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November 1, 2007
The Commonwealth Government appears unlikely to take full control of the Mersey hospital until after the federal election due to a medical registration bungle.Then we have a spat that played out on ABC Radio talkback on Tuesday morning between Tony Abbott, the commonwealth Minister of Health and Ageing and Lara Giddings, the Tasmanian Minister of Health over who is lying.
Todays Advocate editorial says:
..the Federal Government’s attitude was to seize the Mersey and worry about the detail later. It never consulted its own health department, bothered to find out how much it would cost, or tell the State Government about its plans … the ad hoc, often chaotic way this thing has been handled at times by the Feds smacks of political expediency of the worst kind.
This takeover was meant to a vote winner and the solution to the public hospital crisis, not just a means to hold the marginal seat of Braddon.
Sharpe
In the meantime we have the background debate between the budget surpluses being returned as tax cuts or invested in better health services. It's an odd debate since a substantial majority of Australians would prefer more goods and services from government, rather than personal tax cuts.
Jack Waterford, writing in the Canberra Times, points to ideology:
The cult of tax cuts, which began in the late 1980s, coincided with a general decline in public confidence in the capacity of the Government to change society for the better. It developed, reasonably enough, into a demand for greater choice in how services were taken up.
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Gary
Abbott had a bad day yesterday ---it was apologies all round --for insulting Bernie Baddon the terminally ill campaigner for asbestos victims; then for missing the first half of a nationally televised debate on health policy.
So where is the health debate going now with the Mersey hospital debacle? Wasn't the Commonwealth takeover of the Tasmanian hospital meant to be a key policy difference between the two sides of politics.