Driven mostly by a dreadful result from top-tier pollster Galaxy, the Coalition suffers another substantial downturn in the BludgerTrack poll aggregate this week, to the extent of returning to the worst depths of the post-budget slump. The change compared with last week’s reading amounts to a clear 1% transfer on the primary vote from the Coalition to Labor, translating into a gain of five for Labor on the seat projection including two seats in Queensland and one each in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. With new figures added from Ipsos and Essential Research, the leadership ratings show Tony Abbott continuing to plummet, while Bill Shorten matching his post-budget figures on both net approval and preferred prime minister. Abbott hasn’t quite reached his lowest ebb on net approval, but he’ll get there in very short order if the present trend continues.
First the Coalition spent years flaying Australia’s attempt to gain a seat on the Security Council. Then Bishop uses it as a platform as a grandstand for her personal ambitions.
She used the Security Council Chairpersonship to flay other countries for ‘not doing enough’ to fight ISIL. The Coalition benchmark? 6 planes and 200 soldiers.
Then Bishop used the Chairpersonship to flog other countries for not doing enough about Ebola. The Coalition benchmark at that time? Sweet Eff All. De nada. Zip. Talk about Bishop having chutzpah!
Now Bishop sinks the slipper into other countries for not doing enough about climate change. The Coalition Government benchmark? Destroy every national and international action to fight climate change it can.
Here is a typical example of the Coalition using direct action on climate: Having been part of a Coalition Government that first took funding out of the International Climate Fund the Coalition Government, now announces that it will give it back.
Except that the Coalition does not actually give the funding back, because the conditions put on the funding by the Coalition Government do not meet the Fund’s guidelines.
I am not sure what people really see in Bishop.
poroti 92 – yes my dad drank raw milk on the farm, as did my partner. But as you say, straight from cow to consumption is a lot different to a whole modern industrial supply chain which necessitates pasteurisation.
Don’t you get the feeling that if Abbott, Robb et al were around in Pasteur’s day they may have been in the “deniers” camp? As in “There are no such thing as microbes – I can’t see them so they don’t exist!”
lizzie@36
Going right back to the original Medibank introduced by Whitlam, Bulk Billing was meant to pay the Dr 85% of the scheduled fee on the basis that the Dr accepted the lower rate and got savings in administration costs.
Most Drs charge above the scheduled fee and the 15% gap has widened considerably over the years.
[Paul Bongiorno
So if we hit doctors & patients for $3.5B and give it all to a Research Fund we make Medicare more sustainable. unbelievable.]
Victoria
I have plugged some numbers into an excel spread sheet and the outcome of this new model is appalling doctors AND patients – worse than the $5 co-payment.
Here they are – those with a mathematical bent please check and adjust – i find the answers unbelievable myself.
Take a fully bulk billing practice. Each doctor works 8 hrs per day for 225 days per year (ie standard days of 250 per year less 25 days for training/sick leave etc). Assume that 25% of patients are children and 30% pensioners or concession card holders. Under current rules let us assume that they are a good practice (not a six minute mob) but currently see about 7 patients per hour, assuming that some patients just want repeat scripts, test results etc and do not need the full 10 minutes. If they continue to bulk bill each doctor in the practice will be $84,000 worse off per year. For those who HAVE been practicing 6 minute medicine the income reduction is as much as $245,000 pa. Now if you assume that in a bulk billing practice that about 1/3 of people will NOT be able to be charged even if not concession holders (eg spouses of low income families, farmers ,(cash poor) people with mental illness, students etc, to recover the lost income, such practices will need to charge the remaining 30% of patients about $30 plus the rebate ie $60 upfront with a rebate to the patient or charge the patient $30 and get the medicare rebate.
Now what about the upmarket practices which currently charge patients $60-$70, with the patient getting the refund. In these practices it is reasonable to assume that of the roughly 45% of non concession card holders, a much smaller percentage will be still bulk billed (say 5% of patients. In this case to recover their losses ie to stay income neutral the patient charge will have to rise from $65 (ie like Victoria’s doctor and mine) to $85.
