Labor Waste

Just when you thought it could’t get any worse, Labor finds a new way to waste taxpayers’ money:

 ALMOST a quarter of the $308 million allocated to put set-top boxes in pensioners’ homes will go to administration and two government departments. Answers given to a senate committee reveal $24.5 million was for the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy for “departmental costs” and to “manage the program”. Another $42.2 million was allocated to Centrelink to “assist in administering” the Household Assistance program.

The program is open to all pensioners to receive a digital set-top box, have it set up and get a lesson in how to use it to get digital television when the analogue signal is turned off.

On average, it costs $350 to complete the work.

“I thought that is what departments did all the time,” Liberal MP Jamie Briggs said of the funding to manage the program: “It is quite extraordinary. The fact that 20-odd per cent of the government program is eaten up by bureaucracy says it all about the government. They can’t possibly run a program without spending millions and millions on bureaucrats.”

Read the rest here: $67m worth of set-top box red tape | thetelegraph.com.au.

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