With a substantial majority in the House of Representatives, a solid position in the Senate and four years in which to progress Labor's long held commitment to UN treaties & conventions as well as international law & rules based order, it is being put on notice concerning the national electorate's justifiable expectations - Part Two

 

President Donald J. Trump may be well past his physical & cognitive prime, with a narcissistic personality wrapped within an incoherent 'master race' world view which is rapidly coalescing into a vicious & violent form of fascism, but as yet neither the US Congress nor the American people will remove him from office.

Which leaves America's historical allies and long-time trading partners at the mercy of the delusional reasoning behind Trump's 'America First: Making America Rich & All Powerful' decision making and the never-ending White House churn to date of presidential executive orders (63), memoranda (16), proclamations (258), assorted remarks (35), and accompanying fact sheets (142).

On Monday 12 May 2025, Trump announced representatives of the Trump Administration had met with representatives of the People's Republic of China in Switzerland and the US had agreed to a 90 day pause in import tariffs created since 2 April 2025 — with the US lowering its tariffs on Chinese goods by 115 percentage points for duration of the pause and China agreeing to lower its retaliatory tariffs on American goods by 115 percentage points for the duration.

Leaving Trump and his inner circle trying to spin the fact that as part of this agreement he has insisted on imposing a crippling 30 per cent import tax on America's own domestic industry, business & household consumers of Chinese produce & products until around mid- August 2025.

If ever there was an urgent need for a 'Oh quick, look at that shiny thing over there!' moment it was on that Monday and Trump promptly trotted it out in a bizarre executive order titled Delivering Most-Favored-Nation Prescription Drug Pricing to American Patients, May 12, 2025 and an equally bizarre fact sheet Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Announces Actions to Put American Patients First by Lowering Drug Prices and Stopping Foreign Free-riding on American Pharmaceutical Innovation, May 12, 2025.

What these two documents indicate is that Trump has turned his disgruntled gaze towards "foreign health systems [who] get a free ride" with US citizens "effectively subsidizing socialism aboard [sic]".

That 12 May Executive Order reads in part:

Sec. 3. Addressing Foreign Nations Freeloading on American-Financed Innovation.

The Secretary of Commerce and the United States Trade Representative shall take all necessary and appropriate action to ensure foreign countries are not engaged in any act, policy, or practice that may be unreasonable or discriminatory or that may impair United States national security and that has the effect of forcing American patients to pay for a disproportionate amount of global pharmaceutical research and development, including by suppressing the price of pharmaceutical products below fair market value in foreign countries.

While Sec 5 ends with:

(vi) the heads of agencies shall take all action available, in coordination with the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, to address global freeloading and price discrimination against American patients.

According to this same executive order, on or about 10 June Trump's thinly disguised threats — against US multinational pharmaceutical corporations who don't immediately respond by lowering their domestic pricing to a new level set by the Trump Administration — will morph into further "aggressive action" by the US federal government.

It seems that Donald Trump may intend to deflect attention from the failure of his economic war on China, by placing those sovereign nations with universal public health care and welfare safety net systems on a MAGA enemies list and, pursue yet another targeted economic war — this time against countries that are definitely not super powers.

With over 180 other countries due to come out of the original 90 day tariff pause on or about 7 July, it is possible that Australia, New Zealand, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland & Denmark in particular will find themselves among countries publicly labelled by Trump as pharmaceutical "freeloaders" with additional tariffs arbitrarily imposed.

 

At the beginning of April Trump's ability with the stroke of a presidential black sharpie or a late night social media post to create an over 180 nation-strong rolling global trade disruption & trigger widespread financial market uncertainty seems to have produced in him a personally gratifying inner glow. He will likely want to revisit that sensation.

The Albanese Labor Government now enjoys a record majority in the House of Representatives, in no small measure because the Prime Minister assured the Australian people that he would not allow Trump to dictate to the federal government on matters concerning this nation's own national security, economic stability, biosecurity protections or its universal health care and welfare safety net provisions.

