Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Those who calculate these things use a couple of measures.  "Quality-adjusted life-years" (I kid you not) and longevity of population for amount spent on health (percentage of GDP) and so on.  There are other 'softer' measures like the wellbeing index.

So, all measures measure something and what you measure depends on the choices you make.  So, yes, all measures are to some extent arbitrary.  And yes, all measures refer only to averages.  If you (or a loved on) have a rare disease that can only be treated in the US you are likely to be in favour of their system.  You will also know that many other persons and their loved ones could have not died by putting the money elsewhere.  There are awful and inevitable dilemmas in this debate.

Generally speaking the value underlying the public debate comes down to "the greatest good for the greatest number".  Naturally, this value is not beyond challenge.  However, the question often comes down to a sense of proportion (unreasoned) how many American's toenails = 1 child's life under other systems (eg supplying clean drinking water).  In Australia how many heart bypasses vs reducing Aboriginal deaths from diabetes.

The initiatives on citizen juries and such is one way to inject this kind of consideration into health funding.  The decision on what measure to use will (in my opinion) be always subjective at least to some extent (there is many a philosophical argument in here); however, once the measure is decided on then it is possible to be quite rigorously objective.

I trust this reply is addressing what you had to say.  If not please get back to me about it.

Evan Hadkins:

There are several nations where health is much more affordable and effective than the US.

I would think the "effective" part is a strict matter of personal perception. I' am not sure if there is anything tangible to measure world hospitals against one another? I would also think if you are sick, and then you find yourself cured you would be happy with the outcome irrespective of where it took place.

If we are going to talk about say the world's best hospital I would suggest Johns Hopkins would come very close (I may well be wrong). If I found myself in their care I personally would not be complaining. My personal perception would thus be that the USA had the greatest and most effective health system.

The problem with charts and graphs in the area of health (that I have read) is that they are put together based on averages - and if averages were such a great thing we would say Mozart was an average musician. The average in many places may mean every person with an ingrown toenail is treated, and there is a 100% success rate. However, what happens with the success rate of major heart surgery, extreme and rare cancers etc? Is it better to have a system were everyone is treated equally bad or average or is it better to have a system that can in certain circumstances aim to be the best? I personally would think that would depend on the situation one finds oneself in at a given time.

Evan Hadkins:

Hi Paul. In the US the government health system is more efficient than the private. There are several nations where health is much more affordable and effective than the US.

I would have to know what you are basing your claims against before agreeing to this particular statement. For example in many places in the world health is not affordable or available for large parts of the population. It therefore hardly matters to those people if it is more affordable there than it is in the USA.

Private probably doesn't suit every situation - our drugs are (relatively) cheap because the government is effectively the monopoly purchaser. From this we all benefit.

Drug prices are down to what is one of the greatest 20th century frauds known as the intellectual property patent. Is there anything worse than a room full of politicians? Yes, a room full of politicians from a handful of powerful nations. Forget ideology - it has nothing to do with the matter. A politician will always without exception come to a conclusion based on where his or her bread is best buttered - and intellectual property patents are the sham within which blatant corporatism operates.

If people cannot accept a world without taxation I would suggest a sole tax based on consumption. A single tax such as this is a fair way to reward the less consuming. Income tax is an inequitable unfair theft of money that is not rightfully the governments. If you or I ran a business in a similar fashion we would be charged with racketeering.

Malcolm B Duncan

Vote me in and watch me do it.

Sorry I don't vote; however, I will give you my support because being better than me with my money means the impossible indeed is sometimes possible.

Hi Paul. In the US the government health system is more efficient than the private. There are several nations where health is much more affordable and effective than the US.

Private probably doesn't suit every situation - our drugs are (relatively) cheap because the government is effectively the monopoly purchaser. From this we all benefit.

From a more philosophical perspective: private sanity can be collective lunacy. One example: it makes sense to drive a car taller than others as the angle of impact in a crash affects the injuries sustained. Everyone individually maximising their safety would lead to cars several storeys high.

David Roffey, the only thing I am claiming is knowing how to spend my own money better than anyone else. If tax (my money) were to stop being collected tomorrow people would still need those basic things. There is no reason to believe they would cease to exist. There is no reason to believe demand would not improve them. The only change would be with who actually pays for the service. It would be a more equitable service.  Governments continually pass off their responsibilities to others whilst still becoming larger, funny that.

