Big cuts for unemployed and sick people, students, pensioners and families – but few measures that will quickly 'repair' the budget

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/13/budget-2014-joe-hockey-delivers-deep-pain-for-little-gain

Government ministers have spent the day laying the groundwork for a tough budget, which is expected to include a temporary tax hike for high-income earners, an increase in the fuel excise and a newfee for bulk billed GP visits.

But the Government has also been pointing towards long-term, nation-building investments and tonight Treasurer Joe Hockey will outline a new Medical Research Future Fund.

The fund is expected to start with $1.1 billion, which will come from winding up the Health and Hospitals Fund, and grow to $20 billion by 2020.

It will be managed by the Future Fund board and pay annual dividends for medical research; $20 million initially, rising to $1 billion by 2023.

However, there is a catch - all money invested in the fund will come from "savings from health reforms in this and future budgets".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-13/multi-billion-dollar-medical-research-fund-to-be-announced/5449886

Yep... it's a neat trick to shift money to the side rather than fund medical research directly and/or properly .... My cynicism is sky high...

Tony Abbott is adopting a “crash through” budget strategy – forcing the states to consider raising the goods and services tax to make up for huge federal funding cuts to health and education and daring senators to pass most of his hardline first budget or risk their seats at a double dissolution election.

Tuesday night’s budget reduced promised federal funding to the states for hospitals and schools by $80bn between 2017-18 and 2024-25, a move the federal government concedes will force the states to raise more tax revenue.

“If they want to maintain that level of funding … they will have to get it from taxpayers, just as we would have had to get it from the same taxpayers,” treasurer Joe Hockey told the ABC on Wednesday.

Abbott said the federal government believed “the states should take more responsibility for their public hospitals and for their public schools and we make no apologies for wanting the states to be grown up, adult governments that take responsibility for the programs that are theirs, for the institutions that they run.”

Asked whether the states had any choice but to provide the necessary support to broaden or raise the goods and services tax, he said they were “perfectly entitled to argue for change, if that's what they want”.

NSW’s new premier, Mike Baird, a good friend of Abbott, reacted with fury, saying the move was “a kick in the guts to our state” and asking his federal colleague “what services would he like us to cut”.

“What we had last night from the federal government was a flick pass … you cannot outsource your problems to the states … that’s not good enough, the people of NSW want to know we will stand up for them and that is exactly what we will do,” Baird said.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/14/tony-abbotts-crash-through-budget-may-force-states-to-raise-gst

No-one explains better than Anthony Albanese about the deceitful con from this CONservative stupid budget's transport strategy... Go Albo!

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/may/14/albo-explains-the-budget-video

Joe Hockey has taken aim at Australians who are “screaming” about the end of free visits to the doctor, declaring the new $7 fee was the cost of “only a couple of beers or one third of a packet of cigarettes”.

And in a blunt response to a question about how a young person who had lost unemployment benefits would be able to afford it, the treasurer said: “I would expect you’d be in a job.”

Hockey made the comments during a radio interview on Thursday as he continued to push the case for the tough measures outlined in the Abbott government’s first budget, including a new $7 co-payment to visit a GP or access out-of-hospital pathology and diagnostic imaging services from July next year.

The doctor will be allowed to pocket $2 of the fee, while $5 goes to the government, raising $3.5bn over four years. For patients with concession cards and children aged under 16 the fee will apply for only the first 10 services in each year.

The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, who will deliver his budget reply speech on Thursday night, has indicated Labor will vote against the measure, as will the Greens and Palmer United party, ensuring it cannot pass the Senate.

Hockey told the ABC’s AM program he was surprised about criticism of the measure, with the money paid to go to a new medical research fund.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/15/joe-hockey-tells-australians-doctor-fee-cheaper-beer

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Joe Hockey is a joke, not funny like an exploding cigar...

I expect everyone in the senate who are not a "liberal" (CONservative) to take this budget to the DUMP.

