This cartoon by David Pope was published in The Canberra Times.
I posted this cartoon on social media today, with links to your blog article. The cartoon was, in part, inspired by your posts. Too often, a good thousand words is worth more than any picture. Thank you for them. David Pope.
See link to David Pope’s gallery http://www.
Warren Buffett described private health insurance in the US as the ‘tapeworm in the US health system’.
This is a current question with Shorten claiming that the Liberals are trying to privatise it and Turnbull calling this a Labor lie. What is the truth? The answer is in the history of Medicare funding. Medibank was set up by the Whitlam government and the bulk billing frees were set at 85% of the AMA ‘Most Common Fee’. The 15% was a discount but saved doctors a lot of costs and all their bad debts. They got slightly less, but the clerical and hassles saved by simply sending the paperwork, and later the computer message to the Medicare computer was felt to be a good deal. (more…)
‘The quality of a student’s education should not be limited by where the student lives, the income of his or her family, the school he or she attends or his or her personal circumstances’.
This is the statement of moral purpose set out in the preamble to current legislation, the Australian Education Act 2013, where it underpins the funding arrangements put in place by the previous Labor government, based on the 2011 Gonski Review.
Bill Shorten has made clear that it is a principle that he and his party support (as do the Greens).
Do Malcolm Turnbull and the Coalition support it – or not? It’s a simple question and it would be good to hear it asked and answered publicly before the imminent Federal election. (more…)
In her valedictory speech on 17 June 2013 after 20 years in parliament Judi Moylan reminded us:
If we are committed to stopping the deaths at sea, in this most intransigent of political arenas, our parliament must find a way to forge a national consensus before we can possibly entertain any hope of achieving a regional consensus.
There are presently 847 people in the Manus Island RPC and 466 persons in the Nauru RPC. There are 541 persons on Manus Island who have received a positive final determination that they are refugees. There are 915 persons on Nauru who are proven refugees, languishing on a Pacific Island with a permanent population of 10,000. Imagine if Australia were being asked to offer places to 2.4 million refugees in the next year. And make no mistake, that is the per capita equivalent to what we have visited upon Nauru with our chequebook. (more…)
Whatever this ill-conceived double-dissolution (double disillusion?) election is about, it is clearly not addressing the issue that, more than any other, is redefining what it means to be Australian. (more…)
It has become a regrettable pattern in the legal world for Attorney-General, George Brandis, to seek to undermine holders of independent legal offices with whom he has disagreed.
One thinks back only a year, to recall his vociferous attack on Gillian Triggs, the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission. This attack followed from the Commission’s release of an extensively researched report on the severe ill-treatment of children in Australia’s offshore refugee detention centres. The findings were damning. Brandis accused Triggs of bias and then had his head of department offer her a senior position in some other less contentious area of government. To her great credit, she refused the offer. (more…)
National TAFE Day was celebrated on June 16 this year, a little over two weeks before the Federal elections. Both Labor and the Greens took the opportunity to restate their support for TAFE and launch further policies. However the Government’s media release from Senator Scott Ryan, Minister for Vocational Education and Skills, focused only on criticisms of Labor’s policies, with no indication of how the Government might support TAFE. “On National TAFE Day 2016”, he said, “The Turnbull Coalition Government is standing with thousands of TAFE students against Bill Shorten’s knee-jerk plan to charge students thousands of dollars in upfront course fees.” He went on to say: “Labor’s ill-thought-through plan for massive upfront fees stands in stark contrast to the deliberative and consultative approach of the Turnbull Coalition Government, which has introduced more than a dozen measures to crack down on dodgy providers, and put students’ and taxpayers’ interests at the heart of VET FEE-HELP reform.” (more…)
In the link below, NFAW analyses the party policies that are being presented at this election which are of interest and concern to women.
http://www.nfaw.org/what-are-they-saying-to-women-election-2016/
The idea of a country negotiating a treaty with its indigenous inhabitants is hardly novel.
Three of our closest friends and allies (New Zealand, Canada and the United States) have all done so successfully, and none of their nations fallen into terminal division and chaos.
And of course even in Australia, a treaty has been under discussion for nearly a century. Aboriginal elders have talked about it since at least the sesquicentenary of settlement in 1938, and it was seriously mooted a generation later when the great public servant, Dr H C (Nugget) Coombs proposed what he called a makharrata – a settlement. (more…)
Labor appears to have rediscovered old values, while the Liberals don’t appear changed one bit. Ian McAuley explains the mire that is the fresh debate on the future of Medicare.