I believe in a user pays system, and would happily go into it tomorrow if given the opportunity. There will never ever be enough money for government.

John Pratt

1. It is better to make a decision after discussion with many people from many backgrounds, this is called good governance.

Certainly I do not believe any person can spend my money better than I can. Governance has zero to do with it. Find your own money and your own governance is my advice.

The winner from the two parties' budgets is neo liberal economics. And a good thing that is too.

1. Why do people think government can spend their more wisely than they can?

2. Why do people think a faltering government system will do any better with more money? Perhaps money is not the problem?

3. Why do people look to government in the forlorn hope it may solve their problems?

Three things I never could find an answer for.

Margo, I think you will find donations go to the party likely to win. Look who gets the lion's share of business donations in NSW. I think you will find it is the NSW ALP, not the Liberal Party.

I think what John Howard says about Richard Pratt is largely true. Should we call the board of Qantas criminals?  What about Woolworths?  Telstra would be one I would gladly call that.  We live in a market economy that has been poorly served by the ACCC.  In many cases they should not have allowed duopolies to develop in the first place.  Even if Pratt had not colluded with a competitor, it is unlikely you would ever get proper competition in such a poorly set up market.

Does anyone think Qantas and Virgin Blue are competing?  No, of course not.  They may as well have had meetings that agreed not to compete.  They don't need to because it is obvious that in a situation that is a duopoly both can make fat profits.  The only thing that serves the consumer well is to make barriers to market entry low. That is why Tiger will be the low fares airline that will upset the market and drive down prices.

You would recall our earlier discussion on groceries.  It is an opportunity for IGA and others outside the duopoly.  I for one would dance on Coles' grave.  I would hope WalMart or similar enters this market and this afternoon I shall consider visiting German owned Aldi.

In no way am I condoning illegal behaviour.  What I am pointing out though is how dysfunctional aspects of the marketplace are.  For example, Telstra should have been broken up and destroyed rather than left as a belligerent monopolistic competitor.

Business impacts all of us.  Unions don't.  85% of us in the private sector workforce choose not to be in unions.  A Labor government will be beholden to unions.  Unions have a track record of holding this country back. You and others may have some nostalgia about a mythical Australian past. I don't.  I like it now. A return to the thuggery of our union past will not be welcome by many.  People who understand business are far more in touch with modern Australia than people, the unions and Julia Gillard, who seek to threaten and damage business. Business provides the jobs, unions seek to destroy all in their path.  They've been a cancer on this country in the past and we should not let it grow back.  Cut it out now!

What if Mr Howard were to concede that Bennelong is unwinnable, and instead orchestrated a parachute into Mitchell (most likely - added advantage - gets rid of a hard-right NSW Lib)? Tapping Ruddock or Bishop on the shoulder would also be possible.

Parents receiving family benefits with one child at primary school and one at secondary school would get a $1125 a year tax refund for education expenses under Labor's tax policy announced today.

Labor leader Kevin Rudd also promised to keep most of the Government's $34 billion worth of tax cuts outlined on Monday, except he would defer some of the $3 billion tax cut for people earning over $180,000, who would receive a reduced amount.

If Labor's beholden to the unions, whose pocket is Howard in? Big business rip off merchants fleecing regular people?

Howard on Pratt, whose company pockleted hundreds aof millions of dollars through illegal price fixing ('luckily' for Pratt, the H govt didn't keep its promise to criminalise this behaviour):

"I have found Mr Pratt to be a generous Australian. He's been very successful in business and my own dealings with him have always been very positive. And I like him."

A few million went the Liberal Party's way, of course.

Tony Abbott admits to taking strike action:

FEDERAL Health Minister Tony Abbott last night confirmed he had been a member of the Australian Journalists' Association when he worked at The Bulletin magazine.

He moved a strike resolution at Australian Consolidated Press, publisher of The Bulletin, after the company sacked the publication's photographic department...

Alga, I know there are, or were, subsidies on solar panels in Queensland not that long ago. Whether they still exist I don't know or care, because I don't live there any more. But when I did, I bought some, and got a subsidy. I think that extended to inverter and wiring and stuff too. Every retailer made the subsidy available. All you had to do was sign a form saying it was for domestic purposes, and for use in Queensland. As distinct from subsidies, the discounts I mentioned are ordinary retail discounts — more you buy, less you pay per unit; and if you're not offered a decent discount there's always the seller down the road.