All that ink and paper wasted on ludicrous break of promises, idiotic taxes and nasty ways to make everybody's life a misery, unless you already swim in a pool of golden dosh... It's typical of the flagellating sinning monks that have taken over the Australian government. But they also want you to self-mutilate. They want you to acquiesce to the pain... It's perverse. Joe, Tony and the rest of them are hangmen, experts on sadism and the psycho-sauce.

It's time to give this team of dangerous ningnongs a zero for a deliberately crappy homework and a visit to the principal. But but but... They have the never ageing Prince Murdoch on their side and they can get away with murder.

So, come on Sir Pete of the Grove, it's time to stop grovelling to idiots and do your duty. Tell these brats to go and play in the middle of the street in front of passing trucks, so they leave us, good folks, alone.

Savage budget cuts will make it harder for science to develop products and processes for the market and will hamper Australia’s transition to a “smart economy”, according to the research industry.

The Co-operative Research Centre (CRC) program, which links researchers with businesses, had its funding cut by $80m, while industry programs such as Commercialisation Australia and enterprise programs designed to cash in on science were abolished.

CSIRO’s funding has been cut by $115m over the forward estimates, resulting in 420 full-time staff losing their jobs by the end of June 2015.

The chairwoman of the Antarctic CRC, Katherine Woodthorpe, a former chief executive of the Australian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, said it was “foolish” to take money from other research areas to create a $20bn medical research fund.

“Australia punches above its weight in terms of the proportion of research and development dollars we spend on medical research,” Woodthorpe told the ABC.

“We have some fine [medical] research establishments but we also have some fine research in so many other areas and we are having money taken from them in order to pay for this medical research uplift, and I think that is foolish.”

The CRC Association chief executive, Tony Peacock, said the cut took the program back to its 1996 level in funding, when the Howard government came to office. He said CRC funding had already been cut significantly under Labor and he and the CRC chairman, the former Liberal party director Tony Staley, were surprised by the decision.

“We have done our heavy lifting, we were really surprised at the cuts,” Peacock said.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/16/savage-science-cuts-will-hold-back-economy

the Abbott idiots want to dumb Australia... They want most Australians to be brought down to Abbott's (and their own) lack of science understanding, so he could look good in a debate about freezing point which for him is twelve months to the salary of pollies... For them, it's much easier to parrot a prayer than to do scientific or technological research with no promise of success. That's why these idiots are cutting science in school and are increasing chaplaincy. Idiots...

The budget centrepiece – a $20bn “medical research future fund” – won’t improve the nation’s health unless the government broadens its brief beyond finding cures for diseases, leading health researchers and academics have warned Tony Abbott.

The prime minister has described the fund as a “fine piece of policy” that would “double our nation’s investment in finding cures for disease and better medical treatments so we can all live healthier and happier lives”.

But acclaimed medical researchers, cited by the government as examples of the people it wants to encourage with the money, said it needed to be rethought.

Many have said they are torn by a budget that provides the new pot of money, in part by charging people to visit the doctor, but also cuts $80m from co-operative research centres, $11m from the CSIRO and $75m from the Australian Research Council.

The researchers’ first priority has been to flesh out the very sketchy details provided on budget night about how the new fund would work, and provide the government with strong advice about its operation.

Professor Ian Frazer, whose team developed a world-first vaccine for cervical cancer and who appeared alongside Abbott on Monday, told Guardian Australia he and other researchers had advised Abbott and the health minister, Peter Dutton, that the fund should have a “very broad remit” beyond researching new cures. They said it should include health economics and preventive and “translational” health – “translating” medical research into diagnostic tools, medicines, procedures, policies and education.

“We get the strong sense they are planning this as they go along and I think they listened to us,” Prof Frazer said after the Brisbane meeting between the heads of research institutions, vice chancellors, leading researchers and the prime minister and health minister.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/19/leading-scientists-cautious-about-20bn-medical-research-fund

To tell the truth, the government could have placed the $8 billions it gave to the reserve bank which did not need it, straight into the research fund... But no, this government wants to plunder to pocket of the poor no matter what. The government has no idea on how to spend the fund or the interest from "investing" the fund...

