Life on Earth #2

HERE:

It was a bummer of a week for the Rudd government. Navel gazing about Australia needing 12 new submarines was followed by news that only 3 of the nation’s 6 subs could go to sea because of crew shortages. Sub-standard wages and conditions were blamed. Next it was revealed that the country’s 380 members of the elite SAS regiment, fighting in Afghanistan, were victims of a bureaucratic pay bungle that has been raging for months. Defence Minister Fitzgibbon said he had been given 10 different pieces of advice from Defence chiefs on how to fix the problem. Army Chief Lieutenant -General Ken Gillespie dispatched a “team” of pay specialists to the regiment’s Perth barracks to "solve the problem". (Prior to the computer age one payroll clerk armed with a pay-book journal, a ruler and pen, and a simple adding machine could handle the payroll of a factory employing 400 workers.) Lieutenant-General Ken Gillespie told a Senate enquiry that his staff had been “working their butts offs”…