So what will win the Rudd/Abbott debate?

Steve Turner says:

10:51pm | 22/03/10

Rudd could turn up pissed, forget his lines, chunder over Michele and Laurie, fall over and swear a lot and the press gallery would still award him winner. Some things never change.
Also, heard a rumor that Mike Rann’s 100 plus media unit are being shipped in to 9’s studio’s to work the worm.
None too happy about it either. They are all so bloody exhausted from posting at Adelaide Now day and night for weeks on end.

Seano says:

09:01am | 23/03/10

Ah well Steve, at least in your fantasy Rudd had the decency to turn up.

persephone says:

01:14pm | 22/03/10

Still 20% more friends than Abbott, according to the latest (today’s) Essential poll - which also shows 58% support for Rudd’s health policy, including 46% support from Coalition voters.

luke09 says:

01:41pm | 22/03/10

persephone, the sad fact is Abbott has more friends in Federal ALP than Rudd and for obvious reasons, the more phoney Kevin the fake queenslander is exposed, the sooner Julia Gilliard or Greg Combet become PM. The sharks in the ALP are circling and keeping their options open, which is a smart thing to do, considering the results in Saturday’s Tas and SA elections. The leaders were on the nose with voters and a swing against labor happened. 

persephone says:

02:11pm | 22/03/10

I’m quite happy to settle for Julia, she’s got a 10% lead over Tony as preferred PM.

But Rudd’s not going anywhere.

JWH wasn’t outrageously popular amongst his colleagues either, look at how many leaders had to fall over before he got the gig. He became popular because he kept winning them elections.

Pollies are hard headed like that.

luke09 says:

02:40pm | 22/03/10

persephone, I hope you’re right about PM Rudd not going anywhere, election nights are boring unless there is a chance for a change of government. I enjoyed watching the SA election it was exciting, ten months ago labor would have gained seats not lost them.

the truth will set you free says:

02:44pm | 22/03/10

‘school halls debacle’ - only in the minds of the editor and opinion piece writers of The Australian. What was the lastest figure on reported complaints .79%
‘dangerous insulation plan’ - a tragedy that 4 people died but one from a heart attack and 3 from using metal staples 2 of which came after they were deemed illegal - 105 fires but on average b4 the scheme fires related to insulation came in at about 80 to 85 per year and there were only 65,000 to 70,000 insulations installed compared to over 1million under the goverment scheme.
Typical of conservatives ... never let facts get in the way of a good anti-government rant

JR says:

03:09pm | 22/03/10

Ah those 80 to 85 a year, Where they all from insulation recently installed?

Super D says:

01:18pm | 22/03/10

I would love to see Rudd claim that Abbott ripped a billion dollars out of health.  Rudd knows its a lie so will not dare utter it without parliamentary privelege. 

If he did Abbott could launch a libel action and its really not a good look to have the Prime Minister and Senior Cabinet ministers declared liars by a court in an election year.

My best guess is that Abbott will be goading him to make the claim trying to get a “You can’t handle the truth” moment out of him.

persephone says:

03:57pm | 22/03/10

Super D

saw it in a media release only today, so obviously Labor’s not scared of litigation.

Expect to hear the phrase repeatedly during the debate.

Robert Smissen of Rural SA says:

01:24pm | 22/03/10

Chum, if you take the spin out of Little Kevvie’s speech, it only has 6 words in it.

TC says:

01:50pm | 22/03/10

Where is the Henry Review and why is the opposition being required to come up with policy with half the information?

Tom says:

01:53pm | 22/03/10

acotel, Abbott isn’t in government. Rudd is. Abbott didn’t make a promise. Rudd did.

The states (all labor) created the problem and Rudd promised a solution at the election. We are all waiting for Rudd to deliver his election promise. There is no pressure on Abbott other than to expose Rudd’s election promise as a stunt.

Sherlock says:

02:05pm | 22/03/10

I agree. Perhaps somebody can explain to me briefly just what the governments health policy is all about and what’s so good about it?

All I’ve seen so far is the commonwealth retaining some GST revenue and allocating it to hospitals under a different formula that appears to favour larger hospitals over smaller ones. This to me looks like they’re simply rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic.

It doesn’t seem to provide for more beds, nurses or doctors. It’s adding yet one more layer of bureaucracy which just cost money.

It just seems like the commonwealth isn’t happy how the states have been spending their allowance and is now going to hang onto some of it to ensure it’s spent Iin a manner they prefer. It’s a bit like the income management in the NT.

persephone says:

02:20pm | 22/03/10

Sherlock

the short answer is to go to http://www.alp.org.au and read the media releases and policy documents there, which deal with all of the questions you raise and more.

I’ll be kind and give you a condensed version:

The plan is for the commonwealth to take over the majority of funding for health (so taking back some of the GST is part compensation for this).

It’s not restricted to hospitals, which would only solve part of the problem, but includes GP services and other primary health services (which will see fewer people going directly to hospital for things which are non urgent - so that also saves money).

