Originally Posted by
beardy
The civil servants who dreamt this up and subsequently badly implemented it should be dealt with harshly. I have no sympathy at all for them.
I'm speculating to a degree here, but I suspect it's a tad more complex than that. One has to remember that back in the day, Ivan had gone away and a peace dividend was going to pay for all manner of wonderful social schemes.
In 1990 we were spending north of 4% GDP on defence. Just five years later that was below 3%GDP. What that means is a shed-load of force-structure reductions, redundancies and equipment deferrals/cancellations. When that starts to happen, people (pollies, mil and CS) start to look for ways of preserving "teeth" - and hence to a degree, prestige - at the expense of tail (logistic support, estate etc).
It's not beyond the realms of possibility that faced with a choice of get some money now to keep force structure, or cut more teeth, gave
the mil and CS involved some very difficult choices and they jumped one way. Hindsight is never a forgiving beast.
That no-one has provided for/anticipated the supposed rent-rise inbound in four years is symptomatic of the same process.