 

"It's not surprising that there is a push and some opposition to the PBS but let me be very clear and explicit — the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) is not for sale," Albanese said during a speech on Thursday, describing the program as a "core part of who we are as Australians".

"It is a monument to the fairness at the heart of Australian life and we don't negotiate our values."

[SBS News online, 19-20 March 2025]

 

Trump's appetite for the humiliating domination of others is insatiable and seemingly only encouraged by any attempt to placate or negotiate with him as a first response to his political & economic aggression — he will keep insisting on further access & concessions while repeatedly taking economic bites out of any country which he considers weak.

The Albanese Government resisted Trump's expectations that Australia — à la former Coalition Prime Minister Morrison — would publicly support his economic war on China and that won't sit well with a US Administration which sees Australia as nothing more than a convenient geopolitical pawn it can move at will.

As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese threw his backing behind Indonesia’s bid to join the trans-Pacific free trade pact to help counter the global chaos created by US President Donald Trump’s trade war, Farrell also confirmed the government was not rushing to seek relief from US tariffs from the White House.

“China is our largest trading partner. Chinese trade is almost 10 times more valuable to Australia,” Farrell said in an interview with The Australian Financial Review to mark his reappointment to the trade portfolio after the election. “We don’t want to do less business with China, we want to do more business with China.

“We’ll make decisions about how we continue to engage with China based on our national interests and not on what the Americans may or may not want.” 

[Australian Minister for Trade & Tourism Sen. Don Farrell quoted in Australian Financial Review, 15 May 2025] 

It appears that the best way forward for any national government — especially the Australian Government — is to repeatedly say no to Trump, lodge a formal complaint against the US with the World Trade Organisation and, in Australia's case, also consider giving notice that it is withdrawing from the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) which Trump has already trashed since his inauguration and, inform the US Government that Australia will be undertaking a formal review of every and all agreements which allow US defence forces a full-time or periodic presence on Australian territory or in its coastal waters as it is proving itself to be an unreliable ally and regional partner.

****

Would believing Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt's denials be the height of foolishness?

Along with making home-owning aged pensioners pay for their Centrelink/Vet Affairs pensions by way of a debt against the value of their houses, it appears as though funding private hospitals at the expense of public hospitals may be on the Liberal-Nationals-Murdoch-IPA Coalition wish list.

A list voters never actually get to see unless the Liberal and National parties are re-elected to government - at which time its contents are usually presented to the electorate as fixed policy.

Here it is. Minister claims to 'rule out' hospital funding overhaul but taskforce continued to meet. You can't trust Turnbull with Medicare. pic.twitter.com/3THdSs3kkx

— Senator Murray Watt (@MurrayWatt) May 29, 2017

Basic outline of unsubmitted recommendations of the
Global Access Partners (GAP) Taskforce on Hospital Funding

Via Twitter

The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 May 2017:

Health department bosses have described their radical proposal to remake hospital funding as "future gazing" after the Turnbull government declared it would never adopt the controversial policy.

The private health insurance rebate would be abolished, consumers would be charged more for extras cover and the states would be forced to find more money for public hospitals under the plan.

As revealed by Fairfax Media on Monday, the nation's most senior health bureaucrats – Department of Health Secretary Martin Bowles and his deputy Mark Cormack – are members of a secretive taskforce formed to develop the policy around a "Commonwealth Hospital Benefit" (CHB).

Health Minister Greg Hunt immediately ruled out adopting the policy.

"Not government policy. Won't be government policy. Will never be government policy," Mr Hunt said.

Mr Hunt said the taskforce – funded by the department but run by a private think tank called Global Access Partners – pre-dated his time in the portfolio and he had already told bureaucrats he was not interested: "I've rejected it once. If it ever comes forward, I'll reject it again."

Officials attended a GAP meeting that explored the proposal just four days after Mr Hunt apparently told them not to pursue the idea in March.

And Mr Cormack met with members of GAP as recently as May, two months after they say Mr Hunt ruled out the proposal…..

They insisted there was nothing secret about the taskforce even though it was never announced, never released anything publicly and branded its material – leaked to Fairfax Media – as "confidential".