Joe Hockey is suing Fairfax Media for defamation over a story about his links to a fundraising body that was headlined 'Treasurer for sale'.

A spokeswoman for the treasurer said he had filed a statement of claim in the federal court against the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Canberra Times and their online services.

“The Treasurer’s determination to seek to prosecute this matter against the relevant publications should not be underestimated,” the statement said.

Hockey threatened legal action when the story was published on the front pages of the Age and Sydney Morning Herald on 5 May.

The story claimed a fundraising group, North Sydney Forum, attached to the treasurer’s north Sydney electorate office offered “privileged access” in exchange for membership fees that ran up to $22,000 per year.

Hockey engaged lawyers the day the story ran and came out strongly against its implications.

“Accusations made in Fairfax Media today are both offensive and repugnant,” his statement said at the time.

“The Treasurer will not let it distract him from the important task of putting the budget together. As the matter is now in the hands of lawyers no further comment can be made.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/20/joe-hockey-to-sue-fairfax-over-donations-for-access-story

A London-based billionaire appointed by Joe Hockey to advise on Australia's financial regulations runs companies that have repaid tens of millions of dollars after exploiting tax loopholes.

Australian-born hedge fund boss Michael Hintze, who is connected to the British Conservative Party, last year approved the repayment of nearly $43 million in a settlement with the UK taxman after companies in his CQS group used ''employee benefit trusts'' that ran foul of authorities.

Sir Michael, known in the British press as the ''godfather of Tory donors'', has a reported personal wealth of $1.8 billion. His financial empire, elements of which have also utilised tax havens such as the Channel Islands and the Cayman Islands, reportedly generated $154 million in 2011, but paid an apparently modest $55,000 in corporation tax.

Sir Michael is one of four international business leaders appointed by the Treasurer in March to provide additional advice to the Abbott government's Financial System Inquiry.

He is recognised for extensive philanthropic activities, but the revelations of his company's tax affairs raise questions as to the appropriateness of engaging advisers in Australia who have been involved in tax minimisation behaviour overseas.

Wealthy, smirking Joe Hockey and smug, snarling Scott Morrison are treading the well-worn path to evil; Bob Ellis has some questions and counsel for both men.

Joe won the race to Evil in about sixty hours.

He passed Affable Smiling Boofhead and Misguided Market Fundamentalist and Courageous World Statesman in the first day and by the time he said ‘one-third of a packet of cigarettes’ and was seen smoking a cigar with Dracula, he’d usurped Satan himself.

There’s no way back from Evil, as Richard Nixon found, and Rolf Harris may soon. It’s a line you should not cross. There is no way back from Evil, Joe. Trust me.

Some tips for your next life.

If you’re hurting everybody at a time of semi-wartime emergency don’t smile as you say you are. Churchill saying "blood, toil, tears and sweat" was not wreathed in smiles.

If you are calling for sacrifice, do not charge anybody $22,000 to hear you talk about it and not spend the money on healing lepers. If you own two farms and four houses, do not talk about ‘the age of entitlement’ applying to old sick women seeing a doctor for free. Sell one of the houses, and donate the money to diabetes research and say you are doing this.

Another good idea would be not to massacre the CSIRO, which wins Nobel Prizes, and give $20 billion for ‘medical research’ to your dodgy mates. The CSIRO and the universities are finding a cure for cancer already, and should be given more, not less, billions to achieve that end.

Don’t say to an old woman:

You’ll be paying up big every time you get sick, but, hey, fifteen years after you’re dead there’ll be a cure for cancer, thanks to your sacrifice.

The last tip for Joe is, next time round, study up on Australia.

