A four-hour round trip to change a damn lightbulb

Neither you nor I will be invited, which is probably a good thing.

After all, with so much to do and so little time, gabbing around a table is a luxury we can ill afford. But not to worry, we can share a few of our ideas here. We don't need a productivity roundtable to identify the things that make the economy inefficient. We see them every day.

Monday, it was roadworks. Don't get me wrong; they're long overdue. Five years overdue, in fact.

It was 2020 when the rains that doused the Black Summer fires also dissolved the road into town. Giant potholes opened up. Cars were damaged. Getting to work involved a slow thread through a cratered moonscape.

Thoughtfully, the local council dropped the speed limit. But the state of the road was so wretched, you'd have been reckless to reach it. A sign went up promising flood recovery roadworks, the details of which could be accessed by scanning a QR code.

Yep, while dodging potholes, the expectation was that you'd whip out your phone, break the law, and scan the code to get to a website that would assure you council knew there was a problem.

Finally, work has begun to fix the road. The signs went up and the stop-go lollipops came out just before the Monday morning peak. People trying to get to work were held up again. And they will continue to be for months to come.

If the road had been built properly in the first place, it would have likely survived the drenching in 2020. If the roadworks it now requires were sensibly scheduled - traffic is virtually non-existent at night and lighter on weekends - workers wouldn't be delayed and businesses in town would be happier.

Tuesday, I found myself in the slow lane of the health system. This was no emergency; I was simply after a medical certificate. I lost an hour trawling through local medical centre websites trying to jag an appointment before giving up. Government promises about lifting bulk-billing rates mean little if seeing a doctor in regional Australia is like winning a division four prize in Lotto.

There are plenty of other examples. A mate who works for a big government organisation needed a fluoro tube replaced. Several tickets lodged but the thing is still flickering. He could stand on a desk and do it himself but that would be against the rules - and involve a mountain of paperwork if he was caught.

A similar thing happened to me a few years ago when I still worked in an office (itself a whole other form of inefficiency). I could have easily done it myself but no, a sparky had to be sent from Sydney, on a four-hour round trip to change a bloody lightbulb.

Apart from the Sydney taxi service whose AI chatbot miraculously recognises my number and knows where to pick me up from (well done, Silver Service), I dread dealing with automated call centres. They don't save time, they eat it. If I added up the work hours lost to waiting on hold while being tortured with bad music and told my call is important, I'd raise bosses' eyebrows. But then again, they've more than likely endured the same thing.

Unnecessary meetings are another sea anchor on productivity. When COVID arrived and hand sanitiser was introduced, offices around the country had to hold workplace health and safety meetings to ensure employees were advised not to drink the stuff. One document I saw said contact with the skin was to be avoided. I kid you not.

Yes, it's another meeting, but I'm sure the boffins who gather around the table in Canberra next month to talk about productivity will bring with them some great ideas about how to fix the big structural problems.

You and I, however, will still face the same inefficiencies that frustrate us in our day-to-day lives.

HAVE YOUR SAY: Name one fix you think would make the economy more efficient. Do you have examples where red tape has made your life miserable? What is worse, bad roads or roadworks? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au

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THEY SAID IT: "The obvious rule of efficiency is you don't want to spend more time organising than it's worth." - Daniel Levitin

YOU SAID IT: There have been numerous accusations of genocide levelled against Israel over conduct in the war in Gaza. But the latest has come from a respected organisation within Israel. And finally world leaders are voicing grave concern.

Mick writes: "The failure to release all hostages. The failure to relinquish 'power' in Gaza. The use of hospitals and schools to shield terrorist strongholds. Confiscating food relief for sale on the black market. Surely Hamas must be guilty of sacrificing Palestinians as much as Israel is guilty of overstepping the mark. Hamas is the catalyst for Netanyahu's overreaction."

"This is a truly horrible situation," writes Martin. "The irony of the situation is that on October 7, the world was horrified by the actions of Hamas and sympathised fully with Israel. Israel held the moral high ground. Since then, they have squandered the support from nearly all countries with their barbarous behaviour."

Jeanette writes: "If every country that exports arms to Israel had the guts to put their money where their mouths are and cut off all military supplies to Israel, how long would it take for them to run out of things with which to kill the people of Gaza?"

"One of the most harrowing books of my youth was Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl," writes Grant. "It personalised the state of depravity to which humanity had descended, and for 80 years served as a living monument that never again can we as a species treat our fellows in ways that diminish us all. So I wonder how many Anne Franks are waking in Gaza this morning, wondering if today will be their last? How many Palestinian girls are keeping a diary, chronicling their constant fear and torment while retaining their faith in the essential decency of humankind?"