I think solar's great. I've argued here on Webdiary with people who reckon it's too expensive, but its relative expense depends on where you live. When the power company quotes you 20,000 to connect you to their wires, and more for an ugly bloody transformer on a pole, which you don't even get to own, even though you paid for it, and then charge you for every watt you use, solar comes up pretty cheap by comparison.

Queensland Greens reckon there should be solar panels on every roof. I'll go further and say there should be nothing else. Get rid of all those dangerous, hideous wires.

And on the Queensland Greens, they say this: "Did you know that the Commonwealth government is actually reducing its subsidies for solar technology? The Greens believe it is therefore very important that the State Government immediately put in place incentives for householders to capture solar energy that is free, clean, limitless, and currently going to waste." So it seems from that that there must be some kind of Commonwealth subsidy, albeit reducing.

Bill, it costs me 26-28 cents to make a litre of biodiesel, we use that to start our engines then switch to oil which costs nothing, so when you work out the amount of biodiesel used to start and flush the system before stopping the engine at the end of the day, it's less than 1 litre. As 90% of our journeys are more than 200 kms, you can work out the cost yourself, my maths is terrible.

We grow seed oil on land which is very sandy and marginal for crops without lots of work and water, that's why we only get about 500-800 lt per acre, as well, we utilise our natural bush. Our ute, a triton has a 70 lt main tank, 280 litre removable long range tank under a false floor in the back of the ute and an 8 litre bio starter tank under the bonnet, giving us 3000+ klms range. We use heat exchangers to heat the oil before the fuel pump to lower viscosity and raise its flash point for better combustion. When we hitch up our purpose built camper trailer, we can carry and extra 100 lt's of oil if needed, which takes us even further. We also carry a portable filter system which means we can top our fuel up when we come across used oil in our travels, which is often.  Most places we stay and play music at, are always happy to give us a few drums of old oil to keep us going, which we filter over night. Our third stop in NSW this trip, already has 4x20lt drums for us, a free bed, food, grog and all we have to do is turn up and play music until we are stuffed and the people go home, then they pay us as well.

From the best of my knowledge, there is no discount or government subsidy for solar at point of sale, except under RAPS and other pitiful government after-sale subsidies. I agree the high cost of solar panels is because of the corporate control over them, (BP) is one who doesn't want solar to drop in price. The lighting in our homes is low voltage LED, we use as much low voltage equipment as we can, a simple thing to do for anyone if they are prepared to take a bit of responsibility for their consumption, as well as lower their power bills.

Here are a couple more you might like to add to your repertoire of broken English, Malcolm B. These ones were noted and chuckled at some time ago by the Coodabeens on ABC radio:

"A doggy-dog world" for A dog-eat-dog world.

"It all goes well" for It augurs well.

All the best for electoral success. I hope it all goes well, but I'm not sure it augurs all that well.

Alga, in reply to your earlier post: I agree in principle with the thrust of your argument. There is no fundamental difference, when it comes to the big issues, between the two parties. And even if there were, whatever happens in Australia can have no effect on the world at large. I think the world's leaders are mad. I just don't blame monotheism for their madness — but I'm not looking to re-open that can of worms.

Seems to me that if we go on the way we've been going the world as we know it is just going to fall into a black hole. I'm not so much concerned about oil shortage — there are alternatives, like natural gas, and the biofuels option, as you mentioned. I don't see much direct relevance to solar power, as someone else here mentioned. I know that stuff pretty well; and reckon you'd need an acre or so of solar collection by silicon to power even a small passenger car.

So with the impending oil shortage, unless it's contrived, as some say — but I'm sceptical about that — there's a crisis looming, but not a catastrophe. A discomforting change of lifestyle for us all, but ultimately a change for the better, when we get used to it. What I'm more concerned about is the damage we're doing to the planet. Whatever kind of fuel we use we will continue to pollute the atmosphere. If anyone wants to challenge me on that with reference to ethanol, will they please factor in the amount of carbon dioxide produced during the making of that kind of fuel. Likewise hydrogen fuel cells, which take enormous amounts of generated electricity to make.

