Lefthanded_Rock_Thrower...........

Well spoken! :D

Possibly so, but what really scares the bejaysus out of me are the words
Julia Gillard, Prime Minister.:eek::ugh:

Cannot anyone else hear the sound of knives being sharpened everytime the abovementioned Woman is pictured standing behind KRuddy??:confused:

Malcolm Turnbull is completely driven by ambition to the point of ruthlessness. The Leadership of the Federal Liberal Party and eventually the Prime Ministership is all he thinks about. He may yet succeed.

You do not attain wealth and position such as he has without a certain ruthlessness, and I fear we will see evidence of such in the not too distant future.

FWIW, I loathe Turnbull. IMHO he would'nt know what the real world is like even if it kicked him hard between the big toes!

I believe it would be a very brave person indeed who would bet anything on who will be a future prime minister of this country.

Some that are old enough to remember the Paul Hogan shows back in the 70s might recall a skit where Hogan as a futuristic tour guide referred to Bob Hawke as the then prime minister of Australia. :eek: The roar of laughter from the crowd was immense.

Bob Hawke
 

I doubt that too many, especially in the aviation fraternity, would be laughing now whenever they remember "By 1990, no child in Austrtalia will live in poverty" Mr Hawke.

Helen Clarke reborn????

RFDS logic
 

Our flying doctor service is a VERY VERY essential service for outback residents.
It is also a political tool used by governments to avoid providing the medical services the out back people need.
If you get a cancer scare in Darwin, you will need to travel 3000 km to Adelaide, or a similar distance to Brisbane to see the specialists. Or maybe Singapore would be more practical.
If you live in Alice Springs you only have to travel 1500 km to see a specialist.
There are insufficient medical facilities, and our governments boast about huge budget surplusses.
A state responsibility???? We are not a state, and it is impossible for the N.T, with 200,000 people spread over a large area to finance the facilities needed.
It should be renamed the Australian Flying Doctor Service. Let's stop pretending. It is run by australians, for australians, and financed by Australians.
The flying doctor service should not have to beg for funds from the public. And, if they are to have an AOC and tender for contracts, it does not seem fair to have tax concessions and public funding that give them a financial advantage over other tenderers. (the N.T. government has a list of "preferred tenderers")
To me, it looks like a great big rort that is used by governments to avoid the health care responsibilities that we pay them to do. Australia does not stop 300 miles from the coast, but facilities do. Australians should be ashamed.
Am I biassed?? Probably. I live in Alice Springs.
My wife died of cancer which was detected late, only after she went to Adelaide.
I flew aeroplanes for the Flying Doctor service for about 11 years. It is a VERY VERY essential service.

Well said Bushy...I couldn't agree more with all of your points. :D

It is scandalous in the extreme for our "Health Minister" to label them as a special interest group only, and only serves to show how out of touch are the politicians who live on the seaboard . := :*

Islander Jock; Point taken, but in this instance I am prepared to stick my neck out and I stand by my 'prediction.' If in the future I'm proved wrong I shall admit it. :ok:

Bushy; Hear hear!:ok:

ZEEBEE; No, far worse I fear!:mad:

Too true Bushy.

I too live in a rural town. The local State Government hospital uses the RFDS, particularly at night, to avoid their responsibility to adequately equip and staff the hospital to handle even minor emergencies!

Why is everyone beating up on Julia, I think she's a sexy beast :} Gggrrrr

damn you 'LRT' you just ruined my pending nights sleep here with that pix of the 'barren' woman:bored:


CW

Torres too true mate, and when they can't they dump it on the ambulance service to drive the 8 hours return trip to the regional centre, leaving the entire area without ambulance cover. I guess if the Govts idea of wages and incentives can't attract staff to large metro and regional centres, there's no chance of attracting staff to smaller locales.:ugh:

How you bin bloke?:)

Surplusses
 

And our governments boast about having huge unspent sums of money. Our money that they will not spend on the things we desperately need. Both governments do it.
The coast is a different country.

