The wash up from the Federal election echoes that from after the Brexit vote in the UK – voter disenchantment and protest.
Commentators suggest this comes from electorates where the “old economy” still holds sway. Where jobs are tenuous and basic concerns on health and education are front of mind.
Others say that the two major parties are too similar and appear unresponsive to the concerns of those who are struggling to keep up with the demands of a “globalised economy” or who have completely missed out on its benefits. (more…)
I look back on the last five years and come to a sad conclusion. For some considerable time, I have been losing control of my movements. But from July 2011 there has occurred a progressive loss of control that is potentially more fundamental than the biological loss of muscular power. It has not been physiological so much as social and personal. What am I referring to? July 2011, five years ago, was when I move into a group-home for people with high support needs. (more…)
I asked a colleague with years of experience dealing with and observing the Philippines about the new President and the maritime dispute with China.
He said that President Duterte revels in the unpredictable and is determined to try to root out crime and corruption in the country as he did so well in winning the slums of Davao 25 years ago against the communist insurgents – the NPA – by vicious vigilante squads. He is already bragging about how many drug dealers have been killed. He has also invited the NPA to hunt down drug dealers and criminals!
Duterte is now equally committed to cutting a deal with the NPA to end their insurgency – through some former NPA and sympathisers in his Cabinet and one of the exiled leaders who taught him at university. The insurgency has been fairly quiet for some years since the US bases (the NPA’s principal target) were closed. This will have serious implications for any moves to bring back significant US military presence in the Philippines. This in turn could pose a few issues for US/Philippines cooperation in the South China Sea. (more…)
On Monday night at Parramatta, I attended Gough Whitlam’s 100th birthday celebration. It was organised by the Whitlam Institute and attended by Gough Whitlam’s family and old friends. Bob Hawke was there. John Faulkner spoke.
There was a memorable speech by Graham Freudenberg who spoke eloquently as usual. I don’t know anyone who has the ability to plumb the heart and soul of the Labor movement like Graham Freudenberg. He is one of the most noble and proper people it has been my pleasure to know. (more…)
In the final month of the countdown to the Olympic Games, our sports stars are probably not eating and drinking the Games sponsors’ foods. Again, as in previous Olympics, the Olympic Games sponsors are Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Cadburys, whose foods and drinks are not good choices for athletes due to their lack of nutrition and high levels of salt, sugar and saturated fats.Unhealthy sponsorship of sport filters all the way down through sport from the elite level to Saturday morning kids’ clubs. (more…)
Road funding is becoming a mess with quite serious misunderstandings of what is being spent and how much is being wasted. The benefits are of increasing doubt.
In this blog I carried a post by John Austen ‘Road spending incurs billion dollar new debts annually‘. He pointed out that in 2013-14, we spent $5 billion more on roads than was raised in road revenue. He described how the Australian Automobile Association keeps adding into ‘road revenue’ other vehicle related taxation that is really general tax revenue – GST from motorists, fringe benefits tax, luxury car tax and passenger motor vehicle customs duty.
Because road spending exceeds road revenue on a substantial scale, additional road spending is adding to debt. In this blog, Michael Keating and Luke Fraser ‘Infrastructure: improvement or impoverishment?‘ pointed out that:
Since 2007-08, revenue from motorists no longer covers road spending.
The accumulated stock of debt attributable to roads could be as high as $114 billion by financial year 2023-24.
Almost all the major multi billion dollar road projects have escaped serious srutiny.
Wasteful roads expenditure is contributing substantially to our growing debt because road spending is exceeding road revenue.
It is time to pause and examine the mess that road spending is creating. It is out of hand with doubtful benefits to road users and the community.
Last weekend’s Upper House election result has armed the ruling Liberal Democratic Party with the parliamentary numbers needed to bring about controversial changes to the Japanese constitution. It does not mean the dropping of the constitution’s war-renouncing Article 9 is imminent or inevitable, but in parliamentary terms for the first time it has become possible. (more…)
This tribute is being published as a foreword to the book ‘Not just for this life’. Wendy Guest has put together all the tributes paid to Gough Whitlam in the House and the Senate in October 2014. This tribute to Gough Whitlam will be published by the UNSW Press.
