Don't hold your breath. The majority of the press gallery, at least, have their eyes firmly closed to any questioning of Labor on how they'd plan to fund all the projected spending.
As they were to how the Coalition would fund their promises or cut spending when the Coalition were in Opposition.
The media's lack of rigour and slackness of enquiry in keeping the Opposition to account is one of the reasons we are in this mess now.
If the media had made proper enquiries of Abbott and Hockey before the election we would have discovered they had no idea what they were going to do.
I noticed facebook and twitter chatter is starting to question how Gillard managed to get legislation through a minority senate and Abbott can't negotiate likewise. I'm guessing that lack of skillset is why the independents swung behind Gillard to form govt.
Or leave it in Government hands and charge more and more taxes, to pay for it?
Funny that no one is asking the Government to spend taxpayers money, to open a supermarket, in competition against Coles and Woolies?
Don't hold your breath. The majority of the press gallery, at least, have their eyes firmly closed to any questioning of Labor on how they'd plan to fund all the projected spending.
They may be, but I'm sure the coalition, will be asking the question of the media.
Taking cheap shots at the Government, for trying to reign in spending, will come back to haunt Labor IMO.
Quite so.Funnily enough, I can see some logic in their defunct Medicare rebate changes. If short consultations include medical certificates (for which the employer should contribute as well) and repeat renewals then maybe the patients should either pay more or the GP, as some do, not require a consultation for writing repeats or in simple cases of flu or gastro where the patient has recovered after a few days off and now just needs to satisfy their employer.
The government's problem, as usual is just charging in without consultation or any explanatory justification and trying to bluff their way through instead. There may be some logic in what they are doing, but without explanation and taking the public with them, they are on a hiding to nothing in the polls.
Gollard had a Labor/Green Senate majority. It was only in the Reps that she had to court the so-called Independents.
Quite so.
The time is right for a systemic review of the health delivery system. Without question there are cost corners that could be cut. But let's be fair and factor in the savings from preventative medicine, as the AMA has rightly said.
And how about some legal relief for doctors. Witches in Salem got a fairer trial than a modern day doctor who makes an innocent mistake. Doctors indemnity insurance must be huge cost to them. Why do people think they get shunted off to endless pathology tests and specialist referals.
I don't mind Basilio's idea of a Govt run blood testing laboratory either. Donating at the centralized blood bank seems to go smoothly enough.
Yes, I sometimes think it would be much better if the Govt stepped in and provided insurance to the medical and possibly legal professions.
Medical indemnity cover:Don't they already ?
I remember there was a big stink some years ago about the cost of medical indemnity insurance which was going to lead to doctors not working in public hospitals unless the government took the liability for them. Same for GP's I believe.
Medical indemnity insurance plays a vital role within the Australian health system by working to protect both doctors and patients in the event of an adverse incident arising from medical care.
While Australia’s health system is generally very safe, things occasionally go wrong and patients may sometimes be harmed in the process of receiving medical care.
http://www.doctorconnect.gov.au/internet/otd/publishing.nsf/Content/medicalIndemnityCover
Medical indemnity cover:
.
On the other hand...Once upon a time we had a government established bank the Commonwealth. While it traded as a stand alone entity it offered effective competition to the private banks. It obviously had to pay its way and it returned dividends to the Federal government. A nice little earner actually.
But it's main role was ensuring that private banks didn't get too greedy with interest rate spreads, fees etc.
I expressed no outrage, syd. Just suggested to sptrawler that he should not hold his breath waiting for the press gallery to question the opposition about how they will fund promises. Why you should translate that into outrage I've no idea.Where was you outrage when Abbott was saying no no no and offering no viable alternatives?
Agreed, but I don't realistically have any such expectation.Hopefully as the next election draws nearer all parties will face a lot tougher scrutiny as to how they will achieve what they say they will.
