...Thwarted by being unable to get its GP co-payment legislation through the Senate, the LNP has chosen regulation to achieve its aim of ‘sending a price’ signal’. Whatever this piece of jargon may mean in plain English, the government is certainly ‘signalling’ not only a contempt for democratic processes but an alarming willingness to govern by any means possible, including if necessary, by decree. Democracy, for all its constraints, is infinitely preferable to the desperate ‘ad-hoc-racy’ of the current Federal government as it panics to implement its radical rightist agenda at any cost. Sending a price signal is jargon for making a visit to your doctor cost you more in order to cause you to see your doctor less often. Around Budget time, we were treated to Joe Hockey’s assumption that some, if not many, visits we make to the doctor are not necessary. Hockey’s scenario is ludicrous, yet it has powerful adherents in the government: the price signal will bring us to our senses and eradicate malingering at a stroke of the regulator’s pen. Where he gets his information is never divulged because it proceeds from ideology rather than empirical fact. At worst, it is a palpable lie for the purpose of withdrawing funding from those who need it most: the elderly, the needy, those on low incomes. Discriminatory against key groups in society, given the structure of our economy and society it will punish women most, in what seems like a calculated act of callous indifference if not cruelty – all to meet a commitment to its grab bag of neo-con, radical hard right ideology...
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 05:44:46 +0000
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