Hospitals (and other health services, such as public dentistry, aged care, etc) will group together. This means that they will share administration (cost savings there), share resources (including staff) and have more bargaining power.

They will be funded mostly by a fee for service basis, which means they can provide the services needed by their local communities, not the services some bureaucrat tells them they need.

Health services which would be disadvantaged by this method of funding will receive top up funding in compensation.

There’s plenty of proposed funding for additional doctors and nurses, but that’s actually a different policy package. So far there’s something like 175 extra doctors being trained per year, with greater increases in these numbers already on the drawing board (it’s not as simple as saying ‘train more doctors’ or even ‘allocate more fund to train more doctors’ - there needs to be places made available for them to receive training in hospitals with proper supervision, and that’s a little more tricky).

Part of the taking over from the States thing is driven by the very imperative you describe - the States have been given more funding, particularly over the last two years, but in many cases this has meant they’ve slashed health budgets rather than putting the money into hospitals.

The Feds want to know that, if they provide more money, it’s spent where they want it to be spent.

Tom says:

03:38pm | 22/03/10

@peephone - did you write the material at http://www.alp.org.au ?

persephone says:

04:04pm | 22/03/10

Tom

no, but alas, I have to read most of it.

Evan Findlay says:

06:10pm | 22/03/10

Zeta my question to you is where will all these doctors come from that you talk of. The Howard government put a cap on doctor intakes in order to preserve their lifestyle. I would never trust the Liberal government to administer anything to do with health. They had twelve years to fix health and all they did was rip out funding, cap the intake of medical degrees, bribe people into taking out private health, for which a lot of them can no longer afford, and lumber future governments with unsustainable middle class welfare in the form of a 30% rebate to private heath. Oh i forgot, Tony did say they were going to do something had they got re-elected again. Talk about all spin and no substance!

Super D says:

07:07pm | 22/03/10

@ Persephone - do you have to read it so you can troll comments pages on behalf of the ALP and ensure that all your posts are consistent with ALP policy?  Or are you just in love with Kevin?  I’ve not noticed you make or allow to stand a single criticism of the current government.

persephone says:

07:47pm | 22/03/10

I read all the Liberal ones, too, Super D.

They’re a lot quicker.

I do draw the line at the Greens, though. One must have some standards.

AdamC says:

01:24pm | 22/03/10

@SuperD, surely re 3, the answer is that both state and feds will have ‘plausible shirkability’. No more ‘blame game’: neither of them will take responsibility!

persephone says:

01:20pm | 22/03/10

And Kevin can ask in return:

1. What is your health policy?

2. How many extra hospitals would we have now if you hadn’t ripped $1 billion out of the system?

3. How will local boards improve health outcomes?

4. How are you proposing to fund these local boards?

5. Given that hospital governance is a State issue under the Constitution, how are you going to get the States to put local boards in place?

6. You have said you want to provide more hospital beds. How many? How much will this cost?

7. Extra hospital beds by themselves are useless unless there are doctors and nurses to staff them. How many more doctors and nurses are you going to introduce? How? At what cost? How are you going to fund this?

Zeta says:

02:01pm | 22/03/10

@ persephone - is that the best you could come up with? Even I can answer those and I’ve barely been paying attention because I don’t believe we should have a Federal health agenda. Here you go:

1. ‘We’ll tell you our Health Policy during the six to eight weeks of the election campaign, so you can’t steal it like you did to most of Howard’s policies in ‘07.’

2. ‘None, because the States were pissing the cash up against the wall anyway with inefficent Area Health Services. Here’s a better question: if Abbott’s health cuts were so important, why hasn’t Labor given the money back?’

3. ‘Local boards would mean scrapping Area health services, which means scrapping hundreds of pointless bureaucrats, which means saving money for hospitals to spend on miscarriage proof toilet seats. If a local board controls the cash flow to local hospitals, they’ll also be less inclined to waste millions on educational brouchures for quadroplegic HIV infected sex workers or education programs on vein spiking or whatever else Federal health bureaucrats might think is a lark.’

4. ‘Large ‘Schizerschnitzel’ table from IKEA: $800. A dozen ‘Munchausen’ high back office chairs: $1200. Some pens. Budget papers. Sacking everyone at the Department of Health and replacing them with real doctors? Priceless.’

5. ‘Excellent question, given hospitals are a State issue why are we even having this conversation? Let’s talk about border protection, Rudd’s cosy relationship with China that threatens our National Security, copywrite reform, the NBN, and where the hell are our Joint Strike Fighters?’

6. ‘IKEA ‘Wunderhosen’ Hospital bed: $900’

7. ‘I could explain how if you gut the unproductive inefficent health bureaucracy you could channel the funds into clinicians but instead I’ll keep going with the IKEA gag. IKEA ‘Glutburgen’ Indian Doctor: $110.’

persephone says:

02:31pm | 22/03/10

Zeta, sorry, you got the answers wrong:

1. He had 5 years as Health Minister. Apparently Howard had a health package all ready to go in 2007, which he pulled at the last minute. Honestly, is he really going to wimp out with that kind of response? (Well, I suppose the answer is ‘yes’).