Now obviously I am make rough guesses as to the proportion of patients who are children or pensioners etc. each practice will be different.
The idiot Abbott openly gloating everytime he thought he won a “debating point” on Faine this morning.
What a tool.
bemused
[the 15% gap has widened considerably over the years.]
You can say that again!
I really can’t get over just how poor the Abbott government has been. I mean I expected the usual barrow-pushing of right-wing causes, but I have been shocked at how inept they have been – they really make the Rudd-Gillard era look like a shining light in political management, in comparison.
The next election of course, is still two years away, and conventional wisdom would probably still suggest that the government will be re-elected – Australia hasn’t had a one-term wonder since Scullin lost in 1931. However, we are edging closer to another one, as the last three new governments all went south at their first re-election attempt. Hawke took a significant hair-cut in 1984, Howard actually lost the 2PP in 1998, and Gillard actually did lose in 2010 (but was able to stitch up a minority government), so that trend might suggest a further change of government in 2016.
But as always, it is the McMillan doctrine that will determine what happens in 2016 – “events, dear boy, events!”.
Joyce has been wedged nicely by Katter, et al.
The issue is that a substantial proportion of Australia’s graziers and farmers are so far in debt that there is absolutely no prospect of them every being able to service their debts. Zip. De nada. None.
The banks are being ultra-cautious. If they foreclosed on all their bad farm debts, land prices would plunge, making a mess of the book values of their farm loan portfolios. There would also be some brand damage.
Katter et al are calling for the formation of a ‘Rural Reconstruction Bank’.
Everyone knows that this is a fancy title for giving free taxpayer money to farmers so that they can farm for a bit longer.
It was one thing for Joyce in Opposition to turn red while doing the Greatest Retail Politician Of All Time rants.
But, cap in hand, Joyce and the Nats will get no love from the Dries in the Liberals camp. It turns out that there are two bigger droughts hitting the whole economy: the drought in private capital investment and the drought in the terms of trade.
So, what is Joyce’s solution?
Why, to tell the banks to stop acting like, um banks.
But, but, but… in a market economy, banks are lending institutions whose shareholders have absolutely no interest in subsidising the atrocious risk management of Joyce’s voters.
Watch this space.
Victoria
I have plugged some numbers into an excel spread sheet and the outcome of this new model is appalling doctors AND patients – worse than the $5 co-payment.
Here they are – those with a mathematical bent please check and adjust – i find the answers unbelievable myself.
Take a fully bulk billing practice. Each doctor works 8 hrs per day for 225 days per year (ie standard days of 250 per year less 25 days for training/sick leave etc). Assume that 25% of patients are children and 30% pensioners or concession card holders. Under current rules let us assume that they are a good practice (not a six minute mob) but currently see about 7 patients per hour, assuming that some patients just want repeat scripts, test results etc and do not need the full 10 minutes. If they continue to bulk bill each doctor in the practice will be $84,000 worse off per year. For those who HAVE been practicing 6 minute medicine the income reduction is as much as $245,000 pa. Now if you assume that in a bulk billing practice that about 1/3 of people will NOT be able to be charged even if not concession holders (eg spouses of low income families, farmers ,(cash poor) people with mental illness, students etc, to recover the lost income, such practices will need to charge the remaining 30% of patients about $30 plus the rebate ie $60 upfront with a rebate to the patient or charge the patient $30 and get the medicare rebate.
Now what about the upmarket practices which currently charge patients $60-$70, with the patient getting the refund. In these practices it is reasonable to assume that of the roughly 45% of non concession card holders, a much smaller percentage will be still bulk billed (say 5% of patients. In this case to recover their losses ie to stay income neutral the patient charge will have to rise from $65 (ie like Victoria’s doctor and mine) to $85.
Now obviously I am make rough guesses as to the proportion of patients who are children or pensioners etc. Each practice will be different.