Something very special and wonderful happened in Parliament House, Canberra, in the last week of October 2014. It began as a conventional condolence motion for a former Prime Minister – Gough Whitlam, who had died on 21 October, aged 98. It became a celebration of the political life of the nation. (more…)
It is well known that our population is living longer. But has our health system adapted to this ageing population? Do the elderly fit into the construct of a single diagnosis? Can we identify those who are coming to the end of their life? Do we ask them if they would prefer to spend the last few months of life in hospitals? What is the impact of the increasing number of medications that they are taking? What is the impact of modern medicine on age related deterioration? (more…)
Some right leaning Christian politicians and commentators were not satisfied when a wise man told them you should love your neighbour as yourself. “And who is my neighbour,” they asked. The wise man replied:
A conservative Member of Parliament was walking back home from church and fell into the hands of brigands; they took all he had, and then began beating him to within an inch of his life. Now it happened that a fellow conservative was travelling nearby, but when he saw the man and the brigands he pretended as if not to see and drove straight by. Then another devout church-goer came upon the commotion, but he too ‘turned the other cheek’ and continued on his way. But a Muslim man – a doctor – who came upon the scene was moved with compassion. He stopped his car causing the brigands to flee. He then took out his First Aid kit and proceeded to bandage the man’s wounds, comforting him with words of kindness. He then gently lifted the man into his car, laid him on the back seat, and took him to a nearby hospital. “Look after him,” he said to the medical registrar; “he has received an awful beating. I will stop by tomorrow to see if he is alright.”
“Which of these three do you think proved himself a neighbour to the man who fell into the brigands’ hands?” asked the wise man. “The one who took pity on him,” they replied. “Go and do the same yourself.”
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The parable of the Good Samaritan is far more than a nice story about human kindness. Rather, it is a sobering challenge to people who should know better: our lives must not be governed by the cultural or religious constraints of our peers – of “my tribe”; of “my nation”.
In today’s fractured political and social climate we must be very wary of fear-mongers who invoke tribalism. Such leadership only provides fertile ground for brigands and cowards. Citizens start to feel threatened and panic sets in as people compete for a dominant identity: it us versus them, me versus you.
In July 2005, Robert Manne in The Monthly Essays, outlined Rupert Murdoch’s role and that of some of his senior journalists in support of the invasion of Iraq. Robert Manne notes that ‘of the 175 Murdoch owned newspapers worldwide, all supported the invasion’. The opponents of the war were described in Murdoch’s newspapers as ‘the coalition of the whining’. See transcript below of Robert’s Manne’s revelations about how monopoly press power is abused. John Menadue
Tony Blair is the most flamboyant and contentious of the trio who took the coalition of the willing into war in Iraq.
Attention focuses on what the Chilcot enquiry has concluded about his role, and equally importantly on what are the lessons, which it promised from the outset it would draw.
The British enquiry naturally wished to protect the confidences of Blair’s co-conspirators, who have managed, unlike Blair, to preserve an image of dignified statesmanship and confident resignation that they did, properly, what had to be done. (more…)
Pearls and Irritations has carried many articles about the exaggerated claims for free trade agreements. That exaggeration continued during the election campaign. One of the five pillars of Malcolm Turnbull’s ‘plan for jobs and growth’ was the alleged benefits of recently negotiated FTAs.
An increasing feature of the most recently negotiated FTAs is that Australia’s hard-won labour standards are being negotiated away through 457 visas in return for access to overseas markets and particularly China.
Peter Martin in the SMH of July 7 highlights how little has been delivered through FTAs. See link below.
The Chilcot Report on the UK involvement in the invasion of Iraq has just been released. In a commentary on the report, Paul McGeough in the SMH refers to John Howard as the ‘patsy from Down Under’.
The Chilcot Report concurs with the widespread view that the invasion of Iraq set in hand the awful devastation and death that we now see continuing in the Middle East. the rise of ISIS can be attributed to the dreadful mistakes of Bush, Blair and Howard.
For Paul McGeough’s commentary on the Chilcot Report, see link below.
In the next few days, we will be carrying i Pearls and Irritations, further commentaries on the Chilcot Report and implications for Australia. John Menadue
On Saturday, Australia’s political system crossed a line. From the normal messiness of democracy into fragmented incoherence. From voter unrest to potential revolt.
The implications are clear for anyone who wants to see. Instability is no longer a one-off in Australian politics but a pattern. Out-of-touch political leadership is no longer an individual failing but systemic.
The enemies of the major parties may no longer be each other. Their principal enemy is fast becoming the ballot box. (more…)
The election seemed more about avoiding some key issues than a contest of values and ideas.
Because so many key issues such as refugees were avoided, it is not surprising that so many voters, about one third, turned their backs on the major parties. Some issues like the NBN were widely canvassed in social media but largely ignored in the public campaign. (more…)
After the election the media is telling us how ‘Malcolm Turnbull’s authority has been shattered’; ‘Turnbull faces big Senate hurdle’; ‘numbers don’t stack up in the Senate for a joint sitting on union crackdown’; ‘Turnbull faces angry back bench’; ‘double dissolution throws up wild mix in Senate’; ‘Turnbull is now a lame duck of his own making’ and ‘how Malcolm Turnbull spent eight weeks trying to be boring in the election campaign’.