In this article from the Financial Times, Simon Schama (BBC’s ‘A History of Britain’) provides an historical and relevant background as to why the UK should remain as part of Europe. He highlights the narrow mindedness and divisiveness of those who favour leaving the EU. His comments also have relevance for Australia in the divisive and short-sighted debate that we have seen on refugees. See link to article :
https://next.ft.com/content/7c7f2dbe-3474-11e6-bda0-04585c31b153
Malcolm Turnbull says that the Coalition will ‘never, ever, privatise Medicare’. Given the wide public support for Medicare and Malcolm Turnbull’s way with words his attempted rebuttal is not surprising.
But the Coalition has been eroding Medicare from within for a decade and a half since John Howard. The vehicle for this erosion is private health insurance (PHI) and the government is facilitating this process with the $11 billion p.a. taxpayer funded subsidy to support private health insurance.
And the ALP does not seem to care. It scarcely ever mentions the damage of PHI. Is it scared of this vested interest? (more…)
The Minister for Health, Sussan Ley, advises that, as Member for Farrer, she represents some of Australia’s most remote and disadvantaged communities and therefore understands that access to health services, as well as people’s priorities, can differ significantly to those in our capital cities. (more…)
Health policies presented as part of the election campaign should address our expectations for prompt, courteous and effective high-quality care when we need it and not be a random collection of thought balloons – from a child’s birthday? – about waiting lists and co-payments .
Health care is essential to achieving goals for more jobs and a brighter budget. Its availability to all is a fundamental of fairness. Labor or Coalition, health policy is critical to what they hope to achieve for us. Here is why we should be hearing a national health policy from the contestants. (more…)
Each time we go for a blood test to investigate or keep track of an illness, or have a tissue sample from a Pap test or suspicious mole sent off for analysis, the wheels of the pathology industry are put to work.
Pathology in Australia is big business. One company draws an annual revenue of almost A$4 billion. And a proportion comes from the public purse, via Medicare rebates.
The industry features a handful of very large corporations – including giants Sonic and Primary Health Care – that typically use multiple brands, giving a misleading sense of competition.
Other large groups operate on a commercial basis but have a religious and thus notionally not-for-profit orientation, such as the St John of God group in Western Australia.
There are also a shrinking number of smaller independent operators trying to occupy market niches or leverage personal relationships.
The industry doesn’t speak with one voice; different providers have competing interests. The key private sector industry body is Pathology Australia. But it doesn’t representPrimary Health Care or religious entities. (more…)
This article proposes a change in focus for the high speed rail debate. Rather than seeking to compete with airlines, rail should contribute to settlement that eases pressures on capital cities. This change of focus does not require ego stoking thousand kilometre distances at 350kph plus speeds, but trains for comfortable commuting between second tier cities and capitals. Costs would be lower and demand higher. Newcastle-Sydney is the obvious first candidate. (more…)
Andrew Robb’s response to concerns that Australia’s recent spate of free trade agreements were being negotiated in secret was to claim that trade negotiations have always been conducted that way. That comment contains a splinter of truth but a plank of misinformation.
Once, not lately, trade ministers routinely informed Parliament on Australia’s aims, progress, and problems in important trade negotiations.
More importantly, trade negotiations were much narrower in scope, solely concerned with the tariffs and quotas affecting trade in physical goods. The international trade agenda expanded in the WTO Uruguay Round. The ambit of Australia’s FTAs is wider still and commonly includes commitments on our foreign investment policy, investor state dispute resolution (ISDS), labour mobility and intellectual property law. Their broad scope now goes to the heart of national policy, law, governance and culture, and carries far reaching legal and societal implications.
FTAs also carry major foreign relations implications; the close economic intermeshing is only sustainable when the other party has a similar economic, foreign, and strategic policy mindset. In contrast the WTO is based, (was based?) around the most favoured nation concept, which goes a fair way to neutralising bilateral relations as a determinant of trade flows because business can readily shift between competitive national sources of supply.
Contradicting Robb’s view on secrecy being normal, DFAT lists 710 “stakeholders” consulted while negotiating the China FTA. They include the Deer Industry Association and the Nursing and Midwifery Board of the Northern Territory. The Australian Parliament isn’t amongst them, hence nor is the Australian public more generally. That’s unacceptable: the ambit of these agreements is such that we are all stakeholders. Before any negotiations commence Parliament should be informed and debate Australia’s agreement objectives and the likely requests that will be made us by the other country.
The opportunity to be more open with the Australian public is still there in the current negotiations with India and Europe and the imminent revisiting of the agreement with China. The FTA with China is a rubbery document, lacking true reciprocity. The meagre provisions on services trade are set for review in the next two years. Also scheduled for consideration is an “investment specific State to State dispute settlement” mechanism. What does that mean and when would it come into play? It would seem to give the Chinese government further additional leverage in any commercial disputes with Australia, something it has in spades by proxy, as most Chinese enterprises remain state owned or state controlled.
