Prime Minister Gillard and I and the overwhelming majority of our colleagues have been applying our Labor values to the policy challenges in front of us and we’re succeeding despite tremendous political obstacles.
For the sake of the labour movement, the Government and the Australians which it represents, we have refrained from criticism to date.
However for too long, Kevin Rudd has been putting his own self-interest ahead of the interests of the broader labour movement and the country as a whole, and that needs to stop.
The Party has given Kevin Rudd all the opportunities in the world and he wasted them with his dysfunctional decision making and his deeply demeaning attitude towards other people including our caucus colleagues. He sought to tear down the 2010 campaign, deliberately risking an Abbott Prime Ministership, and now he undermines the Government at every turn.
He was the Party’s biggest beneficiary then its biggest critic; but never a loyal or selfless example of its values and objectives.
For the interests of the labour movement and of working people, there is too much at stake in our economy and in the political debate for the interests of the labour movement and working people to be damaged by somebody who does not hold any Labor values.
Julia has the overwhelming support of our colleagues. She is tough, determined, forward-looking, and has a good Labor heart. She has a consultative, respectful relationship with caucus while Kevin Rudd demeaned them. She’s cleaned up a lot of the mess he left her and has established a good, Labor agenda. She’s delivering major reforms, and getting things done that her predecessor could not. Colleagues are sick of Kevin Rudd driving the vote down by sabotaging policy announcements and undermining our substantial economic successes.
The Labor Party is not about a person, it’s about a purpose. That’s something Prime Minister Gillard has always known in her heart but something Kevin Rudd has never understood.
Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan’s release on Kevin Rudd
Well Done
10:48 Feb 22nd, 2012 | 9 notes
It is as if carrying the card of the Labor party didn’t already come with enough baggage. But after tonight, the past four years of our policy successes and reforms now amount to nothing in the eyes of the public. Any time talk of politics enters a conversation I am in the questions immediately swing to sideshow leadership speculation, scurrilous rumors, infighting, party conflict and public spats, and are subsequently hurled in my direction. I am forced to remind people that behind this joke of a spectacle, reforms are being passed into law, the lives of Australians are being improved, and our standing in the world is growing. If this is what I dealt with yesterday, I dread tomorrow.
My generation will never remember that it was this Labor government that navigated the 2008 financial crisis better than any other government in the world. They will never recall that it was the Labor party whom introduced paid parental leave, or brought our telecommunications network into the 21st century with the largest infrastructure project in the nation’s history. Forgotten the fact will be that it was this government that ushered in the largest series of education reforms in decades, established Australia’s response to climate change, and removed discrimination based on sexual preference from all but one of our country’s laws. The list goes on, but these reforms will be a footnote in history after all is said and done. The events of February 2012 will come back to haunt the next generation of Labor leaders, dragging them down and holding them back. Who knows how long it will take for Australians to return to our party, to trust us again, to be proud that they voted for us.
So to everyone involved: Congratulations—you’ve screwed us for a decade.
"The Labor Party is not about a person, it’s about a purpose. That’s something Prime Minister Gillard has always known in her heart but something Kevin Rudd has never understood."
- The claws are out: Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan on Kevin Rudd.10:06 Feb 22nd, 2012 | 0 notes(Source: australianpolitics.com)
Keeping Medicare Universal: Medicare must be kept universal if the program is to improve
6:30 Feb 16th, 2012 | 0 notes
It seams strange having to discuss this, but means testing the Private Health Insurance Rebate (PHIR) has brought up questions as to the validity of publicly funded universal health care in Australia. Tim Wilson of the Institute of Public Affairs (who’s motto I think should be, ‘Government. Eww!’) stirred up just such a question on this weeks Q&A.
Let’s be clear: Australia’s financing of healthcare is very messy and inefficient. The 53% of us who purchase private health insurance (PHI) remain insured under Medicare (Australia’s universal public health system), meaning more than half the population is insured twice, but only ever enters the health system as a public patient or private patient at any one time. Similarly, doctors have an incentive not to reduce waiting times in public hospitals, because higher waiting times may drive people to the private system (with shorter waiting times) where they are payed more.
Several solutions are pushed by the ‘Government. Eww!’ people. One is an opt-out of medicare after purchasing PHI. The result is that once you enter the PHI market, you forfeit your right to use Medicare (and presumably the need to pay for it) for everything except emergencies—assuming that we don’t fumble that exemption like the Americans did for a while. The downside is that the people left using Medicare (those who can’t afford PHI) don’t generate enough revenue to pay for the same quality of care the system currently provides with everyone paying, leading to additional funding having to be drawn from other parts of the budget, or a decline in the quality of treatment.
A more radical proposal is a voucher program. You can probably guess where this is headed, because ‘Government. Eww!’ love voucher programs. The idea is to give everyone a cheque instead of directly sending those funds to public programs like Medicare. With said cheques, people choose where to place their money; in the private health system, or the public health system—whichever serves their needs best. The potential is for people to flock away from the public system into the private system, with the worst case scenario being the dismantling of the public system all together. You then have to hope that your cheque covers all of your health costs in the private system, or be left footing a bill that you never would have had under Medicare.
