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Making Ministers accountable? Are you mad? (The Glass House 4/10/06)

NSW Opposition Leader Peter Debnam has pledged to introduce laws so that Ministers who underperform will be docked $55,000. Of course they plan to repeal it if they actually win Government…

Ministers will have their pay heavily reduced unless they can demonstrate they’ve stacked at least one branch, accepted their minimum amount of kickbacks, and used the word “values” at least six times a day.

The Minister for Transport would be accountable for on-time running targets, the Minister for Education would be accountable for literacy and numeracy rates, and the Minister for Technology would be accountable for rigging the statistics to make sure everyone got their bonuses.

And if they really underperform, they get a little “electrical encouragement”… (play stun gun footage)

And if they really underperform, they get fed to the lions. Finally question time is worth watching!

They’re also considering a new system where politicians who don’t perform get voted out of Parliament by SMS. / voted off the island.

It’s still not a cert to get through Parliament, given that all the ministers will cross the floor.

The ministers have to meet the requirements of their particular portfolio. The Premier just gets judged on winning elections… / The Premier only gets his bonus if he implements the policy…

The Minister for Education’s pay is directly related to how well students perform: so they’re all being held back for detention until they get straight A’s.

The Gaming Minister only gets his bonus if the wheel comes up red.

The Sporting Minister will need to ensure Australia wins anything it enters…

Better be careful, Debnam – you might just get elected and have to actually implement this…

But isn’t making Ministers responsible for the results of their portfolios a bit like suggesting that police should be responsible for deaths in custody? Or that the Prime Minister should be responsible for going to war illegally on dodgy evidence? Are you mad?

And it’s fine – he knows he can flounce about saying whatever he likes – no-one will hold him to it once he’s elected! It’ll just be a non-core promise! Mooooohahahaha!!!

Now that no-one expects politicians to keep their promises, they can promise pretty much anything. “Yeah, I’ll be premier for free! Er… and everyone gets Fridays off!”

By Wok and Mat

Warwick Holt and Mat Blackwell are long-time writing partners, who created the mega-award winning web series Bruce, and wrote loads of jokes for TV shows including Good News Week, The Sideshow and The Glass House. Several years of their raw material for those shows is posted right here on this blog.

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