Learn why to Australians Holden, Qantas, the Goulburn Valley and the Tasmanian forests mean something, and your dog-eat-dog philosophy means less to them than it does to you.

Learn that changing a whole society’s way of thinking needs more than the will to do it. Learn that a society built on land grants for convicted criminals and the phrase ‘a fair go’ is different from one whose guiding rule is ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’.

Above all, do not smile while ordering young people to leave their home towns and clean city lavatories or do phone sex for fifty cents a minute or else. Realise how evil you look. Next time round.

In the meantime, enjoy your over-entitled retirement and its millions and prepare for a trial by ICAC.

And try to remember while testifying — don’t smile.

The wild-eyed foam-flecked sado-heathenist Scott Morrison’s contention that he has stopped the boats needs examination.

He’s certainly stopped some boats, though he won’t say how many. He’s certainly people-smuggled some weeping mothers and their newborn babies and shocked young husbands and mothers-in-law back to Indonesia which doesn’t want them, and has done this illegally, offending the UN and all the nations in our region.

But has he stopped other boats, that go by a different route, into beaches north or south of Broome? I ask this because of the failure of many countries, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, to find a big plane in the same obscure dark lightning-smitten seas in three long months. I doubt if the Border Protection mercenaries even look there.

I ask him now which Salvation Island worker killed Reza Barati, and how long he reported for work after dropping a rock on his head, and how long Morrison paid him, and if he is now in custody, and if he will, according to local custom, suffer capital punishment and when.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/advice-for-smilin-joe-and-sado-morrison,6519

See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=-ex6MAtcOe8&app=desktop

When Dr Francesca Panzironi came to Australia several years ago to study how international legal standards related to Aboriginal traditional medicine, she was amazed at the lack of research or recognition of this 40,000-year-old body of knowledge. 

‘I had been aware that globally Australia is recognised as having  advanced policy development and support for traditional medicine,’ she says, ‘but  it turned out this was because of the official embrace of Chinese medicine. I couldn’t believe that there was a complete dismissal at an official level of Indigenous health practice.’

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/awaye/aboriginal-healers-working-to-keep-traditional-medicine-alive/5471058

Please read story at top, in regard to my own granny's "miracle" skin cream...

From Chris Berg

Chifley's time bomb 70 years in the making

So when Chifley announced that they would increase income taxes on rich and poor alike, they also announced a "National Welfare Fund" alongside it.

This National Welfare Fund would fund welfare measures like pensions, unemployment relief, child endowments, even health care. The fund is often seen as the launch of Australia's welfare state.

Unlike a contributory scheme, the fund would be financed by the new income tax increases. But there were two tricks.

First, Chifley said the revenue from the tax increase was specially earmarked for the National Welfare Fund. Thus Labor wasn't breaking its promise not to increase the burden on low income earners - they would be getting social security for their money. (Think of the fund like our Medicare Levy today.)

And second, most of the great new social services weren't to start until after the war. Cabinet agreed that only £5 million of the estimated £40 raised would be directed towards immediate social spending. Money is fungible. The rest could quietly be used for the war effort.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-27/berg-chifleys-political-time-bomb-70-years-in-the-making/5480154

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Chris berg is off the planet here... Blaming Chifley and Curtin for Joe's crap budget is stupid...

If he wants to blame someone he could point the finger at Menzies and especially at Costello, the lazy treasurer...

The fact is MOST of Joe's problem stems from an over-inflated belief in fiddling with the flow of the taps on top of the sink, when the leaks are below, in the pipes to the septic tanks with diversions to the pockets of the rich who pump the manure. But he does not want to fix this, this would demand to call for a real plumber. Joe (and Tony for that matter) only wants to restrict moneys to the poor and ordinary Australian who, in his ancient religious beliefs, shall turn into slaves to serve the masters of god and grindstones.