However I am going to make judgement call that if the upfront fee approaches $100 it will stop patients in their tracks, even relatively wealth ones. $30 to go to the doctor is a fee many of us will pay, even if income is a bit tight (less than a takeaway for two with coffee). However $50 is getting nasty and $70 nearly unaffordable for many.
Rocket
Not to mention the cost to business and red tape involved in making food safe .
It was noted in a previous thread (sorry but I do not remember who said it) that Medibank’s share price went up after the Abbott-Dutton announcement of the $5 rebate reduction and the freezing of payment levels.
The whole wretched plan is aimed at helping health insurance companies to our money.
It won’t take long for our ‘generous’ government to remove the current restriction on these companies offering medical insurance (so we can insure against costs of visiting GPs and specialists, as well as scans and pathology services).
In fact, Medibank already offers fee-free GP consultations in Queensland (no price signal necessary for Medibank customers, eh?)
Here it is on Medibank’s website:
http://www.medibank.com.au/after-hours-gp/
How do investors see this?
http://www.intelligentinvestor.com.au/2014/12/gp-co-payment-changes-benefit-medibank-nib-sonic-healthcare/
Abbott just laid them a golden egg,
and we return to the halcyon days pre Whitlam.
Thank you Lizzie and Victoria.
Possible funding for PT in Victoria looked like another in the current series of backflips.
Of course the other states and territories will not be slow to notice what the Feds seem to be telling the Vic government.
Ulhmann is talking politics on ABC radio. He said that Warren Truss has been unwell and he wishes him well going forward
Talk later
LOL. Bolt has gone to war with The Australian because of this editorial, which is clearly aimed at him.
[Mr Abbott should place himself in the middle ground on climate change policy. Yet he is too eager to please the rabid elements of the conservative base, who do not accept the science of climate change. But in the political world, voters want to see action to abate emissions… Mr Abbott should change his rhetoric, ramp up the symbolism and worry less about the urgers on the far Right — the way centrist Mr Howard would have. ]
[today’s is all ‘Sophie Mirabella didn’t need a fancy office, she put her energies into her electorate’…coming from unnamed sources, of course.]
She didn’t need a fancy office as she was never in it.
[Don’t you get the feeling that if Abbott, Robb et al were around in Pasteur’s day they may have been in the “deniers” camp? As in “There are no such thing as microbes – I can’t see them so they don’t exist!”]
it would depend on whether the milk/food industry of the day were generous donors and media supporters.
I think it is interesting to contemplate where these ‘liberals’ would have stood on many issues including
– abolition of convict transportation and convict labor to the landed gentry
– slavery (not here, but in the US)
– teaching of evolution
– separation of church and state
– federation
– recognition of citizenship and voting rights for first peoples
– one man one vote
– votes for women
– etc.
we know where they stand on other nation building measures such as the living wage, arbitration, free universal education and health care, racial discrimination, land rights, environmental protection law, secular education, etc.
Also – funny how a government can understand ‘price signals’ for health care (because too many of us are going to the Drs unnecessarily and for recreation apparently), but not for pollution, even when the evidence showed a rapid fall in carbon intensity of power following the introduction of carbon pricing, which has now grown steeply since the pricing was revoked. A hot hot dry summer is perfect timing for the renewed focus on abbott’s inaction on climate change. the $200m to the global fund is a farce – australia is ‘giving’ it to the fund, but then says they’ll distribute it. This is akin to me saying to Red Cross “I’m donating this money to you, but I’ll choose to spend it on the programs I choose to – and I’ll spend it on very questionable soil carbon storage programs, give it to fossil fuel businesses that promise to reduce fugitive emissions, and in Pacific Island nations that agree to set up concentration camps or shut up about climate change.”
One other thing not counted in this new scheme. Reduction in money to states for outpatient services. If you have standard cancer treatment in a public hospital and you are NOT a concession card holder, then either the patient or the hospital will be out of pocket by $5 by 50 visits. This is an effective cut to the State hospital budget of at least $250 per patient.
