Best ever !

You're so very, very wrong Blowin, there's massive scope for sinking lower, that's what's so alarming.

Depressingly similar to the privatisation of the NSW Land Titles Office. Apart from the brief cash sugar hit there is surely no benefit in giving a private company access to such data plus the opportunity for their increasing profits at the public’s expense.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/unauthorised-privatised-nsw-land-tit...

That's a good one Blowin. Michael West sure does bring to light the shite.
As for hope I think there is a glimmer.
"Two Senate inquiries were announced on August 1. The first concerns service delivery in the visa and citizenship system Centrelink’s Robodebt, and the second on the government consulting bonanza and the Big Four audit firms. These followed a chorus of agreement between Labor, the Greens and the cross-bench and may mean a temporary interruption to plans to privatise visa processing."

My favourite 'Best ever!' is the sale of the Port of Darwin for 99 years to a private Chinese billionaire.

"Back in mid-December, when the current Labor Government was trying to explain how the NT was in the middle of a full-blown financial crisis that sees it borrowing $4 million a day to keep operating, Jodie Ryan was asked in a briefing what happened to the $506 million the NT received for the port.

She said it was put into general revenue and spent. It's long gone, with less than 96 years left."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-12/why-did-northern-territory-sell-d...

Blowin I don’t even see myself as being crippled by cynicism, I think with regards to what we’re talking about I see decades of evidence and so some sort of realism.
After maybe two generations of strong economic growth as well as a mining boom, the sell off of assets continues apace and regardless of all this, Australia is in pretty poor shape and the gap between the haves and the have nots is blowing out - the middle class is crumbling.
Australia isn’t poor; it is rich beyond the imagining of anyone living in the 1970s or 80s. But so much of that new wealth has been vacuumed up by a few, and so little of that new wealth has been paid in tax, that the public has been convinced that ours is a country struggling to pay its bills.
So imagine what will happen if/when things get really ugly with the LNP in charge and they start claiming that they just can’t make ends meet - health, education etc.
If the LNP have their way this country will be unrecognizable in 30 years, I mean look how much it’s changed even since the 90s.

Blowin, light of hope is to reintroduce Treason legislation, and its penalty. All the chaos has occurred after it was repealed. Harsh yes, but our ancestors put it into the nation's law for a reason.

Pigs at a trough snuffling for our public assets comes to mind.