Prime Minister Abbott is out of the country so, as expected, another little bombshell dismantling a fair and equitable Australia is exploded

The Sydney Morning Herald 8 June 2014:

An Abbott government push to allow private health insurers to cover GP visits would create a US-style two-tier health system and drive up doctors' fees, experts warn.

The Sun-Herald has learnt Health Minister Peter Dutton told senior health sector sources in private meetings he is keen on the idea of allowing private insurers into GP clinics. However, any change would require amendments to legislation.

Under the current Medicare system, all Australians - whether they are public or private patients - can expect similar quality of care when they visit their doctors.

Experts say changing this to create two classes of GP patients would revolutionise Australian healthcare and potentially undermine Medicare more than the government's proposed $7 co-payment.

The revolution has begun quietly through controversial trials undertaken in Queensland.

Medibank Private members are receiving guaranteed appointments within 24 hours and after-hours home visits.

An expansion of such trials which would provide superior GP services to private patients could endanger Australia's world-class healthcare system, Australian Medical Association president Brian Owler said.

"It would be a fundamental change in the way that general practice is funded," Professor Owler said, adding the AMA was open to insurers being more involved in primary healthcare but the government needed to proceed with caution.

"If people go too far or the role of private health insurers is unchecked then, yes, it could have very significant consequences and produce greater inequity. We have a good healthcare system in Australia and the US model is not one we should be trying to emulate.''….

Gasfield-Free Northern Rivers: "Metgasco will do anything to avoid real consultation"

Gasfield-Free Northern Rivers media release 5 June 2014:

Metgasco will do anything to avoid real consultation

Metgasco’s decision to sue the government rather than to engage in genuine community consultation is simply further evidence of their recalcitrant attitude towards the community of the Northern Rivers. According to Gasfield-Free Northern Rivers spokesperson Mr Aidan Ricketts.

“Instead of a mea culpa from Metgasco, we get yet more crash through tactics. Metgasco has shown consistently that it prefers the use of massive policing or lawyers at 40 paces to genuine community consultation”, Mr Ricketts said.

“The glaring irony is that when faced with the argument that they have failed in their community consultation obligations, their response is a combative one. It is a self defeating proposition”

Metgasco’s Rosella drilling operation was suspended last month as up to 10 000 people prepared to face hundreds of police at the Bentley blockade. Neighbouring farmers also complained of severe failures in Metgasco’s obligations to consult with them.

“The government’s action in suspending the license was a rare example of a government listening to the overwhelming majority of a region opposed to industrial gasfield development, but Metgasco still won’t respond to that community concern”, Mr Ricketts said.

“What this litigation really reveals is the problem with our mining laws. They clearly favour the industry over the public interest at every turn. The resources under the ground belong to all Australians and government needs to have the power to regulate the industry in the public interest without being subjected to litigation when they take reasonable action.”

The state government recently repealed the public interest ground for the cancellation of mining and petroleum licences.

“It would not be faced with this litigation now if it had retained that power to cancel mining and petroleum licences on public interest grounds, Mr Ricketts said.”

“Mining legislation needs a complete overhaul so that proper democratic and public interest values are given precedence over cosy arrangements for the industry”, he concluded.

For more info contact:

Aidan Ricketts

0417265263 

The Lies Abbott Tells - Part Twenty

THE PERENNIAL PHOTOGRAPHIC LIE

THE FACTS

This type of visually posed lying is a particular Abbott favourite – whether it be scrubbing down the walls of a flood-affected house with a dry broom (in an attempt to remove what was by then obviously permanent staining) for the benefit of a television news crew when he was Opposition Leader, or in this case as Prime Minister, placing an obviously rusty saw against the side of a chair in an alleged attempt to join two chairs in this fashion:

So that the end product allegedly looks like this:

If Tony Abbott actually joined these chairs it is highly unlikely that he used that old saw. One has to suspect that he was only in the vicinity long enough for that photograph to be taken.

A confidential notice of motion before Clarence Valley Council piques my interest

The very last item in Clarence Valley Council’s Governance & Corporate Committee business paper for 10 June 2014 piqued my interest:

11. CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS

20.008/14 Referrals to Industrial Relations Commission

The General Manager advises that, in accordance with Section 10A (2)(a) of the Local

Government Act 1993, that the matter be dealt with in a Closed Meeting as the matter and

information are personnel matters concerning particular individuals (other than councillor).

Scrolling through this business paper I found it concerned a motion lodged by Cr. Karen Toms.

So my fingers took a walk down Google byways using keywords from the listed item and this is what I found:

http://www.dlg.nsw.gov.au/dlg/dlghome/documents/Circulars/07-09.pdf

http://www.gtcc.nsw.gov.au/webcomm/files/attachments/BusinessPapers/2007/June/R5-Letter_April2007.pdf

Could it be that there is yet another argument brewing over the degree of control the General Manger is exercising with regard to the flow of information concerning council industrial relations disputes/adjudications/legal costs?

Given a recently discovered management error of judgement, one wonders how the next General Manager's Performance Review will pan out.