But what a contrast this is to what our mainstream media was telling us in March about what a genius Malcolm Turnbull was in calling a double dissolution to outflank all his opponents. The decision to hold a double dissolution was called a master stroke. Houdini was free! The press gallery almost without exception told us that he had wedged Labor on industrial relations and was exposing a weak leader. (more…)
While the final outcome of the 2016 election will have to wait for a few days, a Hung Parliament or a Government with a narrow majority seems likely. The outcome for the Senate will take longer but will be even more remarkable with approx. 19 Senators not representing the major parties: nine Greens and 10 others. Probably 30 Senatorial seats will go to the Coalition and 27 to the ALP. The purpose of the Double Dissolution was to reform the Senate voting system and then pass legislation that was blocked by the Cross Benches. Not only will this be unlikely now but a Coalition Government would be hard put to get much of its legislative program through the Senate. (more…)
In addition to the case set out in the above posts, we should consider some important and related background. The Coalition has a record of privatisation in many fields.
In technical education the Coalition has been undermining TAFE by subsidising private providers, including many shonky providers.
The Coalition privatised Medibank.
An adviser to Tony Abbott proposed to the Abbott government the introduction of the $6 co-payment for Medicare general practice services. That adviser suggested that anyone that didn’t like the co-payment should take out private health insurance. Tony Abbott has told us many times that ‘PHI is in the coalitions DNA’
The friends of the Coalition appointed to the Commission of Audit recommended a co-payment of $15 per visit and suggested that public hospitals should charge public patients.
The Abbott government announced changes to the Medicare rebate. That didn’t work politically so the government embarked on a five year freeze on the rebate.
Then the Coalition backed a $57 billion saving over ten years on public hospitals.
It is clear to me that whilst the ‘shell’ of Medicare will remain it is being steadily eaten away from within, particularly by PHI. Further, the Coalition was taking every opportunity to cut Medicare spending in ways which would not upset its principal backers, PHI funds and private hospitals.
Bill Shorten was right to warn of the threat to Medicare.
If revenge is a dish best served cold then surely schadenfreude is best when tasted hot and fresh. As when viewing the tattered remnants of the Turnbull camp following Saturday’s election.(more…)
After following politics and elections for over 60 years, it is quite extraordinary to see the Liberal party complaining about the Medicare scare campaign. In a downcast and confusing speech on election night Malcolm Turnbull spoke of the ‘well funded lie campaign on Medicare.’
In fact, I think the ALP is right on the threat to Medicare, although I would have used different arguments. (more…)
We have been warned time and time again about hung parliaments and the chaos that follows. The media which is so often more concerned about politics and personalities than good governance, joins in the chorus about the risks of hung parliaments.
The claims that minority governments are disastrous are nonsense. (more…)
As a voter in the prime minister’s electorate of Wentworth, I have received two letterbox drops from Malcolm Turnbull on a 5-point plan for economic growth and jobs.
This 5 point plan is the centre piece of Malcolm Turnbull’s national campaign. It is a very flimsy plan which the media has not seriously examined. (more…)
In an earlier article in this blog, I outlined how Medicare is under threat but not for the reasons outlined by Bill Shorten. The threat is the erosion of Medicare from within by the power of vested interests and in this case, private health insurance. This vested interests wants to bend Medicare to its own ends and take us down the disastrous US private health insurance path. That would destroy Medicare. (more…)
The increasing vitriol between the Boomers and (mostly) Gen Y has singed more than a few nose hairs in recent years. You’d be well advised to approach any discussion between active combatants with full hazmat gear. And now the #Brexit has brought matters to a head.(more…)
Alcohol, drugs and driving simply do not go together. Driving requires a person’s attentiveness and the ability to make quick decisions on the road, to react to changes in the environment and execute specific, often difficult maneuvers behind the wheel. When drinking alcohol, using drugs, or being distracted for any reason, driving becomes dangerous – and potentially lethal
In the Financial Times, Martin Wolf says that the fearmongering and outright lies of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Nigel Farage, The Sun and the Daily Mail have won. (more…)
An important new study in the United States has found doctors who receive just one cheap meal from a drug company tend to prescribe a lot more of that company’s products. The damming findings demonstrate the value of new transparency laws in the US, and remind Australians we’re still very much in the dark about what our doctors get up to behind closed doors.
