As most of you would be aware by now, Malcolm Turnbull has won the Liberal leadership after defeating Brendan Nelson 45 votes to 41. Nelson won the post-election vote 45 votes to 42: not sure where the missing vote went (UPDATE: Kevin Andrews was overseas and didn’t vote – hat-tip to Dovif in comments).
Also:
• The latest weekly Essential Research survey has Labor’s lead back at 58-42 after a fortnight at 59-41. Also included are questions on approval of Kevin Rudd, the future of the Coalition and federalism.
• Peter Brent asks what became of the government’s green paper on disclosure, funding and expenditure issues, which was due in July.
• The Australian Electoral Commission has published comments on objections to the redistribution of Western Australian electorates.
• Bryan’s back.
793 Comments
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No 596
GDP in 1985: 178,820,400,000 (6.7% = 11,980,966,800)
GDP in 1995: 384,105,300,000 (5.5% = 21 125 791 500)
GDP in 2005: 732,499,200,000 (5.2% = 38 089 958 400)
I think John Brumby should get his facts straight.
Regarding the Luxury car Tax, I can understand teh push for efficient cars but I note Fieldings new position that he would support it if an exemption/rebate were given to farmers and tourist operators. Why???? Has anyone questioned him on this? Journalists, please do your work here.
Many of these guys can write off their vehicles as work expenses anyway, so why shouldn’t they pay the tax? Farmers already get rebates, and work utilities won’t be icnluded. We all know how many “farmers” happen to reside in Toorak and similar suburbs. How will we stop this being rorted by city landlords with tax dodge farms who use the rebate to buy their next BMW? Why should a farmer not pay the tax compared to any other business? Tourism is even worse – this won’t apply to mini-buses remember; its cars. How many people base their tourism plans on use of a luxury car? This will just be rorted by every hotel operator in Australia to buy their next Merc.
No 602
Socrates, you could forget all those silly scenarios if the tax was completely abolished.
Cheeky to say but that last post shows why GP should not ever be banned!
I meant the post before the last one!
zoomster
The basic problem is that there are less beds now. Hospital administrators are, in general, pretty dumb. The easiest way to save money in the long term is to cut beds. If they need a short-term fix, the easiest way is to cancel elective surgery.
Despite having more administrators than patients, that sums up about 95% of their strategic planning. The other 5% is taking credit for ideas the nurses and doctors have after the idea has been implemented.
Brumby’s facts are straight. 6.7% of GDP in 1985 reducing down to 5.2% of GDP in 2005 can only *not* be an erosion if GDP growth ran faster than health cost inflation.
No amount of piffle will ever show that to be the case.
Agreed
This is probably not quite the forum, but I was wondering if anyone could help me. I’m looking for Piers Akerman’s evil twin blogger, ie a political commentator the equal and opposite of Piers and possibly fashioned in a similiar likeness, BUT while being equally one-eyed and illogical, is a Labor supporter/”Leftie”. Logically it follows that such an entity exists, so he must be out there somewhere, perhaps employed by an equally weighty newspaper as the Daily Telegraph. Or was he unable to break out of the labatory?
Well, I did used to be on a hospital board.
We’re talking particular types of beds when we’re talking bed shortages, mainly the long stay intensive surgery kind.
As a sweeping statement, there is far less need for hospital bed per se and this will continue. Proceedures
which once required a stay of a couple of days in hospital are now done in half an hour in the doctor’s surgery.
Operations which once took a week to recover from the patient now wakes up and walks away from.
Although I had a grump before about beds taken up by aged care patients, in some rural hospitals they’re all that’s keeping the place open.
However, on the opposite end of the scale, operations once impossible or extremely rare are now common place.
These are the ones which require extremely specialist staff, not only to undertake the actual surgery but to nurse the patient afterwards.
The problem isn’t so much the number of beds but the type of beds and the staff required to look after them.