Mr Bowles insisted the taskforce was fully independent – even though the government paid for it with a $55,000 contract…….

Under the plan, the Commonwealth would "pool" the approximately $20 billion it currently gives to public hospitals each year with the $3 billion it pays to private sector doctors and the $6 billion it spends on the rebate to help people pay their private health insurance premiums. 

It would use the money to pay a standard benefit for services regardless of whether they are performed in a public or private hospital, or whether people choose to be treated as public or private patients.

While the Turnbull government struck a three-year hospital funding deal with the states last year, it has flagged it wants a more long-term, less ad-hoc agreement – and a CHB proposal could fit the bill. COAG is set to revisit the issue of hospital funding next year to set the course for a post-2020 agreement.

News.com.au, 29 May 2017:

He told Senate Estimates yesterday it was his job as head of the department to look at the future of health funding.

He confirmed the department had entered into broad policy work on the proposal.

However, it emerged he did not put the $55,000 contract for the consultancy work to tender.

Mr Bowles said he gave the work to Mr Peter Fritz, the head of GAP, after they met in 2016 and told the Senate it was possible for him to award contracts for work costing less than $80,000 without a tender process.

Senator Watts probed Mr Bowles about connections between GAP and the Australian Health Research Centre which is funded by a number of large health insurers.

Members of the AHRC attended taskforce meetings, he revealed.

However, Private Healthcare Australia which represents insurers has raised major concerns about the plan.

“I’m genuinely stunned,’ Private Healthcare Australia chief Rachel David said when she was told the work had been paid for by taxpayers.

“It was a dramatic overhaul of the health system that totally changed the role of private health insurance, eliminated the difference between public and private hospitals and wold have put doctors on salaries,” she said.

“It would have been inflationary, there was no demand management,” she said.

This is what Global Access Partners Pty Ltd (formerly CSD Pty Ltd estab.1969) says of itself:

Global Access Partners (GAP) is an influential network that initiates high-level discussion on global issues, encouraging the sharing of knowledge, progress and policy change. Through its events, GAP promotes Australia’s capacity to find solutions to the challenges facing the worldwide community, and translates these solutions into business opportunities.

It appears to have been founded by:

Peter Fritz - who besides being GAP Chair & Group Managing Director of TCG Pty Ltd also chairs a number of influential government and private enterprise boards - and Catherine Fritz-Kalish currently GAP’s Managing Director.

Its offices are at 71 Balfour St, Chippendale NSW 2008 Australia.

GAP sees its participation in health public policy to date thus:

* The Australian National Consultative Committee on Health (formerly known as the Australian National Consultative Committee on e-Health) was established as a result of Global Access Partners’ 2004 Forum on ‘Better Health Care through Electronic Information’.

The ANCCH represents the major ICT industry players and other stakeholder groups. The Committee contributes to the debate around the public and private health agenda in Australia with a view to promote and realise better patient health outcomes through the application of changes to process, and the interaction of technology to improve efficiency, safety and productivity.

The group also provides a forum for public-private partnerships in order to promote improved execution and industry development.

The Committee  raises issues of national importance, influences government policy and supports the interests of its members. Its four broad areas of interest are agency coordination, chronic disease management, connectivity and infrastructure, and change management.

The ANCCH initiatives in the area of health and wellbeing over the last seven years have ranged from discussions of national health policy to the problems of implementing an Australia-wide e-health infrastructure and the potential applications of genetic testing in drug therapy to the management and long term funding of chronic "lifestyle" diseases in an ageing Australian population.

* GAP Taskforce on Government Health Procurement (2015-2016) is a cross-sectoral multidisciplinary group established by Global Access Partners to analyse Australia’s public health procurement and offer practical proposals for reform (see final report). The Taskforce considered the impact of procurement processes on the age and reliability of medical equipment, service levels, innovation and competition. Its final report highlights some of the inefficiencies of current health government purchasing  and calls for a more rational tendering process to reduce costs and waste in the system, while improving the quality and safety of care.