Pommy, as I have already stated elsewhere on here,

we have a problem with most of the Public Hospitals in Australe

& they are all run by the States. Kevin Rudd wants to remove

30% of the States GST revenue & start a new Federal Department

to allocate the GST & Federal funding back to the States to run the

hospitals, which they can't run.

Added to this lunacy, Rudd has offered special grant to all the States

as long as they sign up to-day (he will throw in 1 or 3 more at the

COAG meeting to-day) I am not an expert on Constitutional Law,

but I believe that these offerings to the blackmailed States, are

unconstitutional.

It is quite clear that the problem is not funding. The problem is

State bureaucratic missmanagement. It was reported only last

week, that it typically requires more than 10 people to sign of on

a Doctor or nurses request to buy a pencil.

Add to the hospital debacle, hospital workers in Queensland are still waiting to be paid after several weeks delay.

Many workers have been advised by their landlords and/or banks that they are about to lose their homes.

One political comment was that they should visit the Salvation Army or other charity to get food vouchers. !!

Kevin Rudd wants to remove 30% of the States GST revenue & start a new Federal Department to allocate the GST & Federal funding back to the States to run the

hospitals, which they can’t run.



And in creating this extra level of bureaucracy, it will be funded from the 30% clawed-back GST, so we will be receiving less going directly into health. Health is already top heavy at State level with bureaucracy, which is where a lot of funding is being wasted.



Its interesting to see Brumby and Keneally holding out for more cash (as Brumby did in the useless River Murray agreement) while the imbecile who runs SA ran straight in laid down and rolled over to please his master Rudd just like a well trained dog. No wonder SA is called a 'backwater'.

I would love to see an improvement in the hospital system.

More doctors are needed, as is improvements in elective surgery & emergency departments.

Also more beds.

Will this work ? - I don't know, but hope something can be worked out to improve the lot of patients.



People will naturally be negative about the proposal as that is human nature, but I would like to see a positive result.

Unfortunately politics is being seen as more important than the needs of the ill by some.

I think this is the time the politicians should listen to the medical profession.



Without knowing all the details of the proposal it is difficult for us to make any firm decision.

We have a local Teaching Hospital that has had over $90Million

spent on it over the last 20 odd years. In that 20 odd years, it

has been totally rebuilt & enlarged. It now has more beds,

locked away & unuseable because of lack of staff, more

administration staff, BUT less nurses & doctors. Before they

wasted all this money, they employed 1 public relations officer,

now they have 6 on staff. About 15 years ago, there were, I

think, 7 houses & 1 vacant block of land on 1 side of the hospital.

I bought the block of land & built a home on it, which I sold for

$85K. Roughly 2 or 3 years later, the hospital bought the new

home for $235K, about double its value. They also bought the

rest of the of the homes at an undesclosed price, then

bulldozed the lot. We now have an overgrown paddock with

a fence around it.

There is a very good reason why business people own & run

businesses & they employ Labor to work in them.

To sum up my last post, we have a situation where the

monkeys are running the zoo !! The proposal is to take

away their food money, deduct the cost of a further,

unnecessary bureaucracy, then give what is left plus a

fortune of our money back to the same monkeys to carry

on missmanaging the same zoo. I have a great idea; Why

don't they introduce a new scheme to insulate all the homes

in Australia with imported batts from China. They could open

special Colleges all over Australia to teach the installers

not to put nails through live wires. Just think, if they spend

$870,000 on each college (1/2 the size of an average house)

& put a new section into every University to teach the new

teachers how to take a full 4 terms to show the installers

how not to put nails through live wires. WOW, unemployment

wiped out in 1 year. I forgot to mention that you can complicate

the construction of the little colleges by not having walls or

drainage so that you have to pay an additional design fee

of $13,000 or so. Because the design takes about 10 seconds,

$12,999 becomes profit & the taxation Dept., collects a fortune.

I just checked my figures & something doesn't add up !! Oh well,

what does it matter ? It's not my money, is it ????

Besides, the Chinese batt manufacturers need the business.

It seems to me that the quality of this debate or discussion has detiorated.

Yes, you are very right fwed. Today we had the first of at least

2 or 3 days of the most important health debate, in Australia's history.

The COAG meeting was attended by the Prime Minister, 6 Premiers &

2 Territorial Leaders, together with over 190 hangers on !!! Of the 200

people at the meeting, it was reported that there were 12 atendees,

with medical qualifications. I have been advised that NSW had 13

people from the Treasury & 1 Doctor representing the Health Dept., of NSW.

The timing of the surrender depends on how long each Premier holds

out, in order to get the maximum amount of "blackmail" money.

The only question remaining is when will we have the next COAG

meeting to discuss the raising of the GST to 12 1/2% or 15%.

I am really amazed at how long the voters of Australia & the individual

States are prepared to put up with this unbelievable fiasco !!!

Scaremongers like Mr. Innes should be locked up and the key

thrown away. You are like a broken record Mr. Innes.



What did the Liberal Party ever do for, you to make you hate the

Labour Party so much? The Labour Party has not been in

power long enough to really see what a difference they will make.

The Liberals screwed up in many ways. Can you imagine

the poor Country if Mr. Howard had been gven the chance to

decide to stay? Hard times for K Rudd and no Lib. could

do better I do not recon.

I don't remember even mentioning the fact that the Western Australian

hospitals are in the same state as all the other States. I didn't even

mention Party Politics

If we were still under Howard, we would still have over $20 Billion

in the Bank, instead of between $150 & $300B in the red. We would

have had 100s less house fires & a few Australian worker wouldn't

have died installing Chinese batts in our ceilings. Christmas

Island would still be a sleepy holiday spot where Australians could pay

to visit, with a closed casino & no brothel. Oh; I forgot to mention that

Pensioners would have got their Christmas bonus last year & again this

year.

BTW Again, I didn't raise Party Politics, Korry, you did. BUT, just out of

interest, can you tell me one single thing that Rudd has delivered, out of

all his grandiose election promises.

Come on people, no personal attacks. This topic was flowing niicely for a while, with some very sensible comments. Let's at least pretend we are mature intelligent people, and not silly children.



Today there has been even more money thrown at the States and Territories - where is all this money coming from, and what will the cost be to pay it all back?

[color=red] Today there has been even more money thrown at the States and Territories - where is all this money coming from, and what will the cost be to pay it all back? [/color]

...

Rudd and Co want the states to give to them a substantial amount of the GST that they collect ...........ERGO .......Rudd and Co will increase the GST percentage so as to get the extra money that they need...............can anyone build on this idea ..............

That just about sums it up clay.

This whole farce is yet another GREAT example to support abolition of State government in Australia. Even the Prime Minister agrees that we are over-governed and one can only imagine the squillions of dollars to be save by elimination of government at state level and expansion of responsibilty at state and federal level.