And Joe's problems are not just Joe's. My educated guess is that the world economy prints about 15 trillion dollars of "counterfeit" cash on top of "normal growth" — just to plug the holes. But as we all know not more than 30 per cent of this extra cash ends up fixing wonky economies, while the rest (70 per cent) is swallowed by the banking systems to fatten the cows in the pastures of  the rich on which they spread the manure. 

Chris berg swallowed someone else's furphy unless he came by himself to this doozy... Either or it's idiotic.

 from Mark Latham

Last week, when promoting the Medical Research Future Fund in his budget, the Treasurer prophesied: “We know one day someone will find a cure for cancer, so let that be an Australian.” He also forecast cures for dementia, Alzheimer’s and heart disease, all via the special healing powers of his research endowment.

Before the last election, the Liberal Party engaged in magic pudding economics, promising to reduce the budget deficit through a combination of big-spending programs (such as paid parental leave) and no new taxes. Now it’s practising magic pudding medicine.

Hockey is going to solve so many debilitating diseases that Australia’s life expectancy level is bound to hit triple-figures. At this rate, the government will need to increase the pension retirement age to 90.

read more: http://www.afr.com/p/national/arts_saleroom/dr_hockey_magical_mystery_cure_

zbgZBCQoWkJECXDb4hCOYK

See article at top...

The $400 million donated to the health and medical research sector every year could be at risk if the Federal Government's Medical Research Future Fund goes ahead, a survey suggests.

Research Australia says a survey found four out of the 10 people who donate regularly are less likely to do so once the new fund is established with money from the GP co-payment.

Research Australia chief executive Elizabeth Foley says the issue is being raised at the Philanthropy for Health and Medical Research Conference in Melbourne today.

"Anecdotally, we've got evidence and reports that donors were ringing up institutions like the Garvan Institute, Macular Degeneration Foundation and the like saying, 'Well, you're covered now; you don't need to donate; the Government's going to increase health and medical research expenditure'," she said.

"So we decided to put these questions into our polling, just to see how widespread that belief system was, and we found that four out of 10 regular donors thought that they might donate less next year if the Government plans for the Future Fund went ahead."

Ms Foley says it will take a decade for new Medical Research Future Fund to get going.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-19/medical-research-donations-at-risk-due-to-future-fund/5680180

An effing decade!... even worse than my worse cynicism.... See my views at top...

Sydney's Daily Telegraph also rued election promises getting in the way of more radical fiscal surgery. "These promises place a moral restriction on the Coalition to retain certain levels of spending when extensive cuts are obviously required," it said.

Its News Corp stablemate, The Australian, welcomed a $7 GP co-payment and described the $20 billion medical research fund it would create as "a clever political fix that should produce laudable results if well implemented".

The Australian did foresee a backlash to the co-payment, saying: "These are brave political decisions that will attract loud protests, but are necessary in order to stem ballooning health costs and engender a sense of personal responsibility."

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/the-budget-backlash-the-newspapers-did-not-see-coming-20141208-11ymq2.html

As usual, the Murdoch press lauded the rat-bags of the right wing nuts and played a dubious hypocritical game: "a clever political fix?" I beg your pardon?. Read my article at top. To stem the ballooning cost of health? Should fewer people go to see a GP, the co-payment would have provided about two buck fifty after deducting cost of running this deceitful scheme. So the scheme was not thought to "fix ballooning" heath costs... Not really was it idealised to help public research into medical problems. No. Most of the cash generated (on interest after "management fees" to ultra-right wing retired pollies) would have gone to "private" labs and the public having funded the research would get zilch in royalties from any "discoveries". Patents would fill the pockets of "private" enterprise funded by PUBLIC CASH. Is this a clever rort or is it not?... Buckle up, "the UnAustralian", you're a disgrace to your country. Tony Abbott lied through his teeth and lied with his mouth opened, and you, The UnAustralian, propagated those lies in fertilised shit.

The federal government's plan to charge patients a compulsory $7 fee to see a doctor is dead, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has announced.