2. Err, not the excuse Tony used. His was that hospitals were going to be cheaper to run, because private health was going to take the load. Instead, we saw the load on public hospitals increase and private health insurance costs blow out massively. So huge extra costs to the taxpayer for no real gain.

3. Only two states are going to have local boards. Does that mean the rest of the health system is perfect? It isn’t.

4. OK, you have no idea about how local boards are resourced. People don’t give up time for free, you know. Local boards also mean local administrators - a CEO, several managers. So we’re talking (on current CEO/manager salaries) at least an extra quarter of a million for each hospital.

5.  See, you can’t answer that one. Neither can Tony. Rudd can.

6. Again, abysmal knowledge of health. A ‘hospital bed’ (in health terminology) is not just the physical bed itself, or indeed the whole thing would be simple. It’s the nurses required to staff it (most EBAs have a fixed nurse/bed ratio).

Increasing hospital beds without increasing the number of nurses is useless, because there won’t be patients in them.

7. So you, like TA, have no answers. We have a critical doctor shortage in this country. The long term answer is not to take them from countries which need them more than we do, but to train more. That costs money.

Zeta says:

03:23pm | 22/03/10

@ persephone - If we accept the current cosmological model, all energy in the universe was created by the Big Bang, including the electrons used by yours and my brains in the act of thinking. That’s all the energy that will ever exist in the universe. The act of thinking uses energy in the form of electrochemical signaling and converts it into infantismal ammounts of heat. So just by thinking we’re draining the universe of resources. One day, trillions of years from now, our star is going to die and in the seconds before human life is extinguished, some highly evolved consciousness is going to say ‘Whoa. If Persephone hadn’t have wasted precious energy rebutting the answers of a guy who used the word ‘Shit Schitzel’ in a sentence, we’d have all lived another micro second.’

The difference between my answers and yours, is that although yours might be true, mine were entertaining. If Abbott said that on TV, hundreds of thousands of KFC chomping morons would cry out as one ‘hurff durff he’s funny, he made a joke about IKEA which is for rich people and I hate them, and German people are stupid but German words for shit are funny hurff durff I hope My Kitchen Rules starts soon I’m hungry again’.

They don’t want to know the truth, or the correct answers - and they certainly don’t want to accept reality or they wouldn’t spend millions of dollars avoiding it. They want to be entertained. Amused. They want to be dazzled with trivia and rhetoric.

Henry says:

04:02pm | 22/03/10

Good to see that Persephone is not playing the blame game!!! Hahahaha.

Bringing up (made up) facts from years ago.

Great to see the vision which run through Labor.

The blame game is all Rudd has left.

People here in SA put Rann and Rudd in the same pot.  They are seen as the spin twins.  Rudd is gone.  Better get in Gillard to stem the bleeding while you can.

persephone says:

04:09pm | 22/03/10

Zeta

but amongst those cheezel munchers (who wouldn’t be watching a political debate if you paid them, but let’s leave our knowledge of human behaviour to one side for a moment) are people who are genuinely searching for answers, not the ‘what’s it all for’ kind but the ‘wtf are they talking about now?” sort.

I write for them.

You can be silly, and you do it remarkably well. I, however, write for a different audience - people who read these posts and want to know what the answers are to some of the points you raised.

Jokes about IKEA don’t help them understand the issues, and they deserve real answers.

Different purposes mean different responses!

Evan Findlay says:

05:56pm | 22/03/10

Super D, is didgy insulation where they insulate your roof with didgeridoo’s? As for the referendum question, I believe Rudd should go one better and make it a referendum on the abolishing of state governments. But i notice that both you and Abbott offer no alternatives, just simplistic, negative drivel. Let me guess, “Business as usual” will be Tony’s health policy. Throw more money and hope it fixes the problem. That’s all Howard did. The Liberal party is not known for reform and I can’t seeTony being any different.

Phil says:

07:35pm | 22/03/10

ZETA YOU ARE ON FIRE…. GO

persephone says:

07:49pm | 22/03/10

Prove me wrong, Henry.

Tom says:

03:47pm | 22/03/10

Here Here - @acker well put

Zeta says:

01:11pm | 22/03/10

Well, I’ll be at work so while it will be probably be broadcast on Sky, I’ll turn the sound down and look at YouTube videos. Maybe bums fighting each other? Cat playing on the piano?

persephone says:

01:29pm | 22/03/10

Er…Rudd’s got one out there, something like eighty pages of detail.

Abbott’s got four words: local boards, more beds.

Mind you, at the rate of two words a month, he’ll have almost an entire sentence by the time we get to the election.

Peter says:

03:56pm | 22/03/10

Mate agree with you 100%. I wish Turnball would start his own party so I can have someone to vote for. I looks like a dummy vote for me this year…. again..