Because FTAs are legally complex they are good at hiding their secrets. The ISDS provisions are inherently vexatious, those in the TPP getting most attention. Blandishments aside, ISDS will constrain parliament’s public policy latitude by imposing a potential compensation cost. Mr Robb argues that the FTA agreements include carve outs for health and environment and thereby protect Australia. Do they? TPP wording refers to “legitimate” public policy, opening a field day for lawyers.
Australian Governments of late seem only to listen to the din of money as though that equates with national interest. Allowing a firm closely connected to the Chinese military to run Darwin, our northernmost port, beggars belief. On another tack Japan, Korea and China have all attached great importance to self-sufficiency in food production. For China overseas land investment is currently seen as a means to achieving it. The AFR recently noted that Chinese who buy land in Australia are feted for “a pioneering effort from national heroes” and gain “face”: the individual is delivering a national benefit. From our perspective it’s essential that Chinese rural investment be integrated with Australia’s rural industry and local community, not separate, apart, commercially excised. This implies the importance both of investment scrutiny and joint ventures.
Australia’s past experience with Japan is cited as reason to be relaxed about current Chinese investment. Lost in history is that over decades successive Australian governments adopted policies to guide Japanese investment to suit Australia’s agenda: initially limiting Japan to minority holdings in iron ore and other mineral resources; later advocating joint ventures in thermal coal; actively encouraging investment in the automotive sector; and stipulating that only Australian residents could buy urban housing.
Foreign relations with China will become ever more complex. A recent paid China Daily insert in the AFR included an article by one, Guo Yanjun. This described President Xi Jinping as “opening a new era for China’s ‘great power diplomacy’ and his diplomatic concepts, which are fundamentally beyond the constraints of the Western international relations theory, are based on China’s cultural tradition of pursuing peace and cooperation with neighbouring countries. To put these concepts into practice, Xi has proposed a kind, sincere, reciprocal and tolerant foreign policy towards neighbouring countries…” Effectively that’s an assertion of Chinese unilateralism, hence for us menace rather than reassurance. Where does China’s approach to the South China Sea fit with that?
Contrary to Australians’ market oriented, Productivity Commission, economic rationalist, presumptions, the rest of the world doesn’t view trade and investment solely through this prism. Other countries weigh national interest broadly, judgements on foreign relations and security meshing with trade policy and economic development strategies. The Darwin decision shows we don’t. The inclusion of David Irvine on FIRB is a sensible step, but the process of meshing trade, foreign and security policy needs to be thorough. The incoming Australian government must improve the coordination of trade, foreign and security policies and ensure all perspectives are clearly articulated to cabinet and its advisory committees for consideration, not decided internally within one agency. That now mandates the separation of the trade and foreign affairs functions, currently within DFAT, back into separate portfolios. Trade should be represented on the Security Committee of Cabinet.
Greg Wood was formerly Deputy Secretary in Prime Minister & Cabinet, and High Commissioner in Canada. He also headed the Americas and Europe Division in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He has had a long involvement in international trade policy and trade negotiations.
Last week’s Broadband for the Bush conference held in the rarefied atmosphere of Brisbane’s State Library revealed just how disillusioned people living in rural, regional and remote Australia have become with the state of their telecommunications services. Chief among the concerns expressed by farmers, welfare agencies, government officials and Indigenous leaders was the limitations of their broadband access, or indeed the lack thereof. (more…)
In this election campaign the issue that triggered a double dissolution – restoration of the Australian Building and Construction Commission – has hardly scored a mention.
That contrasts with the 1974 double dissolution election, called by the Whitlam Government in response to the Coalition’s use of its Senate power to thwart the government’s most important pieces of legislation.
The establishment of Medibank – the forerunner of Medicare – was the main issue in that election. Labor’s vision was for a publicly-funded single health insurer, while the Coalition fought tooth and nail to defend the privileged position of private health insurance (PHI).
The struggle continued in subsequent elections. Between 1975 and 1983 the Fraser Government gutted Medibank, but the Hawke Government resurrected it as Medicare, and over the years of the Hawke-Keating Government, as Medicare grew in popularity, membership of PHI steadily fell to around 30 percent of the population. Then in 1986 the newly-elected Howard Government introduced a set of generous subsidies for PHI, resulting in its coverage rising back to a little over 50 per cent of the population. (more…)
Labor’s broadband plan includes few surprises and fulfils Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s commitment to responsibly increase the construction of fibre to the premises (FTTP). At the same time, it would ensure the completion of the National Broadband Network (NBN) is not delayed further.