In a press conference in Canberra on Tuesday afternoon, Mr Abbott conceded the unpopular proposal - first detailed in the May budget - did not have the support to pass the Senate.

The government, however, will stick with its plan to reduce Medicare rebates for common GP consultations by $5 for adults who are non-concession card holders from July 1 next year. 

Doctors will be left with the option of charging a $5 "discretionary" fee for adults to recoup the rebate reduction or continue to bulk-bill those patients.

"Look, it's been pretty obvious for some time that we were going to have to improve the position that we took to the budget," Mr Abbott, who was joined by Health Minister Peter Dutton, said.

"I thought the position that we took to the budget was a very good position but I think this is a better one and obviously there are a range of conversations that we have with a range of different people in terms of coming up with this improved position.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbott-government-dumps-proposed-7-gp-copayment-20141209-123f1x.html

This new proposal is as smelly as a dead cat in a sewer pipe...

"We had good policy in the first place ... we've got better policy now, and what we've seen here is, I think, an intelligent and sophisticated response from the Minister, from the ERC, from the Cabinet, from the Government more generally, to the quite reasonable observations of the backbench and the community and that's the glory of our system."

The Prime Minister's former adviser, public policy consultant Terry Barnes who initiated the co-payment idea, welcomed the change.

"GP co-pay plan B is much better than budget, balances fairness with sustainability. And it's close to my original proposal," he posted on Twitter.

However, Australian Medical Association (AMA) president Professor Brian Owler raised concerns about the Government's decision to freeze the amount of money given to doctors over the next four years.

"While we're pleased about the protection for vulnerable patients, on the other hand it does have those issues as well and we have concerns about the sustainability of general practice itself," he said.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said the Government was "sneaking around the Parliament" to introduce a tax on GP visits.

"Tony Abbott today has tried to pretend that his GP tax is dead, but sadly for Australians his GP tax is still very much alive," Mr Shorten said.

"The Abbott Government is still doing exactly what it is doing with the petrol tax, they are sneaking around the Parliament to put a tax on going to the doctor.

"This is a GP tax which Tony Abbott can't bring through the front door, so he'll bring it through the back door.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-09/federal-government-dumps-gp-co-payment/5955012

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Okay, let's study this in detail... Should the co-payment or the GP tax go to fund public research EXCLUSIVELY, then there is no conflict of interest though it is an arse way to go about something the government should do without charging extra... Should one cent of the co-payment and/or the GP tax go to private medical research labs one can already smell the pedalling of corruption. Private medical labs will pocket moneys from patents and other tricks from having received PUBLIC FUNDS for which the public would get NOTHING in return, except getting poorer by having to pay for treatment they had already funded, while the private medical research labs would get richer. 

Do I smell a sponsorship of pollie pedalling here or what? This GP tax is not about health. It is ABOUT PROFITS. Throw Tony, his cohort and advisors out the window. It will bleed you with his "bleeding heart" when he says "who do not want medical research to be funded?"... Sure but his model stinks. It is designed to fund profiteers.

How can a $5 GP co-payment that excludes the young and those on benefits save just as much as a $7 co-payment that applies to everyone?

That's what we'll be asked to believe when the budget update is published next week. We'll be told Prime Minister Tony Abbott's new health package will save $3.5 billion whereas his old package would have saved $3.6 billion.

Part of the trick is that it isn't the co-payment that saves the government money, it's the cut to the Medicare rebate. That cut was always going to be $5 per consultation. If doctors had had the ability to charge a $7 co-payment they would have got an extra $2 in their pockets. Now they won't.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/the-gp-copayment-trick-that-purports-to-save-35-billion-20141209-123i8z.html

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That man, Tony Turdy, has no shame... He will rob you in broad daylight whichever way he can and hopes you wont see the ropes holding the backdrop to his crude financial tricks... Now as you can see it does not mean that the cash would go towards a fund for "medical" research (mostly private), but a way to help Tony Turdy fiddle with his crooked cook books... Read from top...