Richardson: Labor downloads Jay 2.0
I suspect my late grandfather, God rest him, didn’t vote Labor much, or once, even, in his almost-91 years – though he was fond of Don Dunstan, in an apolitical sort of way.
The few times I dined at Don’s Table with my grandparents, the Don would instead perch himself at ours, making gregarious conversation, glass of red wine in hand, like the old guy the waiter would usually politely-if-awkwardly ask to move along if he didn’t happen to own the joint.
Nonetheless, the ALP wasn’t really my Grandad Bob’s cup of tea, though he did have one thing wholly in common with this Labor administration: they’re both total crap at information technology.
In the early ‘80s, when personal computers were becoming all the rage, Bob brought home a Commodore or IBM or somesuch, eager to launch his metaphorical jalopy down the information superhighway. Unfortunately, however, he quickly encountered a roadblock.
As he recounted decades later (still mildly annoyed about the whole thing), he plugged it in and turned it on, only to be greeted with the less than welcoming phrase: “Syntax error”, which Bob pronounced phonetically.
At which he promptly turned it off again, unplugged it and drove it straight back to the retail store whence it came. And that was the end of my grandfather’s brief dalliance with IT.
Years on, he would ask me with befuddled wonder: “Do you have … the internet?”
And when I answered in the affirmative, he pressed on: “And … do you have … E. Mail?” Every syllable deliberately, fascinatedly, enunciated. I did. He was suitably impressed.
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State Labor’s technological naivety, however, is somewhat less charming.
On Tuesday night, Service SA’s entire registration payment system crashed. I don’t know whether technical boffins slaved through the night, but it took till late the following afternoon to repair the fault. I wonder if they tried turning the computer off and then turning it on again?
During this time, people were unable to make registration payments online, though for many unlucky punters there was no indication of that until they had hit the “PAY” icon several times, and been accordingly charged several times without actually renewing their rego.
In the morning, people queued up outside Service SA outlets, but it was several minutes before someone bothered to come out and tell them there was no Service, per se. Even then, news of the outage spilled out slowly. There was no media alert, no minister hitting the morning airwaves to apologise and explain to people that they needn’t bother showing up at Service SA, but instead to take their renewal notices to a Post Office and hang onto the receipt.
It was as if the whole Clovelly Park fiasco never took place. What happened to that “new engagement paradigm”? Sure, the Government was hopeful the IT collapse could be righted before Service SA offices opened on the Wednesday morning, but it meant that the outage chaos was compounded because customers were utterly unaware of it.
And all because the Government’s default position is to try and conceal the initial error. To cover it up, effectively.
And having put all their energies into trying to repair the outage without anyone noticing, they were utterly unprepared for the damage control scenario they were lumped with instead.
Once it was clear the situation had escalated beyond all control, minister Susan Close was wheeled out to cop the brunt of the opprobrium, despite being evidently about as computer literate as my Grandad Bob. She was blissfully vague when I asked her about the technical aspects of the fault (“Someone mentioned something about a router”), and hoped it would all be fixed by tomorrow in much the same way as we all hope airily for world peace. She assured me that the Government would review what it did right (very little) and what it did wrong (most of it).
At which point, they’ll probably have to design yet another engagement paradigm, in case it ever happens again. Which it probably will, given this Government’s pedigree.
EPAS, Oracle, RISTEC – its track record with ICT is risible, an oft-repeated tale of lofty ambition, grand expenditure and ignoble failure.
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Just this week, Nine News revealed the Government had written off $4.5 million already spent on the abandoned third phase of RISTEC (Revenue SA Information Systems To Enable Compliance), which was to “enable” the replacement tax collection system to administer the first home owners and housing construction grants and various stamp duties. From its original $22 million budget back in 2002, the project has now set taxpayers back more than $54 million, only to be deemed a white elephant and halted.
But, as Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis told me: “It’s not about being abandoned, it’s about not proceeding any further.”
You say tomayto, I say tomahto …
If only the solution to all this was as simple as turning the computer off and then turning it on again, because that’s pretty much what Labor has done on that “bold” policy agenda we were promised back in March. On Wednesday, with a week and a half left of sitting days for 2014, the Government ran out of government business in State Parliament.
The legislative cupboard is bare. To borrow an insult leveled at factional hacks in the Upper House by Mike Rann as he exited stage left, the Government “might as well have hung a Gone Fishin’ sign on their door and substituted their briefcase for an Esky”.
But there are signs this is the calm before a storm of activity. Ominously, Labor seems unwilling to unveil much of its policy agenda ahead of the Fisher by-election in a fortnight, so I guess we’re not expecting shallow vote-buying populism. But Weatherill appears quietly determined that 2015 will represent a new beginning, of sorts. Parliament’s proroguing, as pointless as it is, appears to carry heavy symbolism for him.
It will, of course, correct a fundamental flaw in the way he initially characterised his Premiership, when he assured voters his was the same Government as before, albeit with a different leader. The thing is, after 13 years, few want the same Government as before, even with a different leader.
South Australia is not merely ready for some new ideas; it is crying out for them.
So the Labor Government may have logged out and shut down for 2014; but there is a palpable sense that the Premier, at least, is preparing to reboot with a fresh operating system in the new year: Weatherill 2.0.
Fingers crossed it’s bug-free, because at the first sign of a Syntax Error, many voters will – like my Grandad Bob – be more than willing to pack up Weatherill 2.0 and take it back for a refund.
Tom Richardson is InDaily’s political commentator and Channel Nine’s political reporter.
From January, he will join InDaily’s reporting staff full-time.
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