The big majority and friendly Senate the election has delivered Albanese could be bad, or it could be very, very good. Will it entice the conservative and cautious Albanese to be a little bit brave?
There is much chatter about the possibilities for reform, but the really big reform needed is to end middle class and corporate welfare.
For far too long, people that are perfectly comfortable have become used to handouts. So much so that they now feel entitled, and that they are being ripped off if they don’t get subsidised this or free that. And there are entire industries that should not exist but do because it was outsourced from the public service at much higher cost for less effectiveness.
And by this, I don’t mean equality measures, such as Medicare and the PBS, or economic activity incentives, like income asset write offs.
Here’s my top 4 changes I would love to see.
1. End the privatised job search provider model and go back to the CES.
Many moons ago when I was first out of uni, I worked at the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations on the job network, when it was still pretty new. I thought then that it was a scam of massive proportions made legal by Government seal, and nothing about it has improved since.
While there are plenty of people who have made millions out of running job agencies, Australian businesses and workers are far less likely to have anything to do with them. Gone are the days where anyone could go into the CES and look at the cards on the board… and there would actually be decent jobs on there. Gone are the days where a business could call up the CES and list a job without much hassle, and usually have applicants pretty quickly.
I’ve tried three different agencies wanting to advertise a journo job at New England Times – literally cannot get them to take my call. Like everyone else I just put it up on various internet job boards and pray that they reach the right person.
The most criminal aspect of the job network (or whatever they have rebranded it to this week) is that providers get paid ‘outcome’ payments that reward keeping people unemployed. And while there is the occasional good egg in the system, it is a fundamentally corrupt system that rewards incompetence and dishonestly, and destroys lives in the process.
The damage to people’s mental health done by a system that works to keep people feeling hopeless, useless and unwanted alone should be enough to ditch this program.
This does not mean an end to private recruitment – there will still be the Hays and Hudsons of this world – it just ends the waste and harm at the lower skill end of the employment cycle.
2. End a transaction based business rebate approach to funding primary health care
I’m sure a number of my patient advocate friends just spat out their coffee, because I am actually suggesting to take money away from doctors here.
Doctors, whether GPs or specialists, are stupid well paid. And when you hear their complaints, it is rarely about remuneration, but about other supports. When you outsource the whole running of the health clinic to a doctor – who by the by was not trained in their medical degree of the realities of running a business – you by default waste health dollars.
Paying doctors to do bookwork and paperwork rather than see patients is dumbfoundingly inefficient, and a waste of the health professional.
The transaction base approach of funding health care just isn’t working anymore. Not just for GPs, but for radiology and pathology and allied health too. Just like the PBS isn’t working anymore either. They are systems build for another time and have not kept up with the times.
The mountains of bureaucracy created to maintain this archaic system that funds surgeries and cancer treatment more than preventative health, replete with significant bias against women’s health, is all waste in my view. Good health records should mean effective patient records, not mountains of billing records. Delve into the health care budget and you’ll see far more spent on things and paperwork than people.
So instead of incentive funding or rebates, ditch the entire system, can we just employ doctors to work at publicly or charity owned and run primary care clinics?
Of course, there will be doctors who still want to operate as private entities and they can do that, but that should not be the only option – for either doctors or patients.
The reform required here is to start from scratch. How would you build a health care system if there was no precedent?
Don’t worry Albo, you can still call it Medicare and flash your little green card everywhere.
3. End child care subsidies
This one should have me lynched on the south lawn by lunchtime, but the stupid amounts of money in child care provision is a pretty good indication that the government is overpaying for a service and incentivising the wrong thing.
And, like the job network model, and the current health care system, it’s not resulting in good outcomes, as the recent ABC investigation has found.
I’m not sure what the alternative is – having early childhood education as part of the public funded education system administered by the states seems logical to me, but this is not a sector I know that much about at the nitty gritty level, so there may be some obstacle I am unaware of.
We need child care. We need equitable access to child care. The way that we are doing it now doesn’t work. That’s all I know.
4. End Energy Bill rebates
Well if I was lynched for ending Child Care subsidies, I should be hung, drawn, quartered, dead, buried, cremated, dug up, rehydrated and killed again for this one.
But just like the private health care rebates, all this is doing is pushing up energy prices more and more and distorting the market.
The rebates and other energy payments are just going to the fat profits of big energy companies. They aren’t making your life easier.
Both state and federal governments need to stop throwing cash at energy companies to get votes.
Just stop it
The common theme here is that all these things are electorally popular but distort the normal supply and demand effects of the economy that would normally keep things in check. There are plenty more that could be added to this list, like family benefits, the private health insurance rebate, and so on.
And when you think about the real pain points for the cost of living crisis – health care, child care, energy… all of them are really the result of past governments wanting to be popular more than they wanted to be responsible.
Just stop it. Albanese has a whole degree in economics, he doesn’t need supply and demand explained to him, he just needs to grow a pair, not worry about re-election for a minute, and be brave.
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We need childcare paid by the government if they want mothers and fathers to work. We need electricity , gas and other subsidies for pensioners only, if they are to survive this expensive world with prices over doubling in the last 3 years. Dental also should be paid by the government, children and pensioners should be bulk billed. Free schooling and universities as it was years ago. Forget the submarines. We have no hope if some country decides to attack us as we are only a small nation . Charge the profits of the large companies at the same rate of the evey day Aussie instead of them getting everything tax free. Put taxes on our exports of gas and mining then we may be able to survive. Keep our farms and do not sell them off to overseas. Everything is common sense but the powers that be don’t seem to have any of it.