Rocket
[Interesting – 62% less CO2 than road freight.]
And much cheaper than shipping.
vic – didn’t realise Truss had been in parliament since 1990 aged 41. Hope he is OK – 24 years in federal parliament would take its toll on anyone.
Diogenes
The editor of the Australian has a farking cheek to write that sort of stuff.
[Mr Abbott should place himself in the middle ground on climate change policy. Yet he is too eager to please the rabid elements of the conservative base, who do not accept the science of climate change.]
Dio 117 – I thought she put a fair bit of her energies into probate law!
Norty Rocket
…to the shed!
You’ve got to love it when this is the headline of an article in The Australian.
“Tony Abbott policy – barnacles or turds?”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/tony-abbott-policy-barnacles-or-turds/story-fn3dxiwe-1227152206587
lizzie@107
And bear in mind the 15% was in practice much greater with non-bulk billing Drs who charged above the scheduled fee.
With what my Dr charges, the difference between the fee and the rebate is around 50% and that is fairly typical these days.
Kohler –
[ Australia’s fossil fuel assets may be stranded
…There is an increasing prospect that Australia’s vast fossil fuel assets, a key foundation of the nation’s wealth, will become ‘stranded’.
In fact an agenda item in a ‘draft negotiating text’ in Lima over the weekend referred to ‘full decarbonisation by 2050’. If that phrasing turns into a formal agreement in Paris next year, it puts a finishing date on the coal, oil and natural gas industries.
….remember there is already a global glut of oil, against all predictions, leading this morning to another fall in its price to just above US$60 a barrel, the lowest price in five years.
Saudi Arabia is effectively engaged in a price war with the US shale oil producers, trying to preserve its market share and, by driving the price down towards its marginal cost of production, prevent further exploration.
….one of China’s state-controlled energy giants, Sinopec, is looking to sell some long-term LNG import deals from Australia and elsewhere.
Arguably, most of the world’s coal assets are already stranded — doomed by the new global momentum for carbon reduction agreements to remain in the ground forever.
But even with existing emissions reduction targets, the falling cost of solar power means coal-fired power generators are likely soon to become stranded assets as well.]
Those Uni’s and others who sold their fossil energy stocks are looking pretty smart now.
BTW – TESLA has opening a Sydney showroom for their electic cars – drove past it yesterday opposite the SBS Studios in Artarmon.
abbott’s call on coal being proven dumber and dumber daily….
[116
Diogenes
LOL. Bolt has gone to war with The Australian because of this editorial, which is clearly aimed at him.
Mr Abbott should place himself in the middle ground on climate change policy. Yet he is too eager to please the rabid elements of the conservative base, who do not accept the science of climate change. But in the political world, voters want to see action to abate emissions… Mr Abbott should change his rhetoric, ramp up the symbolism and worry less about the urgers on the far Right — the way centrist Mr Howard would have.]
This is also an oblique form of support for Bishop. She has “changed rhetoric, ramped up symbolism and discarded the far right”, without actually doing anything substantive.
The Australian is now running a Bishop for PM line.
I am sure that the long game for the Liberals is to transfer health care funding to private insurance arrangements, leaving Medicare as an underfunded 3rd rate safety net for those who can’t afford or can’t get insurance.
lizzie – I only heard some of that Jon Faine/Abbott stuff on way to school – Faine seemed very civil and polite, not combative at all in the part I heard. Maybe he is feeling sorry for Tony?
Twitter reporting that Sen John Faulkner is retiring today..
I need unhappy news to get me in the appropriate mood for the Nick Cave concert tonight.
shellbell
Tony Abbott is still the Prime Minister. Now off to Nick Cave with you.
Funny how The Australian is suddenly the voice of reason against the rabid right climate change deniers, many of whom are on its payroll.
If I was a betting man I would be saying the fix is in.