It shifts the focus back to providing Australia with broadband infrastructure that would slowly arrest the country’s slide in the global broadband rankings. Importantly, this would help business compete in the global digital economy.
Under Labor’s broadband plan, NBN Co would connect an additional two million premises to the NBN with FTTP rather than the technically inferior fibre to the node (FTTN). Existing contracts for hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) remediation, upgrades and new construction would continue under Labor. (more…)
In the din of distractions about political trivia, many in the media have lost sight of, or fail to understand, fundamental differences in the economic policies of the two main parties.
That is their approach to distribution, or redistribution.
Although politicians may accuse one another of heartlessness or of ignoring the poor, almost all politicians believe that the benefits of economic activity should be distributed fairly (even though what they see as constituting “fairness” may differ). (more…)
This was a question asked of me by the Australian Institute of International Affairs. My answer is ‘No’ for the following reasons. (more…)
Indigenous people have experienced miserable health outcomes compared with other Australians for decades. Efforts going back to the 1960s brought some improvements but these were not enough to remove the inequalities. The federal government was prompted to try to resolve this impasse by establishing the so-called ‘Close the Gap’ Strategy in 2008. This brought fresh hope that this international embarrassment would be removed from Australia’s report card. Indigenous people welcomed the initiative but medical experts questioned whether the massive changes the Strategy set as targets could be achieved, as planned, within a single generation. It seems that the reservations about the feasibility of the Strategy were well founded. When the seventh annual Close the Gap report appeared in 2015 the then Prime Minister Abbott admitted that progress was “far too slow” and that the findings were “profoundly disappointing”. When the 2016 report was published the situation was still unsatisfactory and Prime Minister Turnbull limply commented that the results were “mixed”. There was no statement of determination from him that his government would do all in its power to put things right. Surely that wasn’t too much to expect. (more…)
New ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie now faces a choice.
She can simply manage the ABC’s government-decreed decline or reorganise its resources to make distinctive, original and quality content the institution’s strategic priority.
The choice she (and the ABC board which appointed her) make will become apparent when the ABC publishes its updated corporate plan.
This is the key publicly posted document promulgated by the board which sets the resourcing and content priorities. (more…)
You can’t turn the clock back and in the case of the NBN that means you can’t undo those parts of the Multi-Technology-Mix (MtM) without immediately destructing billion of dollars. While it is a pity that the original plan – providing fibre-to-the-home to 93% of the population – can’t be continued the next best thing is to deliver fibre to as many premises as possible as that could avoid replacing the MtM in a few years time. (more…)
For more than 60 years, since opinion polling became important in shaping election strategies, there has been for the Australian Labor Party one awkward but stubborn consistency.
Rightly or wrongly the Australian Electorate, with very isolated and brief exceptions, has always preferred and trusted the non Labor side of politics, the Liberal-National Party Coalition, as managers of the National economy.
Incredibly, the present Government, which came to power on the strength of a supposed debt and deficit calamity retains that favoured regard on economic issues despite the fact that it has, in just three years added more than 100 billion to the National debt and trebled the deficit – the two things they claimed were threatening Australia’s future. (more…)
Foreign ministers can hide their failures more easily than other ministers because ‘foreign affairs’ has no serious domestic constituency. Appearances on the public and world stage can also hide a lack of substance – for a while.
But the failures of Julie Bishop are now clear.
Most of her media appearances are now about ‘consular’ problems – Australians involved in airline crashes, terrorism, or other disasters. Normally these matters would be left to officers of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. But our foreign minister doesn’t want to miss these media opportunities. It is easier than explaining complicated foreign policy issues. (more…)
We learn belatedly that Prime Minister Abbott tried to persuade the Army to send to the MH17 crash site in Ukraine, were more like 3000, a full brigade!
In this long election campaign, the major parties are debating anything and everything that will affect votes. Everything, that is, except refugees, foreign policy, and – as if it is a minor matter – the war. Australians who haven’t been paying attention may well be unaware that we have military in Afghanistan (still), Iraq (again), and Syria. In spite of retired generals Peter Leahy and Peter Gration repeatedly questioning the strategy and prospects of their deployment, the Government says nothing, and the Opposition keeps whatever it is confidentially told to itself. (more…)
Sport is a majestic thing.
Just like our imaginations, it takes us to so many good places. The backyard: where gran and grandson become batting partners in a fiercely fought family ‘Test Match’. The beach: where sand and water gently accommodate the thrills and spills of diving and catching and tackling and throwing. The family home: where mum’s and dad’s bed becomes a make-shift trampoline; a safe place in which we learn how to fall. The oval: where the football and the netball and the tennis ball connect us to team mates for the first time. (more…)