And our cities and towns continue to be lit up like Christmas trees, 24/7; and some government guy tells us we can all do our bit to fix things up by installing low-watt lightbulbs. Talk about Nero fiddling. And every now and then they let off a million dollars worth of fireworks to keep the people comfortably stupefied. I'm old enough to remember when people had enough sense to turn the light off when they weren't using it. And kids were allowed to have fun letting off their own few fireworks once a year, on cracker night. And that was before anyone was anxious about global warming.

On more practical matters, I still have doubts about some of your figures. 2.8 cents per litre is still incredible. There certainly isn't enough used chip shop oil to provide everyone with biodiesel; and every acre given over to fuel oil production is an acre taken away from food production. I'm not an agronomist, but I can't imagine how you can grow oil seed grains on land unfit for growing food.

Can't believe in that ute of yours, either. Must have an enormous tank, is all I can say. I used a diesel Landrover (Defender) for a long time; used to get 1000 kilometre, give or take depending on how hard it was used, per 90 litre tank. Pretty phenomenal, considering its weight of three and a half tonnes. Your 3000 k. just leaves me wondering if I'm being had a lend of.

David Eastwood, John Pratt, et al, isn't solar already subsidised, at point of sale? It was in Qld. when I bought some there; and I seem to recall the Federal Govt. outlining plans to subsidise solar for domestic use quite recently. As for subsidising manufacture, I don't hold with that. Dumping barrowloads of money in the laps of BP shareholders? A bit like mailing Mitsubishi a million dole cheques a month to keep them happy enough to stay here.

David, I find it difficult to make sense of that Greeneconometrics info you put up. The coal/oil/gas figures are way below what we're actually paying, aren't they? And on solar, I can't help but wonder how they came to that figure of 38 cents per kilowatt hour. At first glance it looks mad to me. Consider: modules cost $10.00 per watt to buy retail (less, with subsidy and discount, but let's leave it at ten bucks to allow generously for installation costs). The things are guaranteed for 10 years, or 20, depending on which company made them. They're purely solid state, and close to indestructible (BP, I think it is, say theirs will withstand a shotgun attack). I would be surprised if they don't last fifty years; and wouldn't be surprised if they last a hundred. And they sit quietly where you put them and produce their watts all day.

To be sure, we don't have daylight 24 hours a day, and in poor daylight conditions we don't get a full watt for our ten bucks (but it's worth noting that in perfect conditions we get better than rated output). My bullshit detector is better than my maths, so I'll leave it to others to do the calculations. Last one I did here was embarrassingly out by a factor of ten.

Its amazes me at how ridiculous the the scare campaigns are against alternative energies. $45000 USA dollars for 2 kilowatt solar system is so far fetched it's laughable. I just rang a friend here in Tas who is a licensed government solar installer and was told a 2KW system with 2Kw inverter installed including GST is $24485, then you take of the $8000 rebate off that. Even without a rebate, its not the ludicrous cost put up by the uninformed fear freaks. My own ongoing experience since the late 70's, also shows the complete opposite. Alternative energy and fuel industries would create meaningful employment for Australians and it's really easy to stop imports to allow them to survive, it's called tariffs, something used 50 years ago which allowed us to have a huge industrial and manufacturing competitive base, allowing small business to prosper. The only difference now is our government institutions are controlled my monopoly corporations which dictate the direction of political parties, so we have the situation we now face, idiots running the country into a growing dust bowl and massive overseas debt. Flow batteries solve the storage problems, solar cubes http://www.greenandgoldenergy.com.au/ and other advancements are bringing down costs dramatically. With a growing domestic industry not controlled by corporations as solar is now, would ensure national competition and development bringing down prices even more. I'd like someone to provide proof globalisation and free trade has been of benefit to the real economic situation in this country and not some airy fairy economic sample which leaves out our current account deficit.

Bob Brown said: "Australia has a Prime Minister with a vision for tax cuts but no vision for Australia's future.

"Make no mistake, what these cuts mean is that Australian families will have to spend more on private health insurance, more money on private school fees and more money reducing the impact of their own houses on climate change."

It looks as if the electorate is capable of seeing this — especially if Rudd is capable of providing the leadership.

Senator Bob Brown correctly points to the hole in Howard's tax cuts: the cuts will be no help because the cost of living  will continue to rise and the promised cuts will soon be gobbled up.

Eliot Ramsey:

Perhaps because they're expecting the economy to continue growing.

