- The Guardian
- Issue #2124
“We have a health system that is universal, but with that comes an obligation for Australians to contribute. We have an obligation to care for our own health and we have an obligation to contribute through our taxes,” the then Minister for Health Tanya Plibersek told Parliament in 2012. Universal access is central to Medicare and the fee-free public hospital system. So too is centralised funding through the taxation system.
The more progressive the tax system, the greater the fairness and equity. Under a progressive tax system, those on higher incomes pay a higher rate in the dollar, and contribute a higher proportion of their income to the public purse. The rate of taxation is based on ability to pay. Access to publicly funded services should be on the basis of need. There is nothing fair or equitable about a two-tier system in which the government’s private health insurance (PHI) rebate (currently around $9 billion) subsidises the second, private tier.
Continued Plibersek: “Our public system gives high-quality and accessible care – security for every Australian that, should the worst happen, they will receive the care they need. Our private systems offer choice and flexibility and provide competition and comparison, contributing to continued improvements.” The private system is not universally accessible; it offers “choice” to those who can afford it. Even by the government’s own criteria, it is hardly “fair and equitable.” It is heavily subsidised out of taxes paid by Australian taxpayers, including many who have no choice but the public hospital system. Plibersek’s claim that “We will no longer see poorer Australians subsidising the health insurance of wealthier Australians,” was and is a lie.
ASIO – currently in a PR exercise involving the ‘human face’ of Australia’s secret police, its director-general – was set up (by a Labor government, let us not forget) in the latter stages of the Second World War. Britain and the US, who had let the USSR bear the major burden of the war and inflict most of the casualties on the Third Reich, had unblushingly withheld vital information from their Soviet ally and indeed had waged the war with the public aim of defeating Fascism and the private aim of preparing the ground for the defeat of socialism.
Their eyes were on the main prize – post-war global dominance – and they did not intend the anti-fascist alliance to be permanent. So, long before the War ended, and long before Churchill’s infamous ‘iron curtain’ speech, they were planning how to achieve an anti-communist post-war world.
It was a big task: they had to undo all the pro-Soviet propaganda the Allies (and the USSR’s colossal anti-Hitler achievements) had thrown up and turn today’s anti-Hitler heroes into tomorrow’s potential enemy. Suspicion had to be thrown on to anything Soviet and anyone who was – or had been – pro-Soviet.
PARASITE OF THE WEEK: is Wesfarmers, one of Australia’s biggest monopolies. With a market capitalisation of $77 billion it has under its monopoly umbrella Kmart, Bunnings, Officeworks, Wesfarmers Chemicals, Fertiliser and Energy, Priceline Pharmacies, Target and Soul Pattinson Chemists. Last week Wesfarmers bleated via the mass media that politicians were criticising the corporate parasites for their own political ends. “They should be celebrating the success of such companies,” cried Wesfarmers chairman Michael Chaney. “Profit seems to be a dirty word.”
