And the nurses come from where?

God knows!

Exactly - our practice has a nurse - one day per week - and she checks blood pressure, vaccinates children, adults etc. It;s almost as hard to get in to see her when the flue jabs come around.

In 2003 there were 61,000 doctors working in Australia.

If there are 20,000 nurses looking for work, how come

we can't find nurses for our hospitals & how come we

are advertising all over the World for qualified nurses to

immigrate to Australia? I have spent my whole life thinking

that the Federal Elections were just a matter of temperary

Party Politics, BUT, this man is starting to get genuinely scary.

Thanks for that Innes - you did say once the new Seniors party would follow the 'government' - which put me off for a start.



But then you are in business so just have to know this government is the worst in living history. Must make Gough Whitlam feel better if he ever admits to being a rotten PM as he now is no longer the worst ever Prime Minister in the history of Australia. Rudd has taken on that mantle rofl...

Not that it is a laughing matter to those who are going down the gurgler and will if he is allowed to go on spending money for no returns and sending firms broke and people onto the dole with his mad schemes.



Bit like the left wing Democrats and their mad scheme to put all in a house even if they never had had a job to pay rent let alone a mortgage!

which caused the GFC in the first place. Thankfully the Coalition had protected us by regulating our banks not to do such stupid loans but it was the American government that ordered it - and paid for it with their taxpayers funds and that debt will haunt them for years too. But they at least are awake to Obama and his doubtful ways unlike Labor voters here - the died in the wool ones and I spelt it as I meant it btw!



Tonight we will have a budget with billions of rent money from mining that wont kick in until 2013/4 propping it up and those who are not adept at reading budget papers will think all is well. Sad.



As for the nurses that Toot spoke about - no hospital in Oz has enough and overseas the same. Where will they come from - training them in Uni's has buggered up the system - when they trained in house - it helped out on the wards etc.



Our practice with 4 doctors employs a nurse 5 days week already and still we have to wait up to 3 weeks to get in to see a doctor. It would free up the Docs for those 6 monthly repeats for blood pressure/cholesterol meds etc if she could write out the scripts. Bet though she would need - more training as would all of them most likely knowing bureaucracy. She does the check BP and give injections and vaccinations already and helps diabetics. Without any extra for the Practice.

You are right BigVal. I did say that approx Sept., the year before last.

Mia Culpa, Mia Culpa, Mia Maxima Culpa. Some bloody old

grandmother once said that good intentions kill more people

than heart attacks !! At the time, I thought that Rudd was a bit

of a problem that would go away at the end of his second term.

I have not only changed my mind, but I have actually come to believe

that he is dangerous & a real potential risk to Australia's future.

Just look, for example, at the insulation industry. The brilliant

idea was never going to work & cost well over $2B. But, that was

NOT the worst part. The worst part was that he has totally

destroyed another thriving Australian industry. The industry, as

we know it, is caput & everybody in it is either bankrupt or out

of work. If the mining super tax goes ahead (which it won't) we

will have around 175,000 mining staff in Western Australia

alone, earning over $150,000 P/A each, unemployed within 12

to 15 years. This wouldn't be so bad if it was to achieve anything.

It wont !!! You can't work out accurate figures, but this crazy

scheme will add around $1/2 Billion P/A to the Centerlink bill &

cost Australia over $3B P/A in lost withholding tax alone.

Apart from all this, over 4 million of Australia's 10million +

voters will still vote for Rudd & Co, come October/November.

God save Australia.

I think we are preaching to the already converted but I supposed it helps to have a bit of a rant.

On the budget.

Part of the statement by Swann.

“So this Budget targets three key challenges: the return to full capacity in a two-speed economy; climate change; and[i] the fiscal pressures of an ageing population[/i],” Mr Swan said in his speech to Parliament.my italics.

[url=http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/budget/swan-rides-mining-boom-to-early-surplus/story-e6frgd66-1225865206261]Source.[/url]

So there we go. Pensioners are now "fiscal pressures."

.............................



Innes, I had the same reaction as BV at the time of the statement re going along with the govt.

So pleased to see your reply to BigVal.

On the nurses, I heard someone from the govt say they were going to bring nurses out of retirement!!!!!!!

No link on that one, but I definitely heard it.

I wonder how many retired nurses have been consulted.

There have been a high number of nurses who have left the medical field due to low pay, crippling workloads in hospitals and lack of job satisfaction. Many have married and now are just raising their families. Work opportunities (especially part time or casual) in a doctors surgery may well temp many of them back into the workforce.

I think the government has probably got itself re-elected. The budget offers the optimism of a vastly reduced national debt and this is foremost in most of our minds. The idea of paying off the deficit in 3 three years is a master stroke even though it will come on the back of the big miners and tax on cigarettes. I'm not sure what this big tax will do to the mining industry, but I don't like the idea of them ripping the guts out of this country and nicking off with the profits. Time will tell on that one.



Come on people, there are some good things in this budget, keep an open mind and look for them.

Come on people, there are some good things in this budget, keep an open mind and look for them.



toot, the doom and gloom merchants will never find good as they skip over anything good, looking only for something they can whine about.

If they cannot find something bad they will create a conspiracy.

If nothing was done about hospitals and health they would complain and then if something is done, they still complain.



They complain about debt, but have they ever been in debt themselves ?

These same complainers, do you ever hear them say anything nice ? Not very often, they scour the news to see what they can whinge about next.

Not a very nice way to spend their later years.

Innes, what about this from The Australian this morning, what say you?



"Financial markets reacted positively, with the dollar climbing from about US89.77c to US89.90c immediately after the budget was released, while the local futures market pointed to a 5-point rise on the benchmark S&P;/ASX 200 index after a 51-point fall yesterday. With Australia's stronger growth outlook expected to bolster revenues in coming years, initiatives such as a $661 million investment in work skills, new literacy programs aimed at adults and $5.6 billion towards infrastructure spending over the next decade -- including almost $1bn on rail infrastructure next financial year -- have won widespread support from business lobby groups".

Peter Garrett didn't have the guts to comment on his budget cut, he sent an underling to comment on it. A SPOKESMAN for Environment Minister Peter Garrett said it was "a tight Budget designed to meet the highest standards of economic management and return us to surplus three years ahead of schedule. Like other portfolios we had a modest cut," he said. Oh how I hope he gets voted out in the next election, if he had an ounce of decency about him, he would have resigned his office but no, he is hanging on tightly to all his previleges of government. I can't bear to look at him.