entirely with you.  The ABC was always the ideal vehicle, and should have just been given the contract.

AdamC says:

12:48pm | 04/04/12

If the ABC was so great, they could have found a way to contrive that their tender was superior. The News-linked tenderer offered much better access to China. That will now be lost.

Phil says:

01:06pm | 04/04/12

Have you been overseas recently and suffered this production. Maybe you should experience a sample of what they currently produce to see why new blood and experienced producers are required.

SimonFromLakemba says:

02:45pm | 04/04/12

I don’t think I would want Murdoch representing Australia through his network.

As Marely says it should be ABC, they just need to pick it up a bit. I watched it when I was in Bangkok and it wasn’t great.

Steve says:

11:07am | 04/04/12

thank you for this rational and useful explanation based on actual experience.

An alternative explanation - not based on officials’ incompetence - is that Gillard, Conroy and most of the Cabinet hated Murdoch and would rather eat broken glass than hand over even one tiny part of a cultural icon such as the ABC, and doing so alienate one of their remaining core support groups - the arts luvvies.

SimonFromLakemba says:

02:48pm | 04/04/12

So Dancan gives a “rational and useful explanation based on actual experience” your words and then you go off on a rant.

Geeze.

marley says:

03:38pm | 04/04/12

@dancan - I’m not sure I agree with you on this.  I think the ABC could have been awarded the contract without tender, and while there might have been a few grumbles, it could have been sold quite easily as simply using the “national broadcaster” to disseminate Australia’s messages overseas.

That said, I think the decision was made at cabinet level to open up the tender in order to show how transparent and business-friendly the government was.  On fairly ordinary tenders at departmental level, I think you’ve laid out the pitfalls fairly well;  this, however, was never intended to be an ordinary process.  It was always intended to be bit of theatre, with the ABC getting the contract in the end.  It didn’t occur to anyone that Sky might actually win the tender.  So when the first bid came through, and Sky looked like the winner, they had to quickly revise the parameters to reduce Sky’s chances.  Second round, and Sky again gets the nod.  There’s no way they can rewrite the tender a third time without putting in a criterion like - the bidder must be a publicly funded national broadcaster - so they trashed the whole thing.

In other words, they wanted the appearance of openness, fairness and transparency but also wanted a pre-ordained result. 

This schemozzle had nothing to do with the officials involved in the procurement process, but with the decision to take the final say out of the hands of Dennis Richardson at DFAT and turn it into a political one.

dancan says:

04:39pm | 04/04/12

@Marley - by no means am I saying that grounds wouldn’t have been there to award the contract directly to the ABC and avoid all of this mess.  But it comes down to how defensible is the decision when it’s put forward to the public or to a senate committee. 

And here things get murky and I think this may be the crux of the issue, defending the decision to contract directly with ABC isn’t just about that one action, it’s also about defending why they excluded everyone else.  How could they defend excluding Sky the right to tender?  They couldn’t.  So the next option is to try and swing the tender in favour of the preferred business.  But as we all see the entire thing was a balls up

In the end I feel we’re both right.  The guys at top turned it into a political affair, the guys doing the work mismanaged the process.  Both ignored the advice given to them

marley says:

05:10pm | 04/04/12

@Dancan - my impression is that the guys running the process did okay and all the bungling took place at the political level. I admit, though, that I haven’t read the actual report of the AG yet, so I could be mistaken on that.

Zed says:

01:29pm | 04/04/12

Sky didn’t lose. The proccess was abandoned when the govt. realised they had backed the wrong horse.
As usual.

marley says:

02:03pm | 04/04/12

Marilyn - but SKY didn’t lose the tender.  They won, twice. The Cabinet didn’t like the result its own tender process had produced and simply tossed it out.

And our tax dollars will now go to pay SKY compensation.  $2 million bucks that could have been better spent elsewhere goes to Sky because the Cabinet couldn’t get its act together.  And that’s not counting the cost to DFAT of running this whole farcical exercise for no result.