(In the hospital I was on the board of, we achieved in some months 110% occupancy, simply because the speed of recovery from operations meant we could use the same bed for at least two patients a day).
BTW, I’m having an interesting time posting – if some of these sentences are peculiar, it’s because I’m having to type around the Archives ‘Select Month’ and ‘Select category’ boxes, which live in the comment box on my screen. Any way to fix this?
Philip Adams?
Zoomster – is your monitor resolution 800×600?
The pages here are 960 pixels wide, with the sidebar taking up 300 or so. That could be the problem.
Poss, much as I adore your little fluffy tail, you don’t tell me how I could fix this!!
(Please…)
Unfortunately – a bigger monitor is the only solution I can think of. The only other way would be if your monitor can run at a higher resolution than you are currently running it?
Zoom, you could try Firefox
609,
Has to be Possum!
zoomster
There aren’t all that many common procedures which are day cases now that required a week in hospital. Lap chole (gall bladder) is probably the only one. As you say medicine is getting much more complicated now. People now die after long chronic diseases now, which take up an enormous amount of admissions etc. They used to die fairly quick deaths. We can keep people alive with many cancers, burns, kidney and liver failure etc etc now. The patients just won’t die anymore!
Phwoooar – you’ll keep Judge Growler
Yeah I thought strongly about Mr Adams, but I’ve read in two article now him criticizing the Rudd govt on certain things … now thats just not on – I’m looking for someone equally bigotted, shows the same complete disregard for facts, or indeed reality. Phil shares Piers hatred for the enemy, but not quite the same adoration for the party.
To get the counterpart of Piers, you’d have to have someone blogging straight out of Sussex Street.
Nah Possums going to have to try harder to even contemplate being in Piers’ league – he’s continually too fair and even handed.
And for that matter where are the Leftie shock jocks? Am I listening to the wrong stations? Where’s Alan Jones’ counterpart, which frequency is he using to rant about the need for a complete redistrubtion of wealth? Or persitently declaring the NSW Government to be a picture of fair and just government and disconnecting any callers who believe otherwise?
The Socialist Alliance hour on Community Radio?
I bet the “hour” is from 1.30am to 2.30 am.
Aurelian
All lefties are fair, logical, even-handed and respectful of the facts. That is why they are lefties. Your search will be in vain.
Diogenes
can’t quantify this, as on the board I had to take the advice of experts, but was given an impressive list at the time.
A lot of skin procedures – removals of warts, sun spots, etc, ingrown toenails, etc – used to require hospitalisation but don’t now. Similarly some eye surgery – my mother has had major eye problems since the 1940s, and some pretty tricky ops, but these are ‘in surgery’ now rather than hospital jobs.
Heart operations are probably the major – patients generally come home a lot quicker with far better prognoses – suffer a heart attack and they’ll whack stents in you which will give you many many years of good heart health. Once upon a time you spent a lot of time in hospital and went home to die.
As I said, can’t quanitify it, but have seen the stats and they’ve convincing. The parabolic curve for the incidence of major age related illness/death has shifted by about a decade – once you keeled over at sixty, now it’s eighty. And you’re a lot healthier in between.
So, as I say, the reduction in beds is perfectly reasonable and inevitable. And as you say, it’s the chronically ill that cause the problem – we can keep them alive indefinitely, if we’re prepared to spend the money.
Mike Carlton is probably you’re going to get as a leftie counterpart to Alan Jones.
Only problem is that he has nothing like the influence Jonesy has on the Australian (and NSW) political scene…
Mike Carlton is probably the closest you would get, but he’s not that close really
Well in that case Diogenes I call for some more complete disregard of facts. Unless the “Left” show some more determination and pig headedness then the Conservatives will remain the natural parties of government in Australia.
Just make sure they don’t get their tentacles into the ABC, that’s all I say.
Oh Mike Carlton?! Give me a break! Until I hear him argue that Morris Iemma was the best thing since sliced bread and the best premier since Carr (and Rees), he will remain wanting in my eyes.