It is also not a bad idea for a nation to be somewhat competitive with taxation levels. Calling for the invention of new industries is the easy part. Actually finding, as opposed to talking about, such industries is the tricky bit. Taking away incentive (uncompetitive taxation) to do so is not a good way to get the process moving along. Australia is an island, it is not another planet.

THEY must be counting their blessings, the workers at CSG Solar AG in Thalheim, Germany. Demand for solar power is booming and the people in the eastern state of Sachsen-Anhalt are riding the wave of global change. So successful is the company in developing and manufacturing solar power technology, it recently started to operate around the clock.

Many people in the East had a rough time after the reunification of the two Germanys. The socialist economy was in tatters and there were few prospects for decent, well-paid work. Then, in June 2004, came CSG Solar, first with only one employee. But soon demand for solar products expanded, and so did the need for labour. Today CSG Solar employs hundreds.

Great for Thalheim. Bad for Australia. These jobs could be in Horsham or Goulburn. "Crystalline silicon on glass" — solar technology is an Australian invention. It was developed at the University of New South Wales. But Australia lacked the determination and political will to effectively commercialise the brilliant invention. In 2004 CSG Solar purchased the rights. Aussie solar cells are now manufactured where staff eat bockwurst during their lunch breaks, not meat pies.

Howard's lack of vision has caused thousands of Australian jobs to go overseas. Unless we find leaders that are willing to invest in Australian technology, we will have no future for our kids. 

Mr Howard called on Australians to throw off the "cultural inhibition" of fearing success and argued that the economy could keep growing indefinitely.

"Why do we worry all the time that we can't succeed? Growth is good; we should believe in it, we should aspire to it," Mr Howard told Fairfax.

Howard believes in continuous growth. Someone should tell him that it is impossible.

Why do we continue living as though we were not a part of nature? One of the root causes has to do with the rise to global dominance of the market economy and its underpinning assumptions and prerequisites, one of which is continuous growth. Even in his recent impassioned writings, scientist Tim Flannery has found it necessary to rely on market forces (in this case, carbon trading) to produce continued development, productivity and future wealth. I think Flannery is partly correct in this but his argument doesn't go anywhere near far enough. At a deeper level we should be thinking about how and why global warming has come about and why we have been so reluctant to address it. If our economic theories rely absolutely on the assumption of continuous economic growth and yet we live on a planet in which continuous growth is plainly impossible, then our economic theories must be seen as being fatally flawed. This of course seems almost comically divorced from reality, but it's not. We need as a matter of the utmost urgency to seek out ways by which our human society can re-couple itself with our underlying biology and work towards operating the way the rest of the planet does, ultimately achieving a societal and economic steady state.

Howard's plan for our economy is a plan that is doomed to fail. If we want a planet for our kids and grandkids, we need to get rid of this way of thinking. Howard has no idea of the future and no plans to take us there. We live on a finite planet and we are already taking much more than our share.

A mess? Reba's hardly been the health minister long enough to make a mess of anything. Government by the Daily Telegraph may seem the norm in NSW, but it doesn't reflect reality.

Any "mess" in NSW health is down to that scary right winger John Harzistergos.

You won't get a lot of argument from me about NSW Labor but Reba Meagher is no offender there. Just think - with Labor in federally then we can work together to boot out NSW Labor.

Nothing has changed from previous elections, just talk of money uselessly thrown around concentrating on only one aspect of the economic situation, but not one mention of a most obvious and telling fact in the bottom line of our countries situation. The countries growing $1 billion plus a month overseas debt. Which is hundreds of billions of dollars. Now if my company was going backwards in its balance of payments at that rate, I wouldn't say we were balancing the books, more money going out than coming in doesn't sound like a good economic outcome at all. Add the multiplying domestic credit debt and things look very different, so how can you have a balanced budget whilst leaving out crucial aspects of the monetary situation.

Not one mention from anyone about peak oil being here and what they will do next year about it, just more money spent on roads. We still have those who deny climate change, yet even if it's not happening, there's a rapidly diminishing water supply and none for the food growing area's of the country. As usual It's all about money this election, who can throw the most, yet not one solution addressing and restoring the services we used to have and deserve. I really hope the debate changes before we end up with a government just like the one we have now and just as blind to the countries reality, These fools think they know, but the people see and feel the outcomes of their works, they know nothing but how to con people. Just look at the legal professions control over our lives and the outcomes for the people, along with the numbers of lawyers in our countries parliaments and trying to get in, to see a brilliant example of failure.