Posts Tagged ‘Australia’

I guess it’s too late to move to Australia

Saturday, September 7th, 2013

I have always liked Australia and have visited a couple of times. In 1987, I thought about buying land in Queensland. Some friends in Toowoomba offered to help me look but I haven’t been back and the idea was stillborn.

A few years ago, I lamented the ingratitude of the Australian electorate.

Last week, the most recent example of the startling rejection of a successful leader was seen in Australia. The defeat of Prime Minister John Howard after four hugely successful terms was a shocker. It is compared, and I think with good reason, with the defeat of Margaret Thatcher in 1990. The difference was that the Conservative Party, itself, ousted her, only to lose the next election to Labour and Tony Blair. In Howard’s case, he has been criticized for failing to withdraw and allow a successor to take his place before the election.

The electorate has corrected their previous error.

The Coalition has been swept to a convincing election victory in a result that could keep Labor in the political wilderness for a decade, with incoming prime minister Tony Abbott declaring the country is “under new management”.
ALP seats fell across the country on Saturday, ensuring Tony Abbott will be the 28th prime minister of Australia and have a commanding majority, holding up to 90 seats in the 150 seats in the House of Representatives.
From today I declare that Australia is under new management.

Mr Abbott said he would methodically deliver on his promises with a government that accepts it will be judged more by its deeds than its words.

Kevin Rudd, at least, realized that his “green” agenda was unrealistic. Obama has not found such wisdom and, instead, his chief strategist, Ms Jarrett, has stated his second term agenda.

Jarrett is very excited about a 2nd term agenda and a big part of that agenda is to punish everyone who opposed them during the first term and the campaign. Strange that everything was “Ms. Jarrett wants this, and Ms. Jarrett is looking forward to that”. You hardly heard Obama’s name mentioned by her which I guess reinforces what people are saying. Valerie Jarrett really is the power in the White House. I know that when her representative showed up it was like royalty was visiting. All the big dogs were lined up to meet her and acting real friendly and they gave us a heads up an hour before and told us we better “put on a good show” while she was here.
The part that really stuck out to me was when I overheard the rep say that Jarrett told them, “After we win this election, it’s our turn. Payback time. Everyone not with us is against us and they better be ready because we don’t forget. The ones who helped us will be rewarded, the ones who opposed us will get what they deserve. There is going to be hell to pay. Congress won’t be a problem for us this time. No election to worry about after this is over and we have two judges ready to go.” She was talking directly to about three of them. Sr. staff. And she wasn’t trying to be quiet about it at all. And they were all listening and shaking their heads and smiling while she said it. Pretty creepy.

Syria does not seem to have been a large part of the agenda. This is what we will have to deal with for the next four years.

I wish I had moved to Australia when I thought of it.

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Posted in corruption, politics | 1 Comment »

Health insurance in other countries

Friday, February 20th, 2009

We are often chastised that American health care is too expensive and private health insurance is inefficient. How much better would we be with a national health plan ? How about a few examples from the present time ?

Australia had an excellent health system in the early 1980s. The residents paid into a national health plan called “Medicare” that paid doctors’ bills and for other non-hospital services. The states, like New South Wales, built hospitals that cared for both insured patients and indigents. The doctors could see their private patients and the charity patients in the same location.

Then came the Labour Party, which in an election, promised free healthcare for everyone if elected. They won the election and most people stopped paying for Medicare. Except that no one had planned how to pay for the doctors’ services. There was chaos for a while. The exception was Queensland, the most conservative state, which had not built the big new government hospitals like the other states had. Much of Queensland was still covered by private care and doctors told their patients that, if they dropped their private insurance, they would lose access to the private hospitals.

Now it is 20 years later.

British retirees in Australia are finding a new problem; skyrocketing health insurance premiums.

The Britons, numbering around 6,000, reside permanently in the country on condition they do not become “a burden on the state”. That means comprehensive private medical cover is mandatory.

The expats, all of retirement age and including some Second World War veterans, hold temporary residence permits, which have “rolled on” through the years. Categorised as 410 visas, they allow holders to own property, travel freely in and out of the country and work for 20 hours a week.

Many visa holders are retirees who went to Australia to join their adult emigrant children.

Now, health insurance costs are forcing some of them to return to England.

It is not just that insurers assess visitors as higher risk. In Australia – where private cover is officially encouraged and bought by four in 10 citizens – residents’ premiums are subject to official control. Visitors’ premiums are not.

Consequently, Beria is petitioning the government to give long-term 410 visa holders permanent resident status.

The issue came to a head following legislative moves last year. Visitors’ medical cover was switched from its former category of “health insurance” to “health-related insurance”, removing the protection afforded by official capping of increases.

Annual premiums for a couple on top level cover are now more than A$6,000 a year (about £2,900).

That’s 4,152.80 U.S. dollars. Less than most US policies for a couple but a lot for a pensioner.

I thought health care was free everywhere else but the USA.

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Posted in health reform | 1 Comment »

The ingratitude of the electorate

Wednesday, November 28th, 2007

John Howard was not only defeated as Prime Minister of Australia, but lost even his own seat in Parliament. An analysis of the results in the Weekly Standard points out some interesting historical parallels. Winston Churchill was defeated in the 1945 election and Labour took over Parliament in spite of Churchill’s success in defending western civilization. He told his wife, Clementine, that he did not wish to be responsible for the affairs of the British voters for a minute longer than necessary, once the results were known. That is probably the height of ingratitude by voters, a 10 on a scale of 10, although there are modern analyses that suggest his lack of a domestic agenda was a factor. “The Beveridge Report, (which proposed the NHS Ed) therefore, presented the Prime Minister with a golden opportunity to reinvent himself as the leader of a party seriously concerned with social questions. What was more, acceptance of the report was not the only option – the party could have decided to devise and publicise an alternative prospectus. Churchill, however, completely missed the opportunity.” Churchill, in fact, was a classical liberal who had broken with the Conservative Party over the Irish Home Rule bill and who had supported measures to alleviate the burden of the poor in the early 1920s. In 1945, however, he had a war to win and seems to have ignored any other consideration. His problem was that the voters considered it won and had begun to think about the post-war period.

Last week, the most recent example of the startling rejection of a successful leader was seen in Australia. The defeat of Prime Minister John Howard after four hugely successful terms was a shocker. It is compared, and I think with good reason, with the defeat of Margaret Thatcher in 1990. The difference was that the Conservative Party, itself, ousted her, only to lose the next election to Labour and Tony Blair. In Howard’s case, he has been criticized for failing to withdraw and allow a successor to take his place before the election. The truth is that his agenda had all been accomplished and his Labour successor will, like Tony Blair adopt almost all of his reforms. The Australian Labour Party was wise in choosing a leader from Queensland, the most conservative of Australian states. Rudd, the new PM, has already announced he “has made a commitment to keep the government’s finances in order by maintaining budget surpluses and to preserve the central bank’s independence to set interest rates.” Howard paid off the national debt and his policies have seen Australia take off economically. Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking technocrat seems determined to follow the Blair path, even to his emphasis on climate change. Environmentalism is safe as long as you don’t actually plan to implement those Kyoto treaties.

Of course, there is always wishful thinking.

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Posted in politics | 10 Comments »