Just published in the leading Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Internal Medicine, this study is well worth a look for anyone interested in the hidden influences on how doctors prescribe.
Together with a host of other recent work, it adds to the growing mountain of evidence suggesting doctors who expose themselves to marketing strategies – from seeing attractive drug reps to attending sponsored “education” – are doing patients and the wider public a grave disservice.
Need for transparency
The new study took advantage of a new government-run and publicly available databasewhich discloses all drug company payments to doctors. Researchers looked at how often doctors prescribed four popular brand-name drugs, and linked prescribing rates to how often those doctors received meals from the drugs’ manufacturer.
They found that receiving just one company-funded meal was associated with a 20% increase in prescribing of Astra Zeneca’s cholesterol-lowering statin, Crestor, compared to other drugs in the same class.
For two other heart drugs, the increase was in the order of 50%. For Pfizer’s anti-depressant Pristiq, taking one free meal was linked to a 100% increase, or a doubling of the rate of prescriptions.
The average cost of the meals drug companies gave these doctors was between US$12 (A$16) and US$18 ($A24).
And when doctors ate sponsored meals on more than four occasions, their prescribing of the brand-name drugs rose dramatically. Perhaps unsurprisingly, doctors who got more expensive meals tended to have bigger prescribing increases.
Association not cause and effect
Perhaps the most important caveat, as the study’s authors stressed, is that “the findings represent an association – not a cause and effect relationship”. Nevertheless, the results reinforce similar findings from recent studies also using the new transparency data in the US.
In March investigative journalists at ProPublica found doctors who received drug company payments or gifts – mostly free meals – wrote scripts for brand-name drugs at much higher rates compared to doctors who didn’t take industry money.
In May, in the journal PLOS One, researchers found almost half of the 700,000 doctors in the US had received payments from drug companies. Specialties receiving the highest industry payments had the highest prescribing costs per patient.
And also in May, the JAMA Internal Medicine published a small study from the state of Massachusetts, similarly uncovering an association between payments from industry and modest increases in rates of prescribing brand-name statins (cholesterol-lowering medication).
So why does this matter?
The main concern in all the recent US studies is the unnecessary cost to patients and the health system when brand-name drugs are prescribed instead of cheaper generic alternatives.
But perhaps the more serious concern is the danger of doctors prescribing under the influence of drug company marketing – which always favours the latest new drug, rather than what’s in the patient’s best interest.
As The Conversation has covered recently, newer and aggressively promoted drugs can have very limited advantages over older ones, if any, and sometimes carry very serious side effects – particularly for the elderly.
There is already evidence many older Australians are at risk of harm from taking too many inappropriate medicines – and there is a growing push to promote “de-prescribing”, which means taking people off drugs they don’t need.
Australia still in dark
Compared to the new transparency regime in the US, Australia has fallen way behind. Under new rules some payments to some individual doctors will have to be disclosed from this August, but there are too many loopholes.
As a result of horse trading about the new rules – between the doctors, the drug companies and public authorities – any funding of meals costing less that A$120 will not have to be disclosed. And if doctors who have received payments don’t want their names disclosed in August, they won’t be.
Also, all of the roughly 25,000 events, including breakfasts, lunches and dinners which doctors and other health professionals regularly attend annually, will from now on remain totally secret – until there is regulatory reform.
Consumer groups are angry that citizens remain in the dark, and many doctors are horrified by the wining and dining of their colleagues, with some cutting their ties: refusing to see the attractive sales reps and seeking “education” elsewhere.
Disclosure on its own is no panacea
As others have pointed out, disclosure on its own is not a panacea, and it’s legitimate to ask why doctors should receive any free gifts or meals at all.
Already there’s been one legislative attempt to enforce more independence between doctors and drug companies in Australia, and it is likely more will emerge in the future.
Until then, it might be wise to inquire whether your doctor still takes the free meals – and perhaps seek your care elsewhere if the answer is yes.
Ray Moynihan is Senior Research Fellow, Bond University. This article was first published in The Conversation on 23 June 2016.
There are lessons for many, including Australia, in Brexit and in the demise of David Cameron.
That demise resulted from a failure of leadership. He pandered to the extremist Eurosceptic in his party. Instead of dismissing them and telling them politely to jump in the Thames – and showed leadership in what he believed in – the UK in Europe – he offered them a plebiscite that gave a platform to little Englanders on so-called sovereignty and immigration. (more…)
The Turnbull Government and the Shorten Opposition have focussed on domestic issues in the election campaign. This is understandable but in the longer term the Government elected on the 2nd of July will need to address the greatly changed world of 2016. (more…)