When lefties show pig headedness, they’re labelled as “dreamers” or “ideologues”.
When conservatives show pig headedness, they’re labelled as “realists” or “pragmatists”.
Hence the reason why there are more conservative shock-jocks than lefties…
WA was the first State government Lib win in 12 years wasn’t it?
No 630
That’s the thing Aurelian. The NSW Government is so bad that even lefties can’t bring themselves to lay praise on it.
zoomster
That’s partly true. Most of those skin procedures certainly stayed in at least a day, and none would stay in now.
There is absolutely no regard for cost when determining which treatment to perform, which may or may not be a good thing. The coronary stents are pretty dodgy in terms of efficacy and are bloody expensive. So we put in even more expensive ones, which are no better. Hip replacements now cost $30,000 for the prosthesis when they used to be $5,000. If a drug has a 1% better outcome and costs 10x as much, it will get prescribed every time.
I heard of a brain surgeon who operated on a patient who had had a dural patch in the past (the outer covering of the brain from another patient). Old dural patches can carry CJD (human mad cow). He used all the normal equipment, so it was all potentially contaminated and you can’t sterilise for CJD. ALL the equipment had to be destroyed. The cost of the equipment was $250,000.
Good one Dario, I was trying to a broad emotive generalised argument that completely disregarded any facts, and then you go and ruin it.
hahahaha sorry
No 607
The Health budget tripled in the 12 years the Howard was in power.
Still arguing fundamentals and established facts. I give up.
Bye bye. This blog has become too stupid and pointless for words.
Thanks GP. You’ve certainly got the gift of the troll. You suck them in every time. But to what end? You lost, buddy, we won.
William, thanks for the blog, but it’s a waste of time unless you get rid of the trolls.
Federal health funding dropped from 45% to 41% between 1995 and 2005, while state funding rose from 46% to 51%
Diog
as I said, if you’re prepared to spend the money, you can basically keep someone alive almost indefinitely.
Health is one of those self emptying buckets. It wouldn’t matter how much money you put into it, there would still be waiting lists – because people who presently wouldn’t have surgery would now be encouraged to (so your hip is obviously going to cark it in four years time, why wait? replace it now) – and there would still be more demands for more money to be spent.
It’s almost impossible to cut any area – try and shut an old and inefficient country hospital, which is fifteen minutes down the road from a major modern facility, and it’ll take you ten years and millions of dollars (speaking from experience, here).
Dario
it is possible that GP is factoring in the hugely irresponsible private health rebate in this.
I wouldn’t exactly call it health funding.
No 638
For hospitals, Dario. Get it right. There is more to the health system than hospital funding.
637 …
JAMES HACKER: Wehave to say something about the Health Service… Care for old people, mothers and children, that sort of thing.
DOROTHY: Value for money?
HACKER: We can’t say that, everyone knows that cost are completely out of control.
DOROTHY: We are spending more than ever before to make our Health Service the best in the world.
HACKER: Excellent.
Correct, apologies for the typo. It’s still a very poor stat.
GP at 637 – only if you’re using an abacus with the wrong sized beads on it and three strings short. Comparing nominal expenditure over an 11 year period (which you’ve got wrong as well, but that’s another story) is an idiots game.
A buck then is a buck now?
Not bucking likely matey.
No 645
Actually, you’re correct on the nominal expenditure figure, I looked at the future projection by accident.
Which meant the proportion relative to the states only dropped by 5%!
The Howard government is great, if you don’t compare it against anything.
Just don’t make the same mistake twice.
Does anyone have any reliable data on the proportion of health $ spent on admin, compared to a decade or two ago?
My perception (based on nothing in particular) is that the share of the cake that goes to admin is increasing significantly, and this is a big part of the problem.
If anyone watched The Hollowmen tonight, you’ll understand how impossible it is to control health budgets. The public just won’t wear it.
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