The problem I and many others have with these proposals is that they remove the universality of Medicare. While this may not always be done with malicious intent, it creates an environment where our attitudes towards this public program drastically diverge. At the moment, every man, woman, and child in this country is invested in Medicare. This is not only because we are all paying for it, but because we all have a claim to its use—we know it is there if we ever need it, free of charge, no questions asked. Removing the universality of Medicare breaks this mindset. All of a sudden, we are not all invested in making sure the quality of Medicare services are kept high, that the treatments delivered are the best available, or that new and creative solutions are found to the systems flaws.
Overnight, Medicare would turn into something ‘only poor people use’. Much like Centerlink conjures up images of ‘dole bludgers’ and ‘welfare queens’ despite the agency’s role of providing student support, the pension, the Family Tax Benefit, legal aid, grief counselling, and disability support; so too will Medicare become a target for disparaging remarks, and the first port-of-call when politicians start spouting off about the need to ‘remove the culture of dependency’.
New methods need to be found as to how we finance healthcare in Australia. Beyond adjusting the PHIR, we could adjust the system so that PHI covers only ancillary care, and not medical or hospital cover. There are many changes possible and with more debate, more solutions will arise. However, we must not forget that we must all be in this together. Dividing Australia into ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ in terms of healthcare will only weaken a strong public program. If we are to lobby for a better Medicare, we must all be invested in its success.
Obama’s 2013 Budget
6:30 Feb 15th, 2012 | 0 notes
The New York Times has made a useful (and very pretty to play with) visualization of Obama’s new budget. Ignoring the fact that it will never pass congress (none of his have so far), it is none the less an important gauge of the President’s priorities for the coming year. So what appear to be his priorities?
- Federal Highway Administration receives a 103% boost in funding
- ‘Housing Programs’ at HUD receive a 62.9% increase
- The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau receives a 31.8% larger budget (they had a budget?)
More statistics can be viewed at the New York Times, and if you’re up to reading the entire 256 pages document, you can read it at the Office of Management and Budget’s website.
Fun fact: Obama’s budget paper is 256 pages long and spends $3.7 trillion dollars. The Australian Federal Budget is 1102 pages long and only spends $414 billion. Happy reading!
2012 Worldwide Cost of Living Index
12:27 Feb 15th, 2012 | 0 notes
The Economist Intelligence Unit has just released their new Cost of Living Index for 2012. The highlights? Currency movements over the past year have seen Swiss and Australian cities move strongly up the rankings as some of the most expensive in the world to live in. Also of note: despite recent economic events, Western Europe still retains 24 of top 50 costliest cities.
The top ten:
- Zurich (Switzerland)
- Tokyo (Japan)
- Geneva (Switzerland)
- Equal Third - Osaka Kobe (Japan)
- Oslo (Norway)
- Paris (France)
- Sydney (Australia)
- Melbourne (Australia)
- Singapore (Singapore)
- Frankfurt (Germany)
The full report can be downloaded here
Australian economic inequality: We would like a fairer go
7:22 Feb 5th, 2012 | 1 note
With the Occupy movement filling headlines across the globe, leaving an empty vacuum instead of solutions to their vaguely stated complaints, it is important that we look to Australia, and our own economic situation here at home.
While we pride ourselves on our egalitarianism and in our belief in a ‘fair shake of the sauce bottle’ for all (as one former Prime Minister put it), we must acknowledge that Australia is a free-market economy, and thus is prone to the perks and pitfalls that come with the territory.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics, our national statistical agency, compiles data on wealth and income distribution every two years. What it shows is that Australia has a healthy middle-class, which I’m classifying as the third and fourth quintile. However, it would be hard for people not to be mildly surprised at what is happening either side of the middle class. The share of household worth for the top quintile grew from 59% in 2003-04, to 63% in 2009-10, squeezing the second, third and fourth quintiles along the way. The poorest 20% of Australians have held steady at 1% of household net wealth since 2003-04, which I guess is only slightly more bearable than that number dropping to a statistical 0%.
While all Australians experienced wealth growth over the past decade (mostly through property prices shooting through the roof), in real dollar terms, the growth for the bottom 80% doesn’t look that crash hot when shown on a graph.
It is a similar story in terms of income, which is in my opinion a much better indicator of economic wellbeing. The picture painted here between 2003-04 and 2009-10 is rather more alarming then what I just showed for wealth. Overall, the poorest, second, and third quintiles all have lower wages in the 2009-10 data than they did in 2003-04. The poorest 20% of Australians saw their wages decline by 12.8% between 2003-04 and 2009-10; the second quintile saw a decline of 12.6%; and the third quintile, a 4% decline. Meanwhile, the highest earning Australians saw their income rise by a healthy 11.8%.