Any Government that has that big of a surplus isn't doing its job. Sure there should be some money put away for a 'rainy day' i.e. national disaster or international aid etc. but with health, education, roads(particullarly rural), and basically all other infrastructure in the state they are in there is no good reason to have all this money sitting there. It seems to me that these surplus' are being used to buy re-election by promising big sums of money to areas that attract the most media attention before an election. This in itself seems to be a big part of the problem.

Hypothetical scenario:
1. $2b allocated to mental health. How should we spend that?
Let's set up a commitee of 'experts' to best work that out.

2. Where do we put this commitee?
Let's build a new state of the art mental health commitee building with all the latest in computers and communications, better than anything else in the world, we will show everyone that we are leaders in mental health.

3. What has the commitee decided?
We need a new level of middle management to better run mental health.

4. Where will we put this new middle management?
see point 2 substituting commitee for management

5. What has managment decided?
We need more computers, phones and faxes.

6. What about mental health Doctors, Nurses, beds facilities?
Sorry theres not enough money left in the kitty for those incidentals but hey, the new management facilities are spot on!:ugh::ugh::ugh:


It's just false economy. We all know that preventative maintenance is far more effective than just waiting 'till it breaks then putting a bandaid on it!

G'Day Jamair. Hardly a night I don't hear the Doc's King Air go over my house. I am told the local hospital is now whistling up the Docs aircraft for injuries as minor as a simple arm fracture, rather than calling in an on call doctor. And despite the numerous rural health centers and hospitals, the Ambo's Merc Vans are now about as common on the highway, as Road Trains!

Don't start me on the currently proposed Budget Surplus!! :mad: Budget Surpluses have been very smart strategy over the past decade to amortise national debt and build the country's essential reserves, particularly for the liability of unfunded future expenses such as politician and public service superannuation.

However the currently proposed "mine is bigger than yours" $21 Bn surplus is being achieved through even higher taxes on "working families" and further reducing Government services, particularly in the essential areas of health, education and welfare.

If my maths calculations are correct, a $21 Bn budget surplus represents an average additional tax of $2,625 per person for every one of Australia's eight million workers!

No wonder the retirees are demonstrating! Age pensions for those that require them are now below the poverty level and self funded retirees are being slugged with further taxes on their megre investments. Hardly fair by our society when those same retirees have worked and paid their taxes for maybe fifty years, only to spend their twilight years in poverty.

This post is not about politics, but an ever increasing tendency for politicians of all flavours to further stick their snout into the income and lives of working Australians and small business, whilst progressively reducing the services they provide to Australian famililies. How arrogent of any Government to think they can manage my personal affairs better than I can! :yuk:

I hope we see more input into the currently proposed Budget by all Australians and some rationalisation in the Upper House before the Budget becomes law.

Would this be above the sound of banjoes? http://www.augk18.dsl.pipex.com/Smileys/laughpound.gif



Upper House

Cant KRudd just wait until August Torres? :uhoh:

And who will pay the Public Servants from July 1 to August, if there no Appropriation Bill approved by the Senate?

Another Prime Minister tried the same thing in 1976, you may recall........

I think the Prime Minister suggested that by granting the ATO and Centerlink access to the bank accounts of every Australian, the Commonwealth may save $300 million on "welfare cheats".

My guestimate that amounts to 20,000 to 30,000 "welfare cheats" - or 0.1% of the population?

As a result, 100% of the population will now have their private financial records available for scrutiny, without their consent. And how many additional public servants and at what additional cost, to recover perhaps $300 million?

Big Brother is watching! The Australia Card all over again, this time by stealth! :yuk:

Don't lie, cheat or steal - the Government doesn't like competition! :=

Kev07 reckons if you live in Dubbo then you would have to be a National Party or Liberal voter so therefore you can go and get rooted, better spending his surplus in some Labor electorate or another 2020 Wankfest.