We've been through this before. I understand that you are repeating the mantra created by Julia Gillard on the 'gold plating' idea but I've explained that in many regional areas at least in Qld, the infrastructure was anything but gold plated: it was simply upgraded to what should have been provided many years earlier.Govts at all levels need a lot more knowledge on how to do, at least to make negotiations with the private sector less on sided, but more importantly having that knowledge inside would have helped stopped some of the gold plating of the east coast poles and wires which has doubled power bills, and hopefully would have stopped the building of some of the wasteful infrastructure built the last decade.
Wasn't this confined to public hospital doctors? I think doctors in private practice have always needed to arrange their own insurance. I don't think that should be a government responsibility any more than government should have any say in how private practitioners run their practices.Don't they already ?
I remember there was a big stink some years ago about the cost of medical indemnity insurance which was going to lead to doctors not working in public hospitals unless the government took the liability for them. Same for GP's I believe.
That's not what I was taught in social studies. Like most Australian enterprises there was insufficient anything to buffer the banks and utilities against global forces. Nationalisation was the answer to the collapses.
The Commonwealth bank was a patriarchal remnant of conservatism that denied, women especially, any sought of liberal treatment to advance the society at a growth pace. It was a pricing fixing machine that lead the oligopoly of the banking system.
I have to disagree with your social studies teacher (or what you might have understood) .
The Hawke/Keating abour government proceeded with privatising the Commonwealth Bank. It was part of the 80's push to deregulate the banking system. It was not under any particular finacial threat (Mind you the 1990 recession did have major consequences for other banks at the time.)
The conservatism of the Commonwealth bank ? I suggest all the banks were conservative in their treatment of women. The fact was that the industr as a whole was conservative.
My main point was that privatising teh Commonwaelth Bank enabled the entire industry to chase profits with no regard for other considerations.nd we have paid for it.
The prob is the Coalition believes Govt shouldn't actually do anything. It might step in to help correct an obvious market failure, though their opposition to the NBN makes me think not, but they have the attitude that they'll still use the private sector to fix what in effect has been caused by the market.
Some will argue Govt can't afford to pay enough to lure talent of the right calibre, but I don't believe money is often the main motivator for a lot of people. Interesting work and challenges can be very rewarding to the right kind of people, and as Mike Quigley showed a sense of civic duty can also be a powerful motivator. Govts at all levels need a lot more knowledge on how to do, at least to make negotiations with the private sector less on sided, but more importantly having that knowledge inside would have helped stopped some of the gold plating of the east coast poles and wires which has doubled power bills, and hopefully would have stopped the building of some of the wasteful infrastructure built the last decade.
The Government's backdown over the Medicare rebate is evidence of decision-making that is as chaotic as it is confusing, and does not augur well for a Prime Minister who continues to fumble, writes Norman Abjorensen.
The extraordinary volte-face of the Government over the short consultation fee suggests that either the PM changed his mind on a key policy at the last minute, or this has been one of the most humiliating rebuffs to a prime minister in recent years, with the new Health Minister, Sussan Ley, being sent out to announce the retreat just a day after it was talked up by Mr Abbott.
It appears that nothing has been learnt from the stalled budget - framed to appeal to the big backers of the Coalition, but with little chance of passing the Senate.
We've been through this before. I understand that you are repeating the mantra created by Julia Gillard on the 'gold plating' idea but I've explained that in many regional areas at least in Qld, the infrastructure was anything but gold plated: it was simply upgraded to what should have been provided many years earlier.
Since the upgrade, we have had just one power outage in about four years, and that was fixed in less than 2 hours, despite affecting a regional area of more than 100 sq km.
This is in contrast to outages pretty much every time there was a bit of a storm, such outages lasting many hours, preventing businesses from functioning, traffic lights from guiding traffic, in addition to the obvious inconvenience, insurance claims etc for householders.
What has very much affected retail electricity prices are the subsidies paid to solar power households, both as a cost of itself, and because of the additional burden on non-solar households as fewer households are actually paying electricity bills and the fixed costs being spread over fewer people.
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