Lord Deben: "I think the Australian government must be one of the most ignorant governments I've ever seen"

The Guardian 5 June 2014:

A recent study by Globe showed that 66 countries, accounting for 88% of global emissions, have passed climate laws.

While most countries were already taking action to tackle rising temperatures - another reason why a deal might be achieved at the crunch climate talks in Paris next year - Lord Deben singled out two countries, Australia and Canada, for criticism.

Australia in particular, where the government has repealed climate change and environmental laws, was behaving "appallingly".

"I think the Australian government must be one of the most ignorant governments I've ever seen in the sense, right across the board, on immigration or about anything else, they're totally unwilling to listen to science or logic," he said.

Can Tony Abbott bring this federal government any lower in the world's estimation than this?

* Lord Deben is a Conservative life peer sitting in the U.K. House of Lords, with varied business interests including being a non-executive director of the Catholic Herald newspaper.

Pensioner concessions stay in New South Wales and Queensland

The Sydney Morning Herald 8 June 2014:

Pensioners will be spared cuts to concessions on basic living expenses, with NSW Treasurer Andrew Constance to announce on Sunday that the Baird government will fund a $107 million shortfall left by the federal budget.

The move to cushion the blow of the Abbott government's cuts follows angry scenes in Queensland after Premier Campbell Newman decided to pass on $50 million in Commonwealth cuts to pensioners in the Queensland budget. Within 48 hours, as irate pensioners flooded talkback radio, Mr Newman had reversed his decision.

Mr Constance said: "We understand the cost of living pressures seniors face and are determined to ensure they are not adversely affected by the federal government's harsh cuts … We are not in the business of creating bill shock, where, in just a few weeks' time, people would have been left out of pocket courtesy of Canberra."

The NSW budget will commit an extra $107 million to maintain pensioner and seniors' concessions. These include discounted vehicle registration, $2.50 travel across the train, ferry and bus network, a $250 discount on council rates to pension card holders, a $235 rebate on electricity bills and an exemption from Sydney Water service charges of $31 a quarter…..

It appears that in New South Wales pensioner concessions will remain for the life of the current state budget. Hopefully, funds to cover these concessions in future years will also be found.

As in remote, rural and regional areas in particular, bus/train travel and car registration concessions can mean the difference between receiving adequate medical care for chronic or potentially life threatening disease/illness or having to go without appropriate treatment all together because access to regular specialist medical care is unachievable.

What all members of the Abbott Government (without whose support the draconian 2014-15 Federal Budget would not exist) appear to have forgotten is facts such as these from the National Rural Health Alliance:

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) reports that cancer is responsible for Australia’s largest disease burden, with more than 108,000 new cases and more than 39,000 cancer deaths in 2007.

About one-third of the people affected by cancer live in regional and rural areas. For them, the burden of cancer is disproportionately heavy.

People living with cancer in regional and rural areas have poorer survival rates than those living in major cities, and the further from a major city patients with cancer live, the more likely they are to die within five years of diagnosis.

A study by Jong et al published in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) in 2004 found that people with cancer in remote areas of NSW were 35 per cent more likely to die within five years of diagnosis than patients in metropolitan areas.

For prostate and cervical cancers, patients in remote NSW were up to three times more likely to die within five years of diagnosis than those living in more accessible areas….

For most people a cancer diagnosis causes significant physical and emotional distress, loss of income and substantial expense.

Because of the complexity of cancer treatment and the absence of specialist services, most rural people with cancer need to travel to major centres for at least some of their care.

This adds to the financial and personal burden for patients and their families….

As well as in this article by ABC News on 4 November 2013:

It seems little progress has been made over the past two decades in bridging the gap between rural and city cancer patients when it comes to treatment.

A study in the Medical Journal of Australia has found cancer patients in rural and remote communities continue to be at increased risk of death from the disease compared to their city counterparts.

The paper looked at cancer deaths from 2001 to 2010.

It found there was no improvement in the rates of regional and remote patients dying of cancer. In fact, for women, the disparity actually increased.

Dr Michael Coorey, from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, says one of the reasons death rates have not improved is because of the lack of investments in policy on how to organise cancer services so they provide the most benefit to patients.

"Enough is already known about the causes of the regional and remote access in deaths to start evaluating possible solutions," he said.

Possible solutions could include more support for regional and remote patients to travel to metropolitan centres, and more funding for associated accommodation….

Abbott and Pyne's "brave", "decent", "revolutionary" woman comes a cropper after allegedly spending over $1 million of HSU union members' funds

http://youtu.be/-22egcUFTJo

The Sydney Morning Herald 6 June 2014:

A Fairfax Media investigation has also obtained a leaked NSW police statement that alleges that Ms Jackson knew of serious corruption claims involving Health Services Union bosses Michael Williamson and Craig Thomson for more than a decade before she reported the pair to police in 2011.

The witness, Sydney businesswoman Carron Gilleland, said in her signed police statement that she asked for Ms Jackson's help in 1999 after discovering the possible ''illicit'' use of funds by the pair.

The leaked police statement and other documents also suggest that a private company directed by Ms Jackson and her then husband Jeff Jackson was used both as a secret slush fund and a vehicle for charging the union for ''industrial consulting'' fees in the late 1990s.