it's the typical honest John strategy - dimsantle by stealth. but if you do the sums, hardly any get the concessions anyway.

i'd like to see him *really* privatize health insurance instead of propping it up with public monies and see how well that will go down with a spoonful of sugar

Saint,
John Howard doesn't have to dismantle programmes like Medicare or the PBS scheme by stealth. It happens by natural attrition in a reverse case scenario like bracket creep, where more PAYG taxpayers pay higher marginal tax rates.

If you don't believe me, believe Finance Minister Nick Minchin who recently commented on a 10% blowout in costs of the PBS scheme last year.ie that if costs rise at that rate, within 13 yrs the scheme will gobble up more resources than the total spend on education.(and that doesn't even take account of exponentially increasing demands from an aging popn.) We should expect the same withering away of things like Medicare, particularly with exogenous shocks like medicos liability insurance.

If you think Labor is the answer to all of this then you're going to have to see them stand on a platform of dramatically increased taxation, with a view to protecting the universality of such schemes from rising costs. Failing that, you may as well vote for John on economic management grounds and expect to shoulder more of the burden privately. Of course you may have other objections to John, which prevent you from taking up this broadly accepted, pragmatic offer. You certainly do not have any serious, alternative option on offer at present.

Can I also point out that with the luxury of a $7.5billion surplus, largely due to a tax on services via the GST, you should be thankful John is in a position to offer some relief on Medicare. But perhaps with a total net GST take of about $30billion you would prefer to rollback the GST to about 7.5% and have no increased spending on Medicare? Would that sort of trade-off satisfy your sweet tooth?

Observa,

Why introduce rollback of the GST into the discussion?

The GST was about providing an growing income stream for the state and easing the tax burden of individual taxpayers.

The issue is about how that money from the GST is to be spent. Why shoud we just accept that the money should be spend on defence and not health. Why accept that it is to be spend on subsidising a private heath industry and not on bulk billing.

Why accept the assumption that health is not a public good that should be paid for out of general revenue?

Why should we accept the principle of userpayers for sick people?

I guess there are a couple of points that I was making here. Firstly that we have to understand that Govts often have to govern in response to events and inexorable forces beyond their control. ie demands of aging populations or rises in liability insurance. This is the reactive side of Govt. We should always be careful that our biases do not blame Govts for these things beyond their control.

On the other hand we should be prepared to give credit where credit is due, when we see proactive courage in Govt policy. I would suggest the GST is one such example. The Howard Govt stuck its neck on the block for that, against much opposition and hyperbole. It also had to face the unpalatable truth that no Govt that had introduced a VAT type tax, was returned at the next election. The benefits of a VAT type tax in overcoming the increasingly problematic WST were well recognised even by Keating. He of course lacked courage on this issue, unlike Howard(although Keating showed courage with freeing up the dollar,etc against his own idealogical constituency)

The benefits of a GST should now be apparent to all(on top of the Hawke/Keating reforms)An improvement in equity has occurred through the taxation of services rather than just goods under the WST. As well incentive was enhanced by ameliorating high marginal tax rates, while the efficiency benefits(particularly to exporters) I believe, have been demonstrated by Australia's relative economic performance since.

So we should recognize and applaud good Govt action when we see it and not be blinded by our bias against such Govts for other perceived shortcomings. As a result of this act of good Govt, Labor can now be free to offer the electorate their ideas on how best to spend the fruits of the GST. I guess I did not sense any such magnanimity in Saint's comment.

He should understand that if you want to spend publicly, you have to be prepared to raise the taxes to do it. Our politicians face a plethora of rattling buckets around the cow of Govt, but very little enthusiasm to get up early in the morning to help with the milking.

observa - thanks for your thoughts. just a note: you have assumed/read more into my comments than what was really there.

Fair enough.