One of the more interesting points to note is the different in raw dollar changes in income. Top Australian earners saw their incomes rise by an amount larger than the entire weekly wage of a person in the bottom quintile. That is, a top earner saw his income rise from $3527 a week in 2003-04, to $3943 in 2009-10, resulting in a $416 larger pay cheque compared with the $360 which comprises the entire pay cheque of someone in the bottom quintile.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions last year published a survey they commissioned on the attitudes of Australians towards wealth. The most interesting section here was Australian perceptions of wealth distribution. In each quintile, respondents over estimated the equality of wealth distribution, by a lot. Respondents from every bracket thought the combined wealth of the bottom quintile was 9% of total household net worth, whereas in reality it is 1%. Respondents in the top wealth quintile thought their combined household net worth was 40% of the national total, instead of 61% in reality (Empirca Research, the firm who conducted the survey, for some reason used ABS data from 2007, even though the survey was released last year).
The astounding results to what respondents supplied as their ‘ideal’ wealth distribution speak for themselves.
Highlighting all of this isn’t to bash rich people—I’m studying economics, I’m hoping not to end up poor. Instead, it is to remind Australians of the reality we live in. We must remind ourselves that our social services and our safety nets are there for a reason: because we are not only the lucky country, we are a country renowned for our camaraderie—we help out those in need. Faced with politicians on both sides wielding axes and salivating over the budget, we must remember what is important.
I feel like any sort of federal welfare payment, like the Family Tax Benefit (A and B), should come with the disclaimer,
‘You may only be eligible if you:
- Have two photogenic young children, or
- Live in a swing electorate in Western Sydney, or
- Live in Queensland.’
Because my single parent family on a teacher’s salary isn’t eligible for anything, while this charming family (in Western Sydney) earning a combined $142,000 a year is complaining that their hand-outs aren’t being inflation-linked for the next 4 years.
BOO HOO YOU GUYS.
Gosh.
"Today we saw an historic vote on one of the most important economic reforms in a generation, an historic Labor reform to strengthen our economy for the future and to make sure that we look after the interests of our children and our grandchildren. We’ll be able to look subsequent generations in the eye and say we did the right thing by our children and our grandchildren and future generations."
- Wayne Swan—on the passing of the Clean Energy Bills through the lower house of Federal Parliament, 12 October8:09 Oct 16th, 2011 | Notes(Source: abc.net.au)
The ‘Minister for Whatever You Can Think Of’
10:23 Oct 10th, 2011 | 81 notes
We have a problem with giving cabinet portfolios decent names in Australia. We have silly names like the ‘Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs’ and the ‘Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy’, as if the purpose is to make sure that everyone in the country knows that the federal government does everything including managing the kitchen sink—which is possibly part of the Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities portfolio.
Then we seem to have a problem with changing said silly portfolio names. The Australian Customs and Border Protection Service has been overseen by fourteen differently named portfolios over the past fifty years:
- Minister for Customs and Excise - 1956-1975
- Minister for Police and Customs - 1975-1977
- Minister for Business and Consumer Affairs - 1977-1982
- Minister for Industry and Commerce - 1982-1984
- Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce - 1984-1988
- Minister for Science, Customs and Small Business - 1988-1990
- Minister for Small Business and Customs - 1990
- Minister for Small Business, Construction and Customs - 1990-1993
- Minister for Industry, Technology and Regional Development - 1993-1994
- Minister for Small Business, Customs and Construction - 1994-1996
- Minister for Small Business and Consumer Affairs - 1996-1997
- Minister for Customs and Consumer Affairs - 1997-1998
- Minister for Justice and Customs - 1998-2007
- Minister for Home Affairs - 2007-Present
Notice how we’ve had a Minister for Small Business, Construction and Customs, AND a Minister for Small Business, Customs and Construction at different times.
Department names also have horrendous nomenclature. We do not tend to name departments after ministerial portfolios, which is terrific when trying to work out what everyone does. For example, Medicare is not administered by the Department of Health and Ageing, but by the Department for Human Services. Because who would ever think that our public health system was run by the Department of Health and Ageing?
Another example is that there is no Department of Home Affairs to go along with the Minister for Home Affairs. Rather, the Minister for Home Affairs oversees the Australia Customs and Border Protection Service, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, which are all actually part of the Attorney-General’s Department.
If you were looking for the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, over the past few years you would have instead been looking for either the Department of Education, Science and Training, the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs, the Department of Education and Training, or the Department of Workplace Relations. But be sure you don’t confuse who has responsibility over the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. You could be looking for either the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations, or the Minister for Schools, Early Childhood and Youth. Take your pick.
There is nothing structurally wrong with our ministerial cabinet system. My point is that it is confusing, very confusing. The United States Department of State has been in continuous existence since 1789 with exactly the same name! The person responsible for the Department of State is the Secretary of State! If an agency doesn’t look like it immediately fits into an existing department, don’t just create another department. Heck, put it in the department that sounds right. The United States Office of Scientific and Technical Information? Well, it sounds scientific. The Department of Energy sounds sort-of scientific, so just throw it in there.
Reorganizing department names and ministerial portfolios for the long term would not only ease confusion, but would save substantial resources from having to reprint letterheads every couple of years. I’m sure the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities/Minister for Environment Protection, Heritage and the Arts/Minister for Environment, Heritage and the Arts/Minister for the Environment and Water Resources/Minister for the Environment and Heritage would be most pleased about such a development, depending on which year you asked.