Steve777 – and someone suggested to me here yesterday I think that that was the reason behind the sudden surge in Medibank Private shares after Abbott’s announcement. After sitting around the release price of $2-15 the whole time, they have now climbed to $2-24.
victoria@100: If Abbott truly thinks he can’t survive without Credlin, I’m inclined to agree with him.
Credlin has generally done a great job at shaping and controlling the Abbott we see publicly. He has become far more disciplined and inclined to follow the script.
Despite what we keep reading in the papers from relative outsiders like Paul Sheehan, it is most unlikely that Credlin is exercising much, if any, control over Abbott’s decision-making and policy positioning. Abbott likes to call all the shots himself, and I’m sure Credlin struggles even to sneak a look at the speeches and press releases he has written himself.
It certainly wouldn’t have been Credlin deciding who could/couldn’t go to Lima: she would just have been the messenger.
If this concerted and nasty campaign against her being conducted in the media ultimately succeeds, then Abbott will be gone very quickly. I doubt that there are too many people in the Liberal Party who would be able to exercise the degree of control over him that even Credlin has done.
Faulkner leaving now?
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/labor-elder-john-faulkner-to-resign-from-federal-parliament-20141210-124q9m.html
Rocket Rocket@130
He cheerfully and politely sliced Abbott up into little pieces.
Abbott is such an easy target.
Faulkner – like I said wrt Truss – all those years take their toll. On your own health, on your family.
[Another year of the same and it will be 60-40. Indeed I’m surprised it’s not there now with the deceit oozing from everything the LNP has to offer. Australians don’t like liars and they despise sneaks.]
The only thing stopping it is how recently many of those swinging voters had decided that the ALP government was chaotic. If this were a second term or more government (heaven help us) it would be 60/40 at least.
Murdoch must be wondering where it all went wrong.
Did he not make every effort to get Abbott elected and now this? Murdoch has obviously given up on Abbott and needs to get a replacement in the PM’s job. So far it looks like JBishop in the absence of anyone else, however she will need to pass the “Murdoch loyalty test” before he moves decisively.
[Diogenes
The editor of the Australian has a farking cheek to write that sort of stuff.]
The Australian is capable of holding more points of view on the subject than even Abbott…
fuxake
getting posts from farking Kevin Rudd on facebook
Energy stocks copping another hammering. Santos leads falls today down 6.4pc.
Pretty smart move by ANU to get out of that. Wish my adviser was as good.
[Twitter reporting that Sen John Faulkner is retiring today.]
Senator McAllister by the time Parliament sits again? Excellent.
(No disrespect to Faulkner who is a giant of the Senate).
Rocket Rocket @ 94
I hadn’t even realised this train route across central Asia had been finished.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/10/silk-railway-freight-train-from-china-pulls-into-madrid
To what extent is it a “through train? I wonder how they cope with at least three changes of gauge along that route:
China 1435 mm (standard gauge)
Russia 1520 mm (Russian gauge)
Europe 1435 mm (standard gauge)
Spain 1672 mm (Iberian gauge)
meher baba @ 136
And you know this to be true because?
Dave:
[Yep – thats the main aim – to get more doctors to cease bulk billing.]
Spot on.
[It will also cut doctors visits.]
Yeah, that’s the effect of the “price signal”, but it’s a mere ruse.
Lizzie:
[Abbott always uses the clincher “no one objects to the co-payment on the PBS” to close down the argument about his own co-payment.
I don’t see that it’s the same, myself, but journos don’t follow through and argue with him.]
You can’t on-sell a Drs appointment like you can a box of pills.
I’m going to get ahead of myself here, so don’t bother making that point.
I am so looking forward to the 2016 election to see Abbott’s concession.
Many of my friends looked forward to seeing Howard fall apart but I always expected, from history and his identity as such a political ‘insider’, that he would be dignified and gracious, as he was.
There is no chance that Abbott has that in him. Even if he honestly tries to be gracious he will be incapable of pulling it off. More likely he will just do a great big dummy spit on purpose.
(Newman in Qld next year should be another doozy, one way or the other.)