WHAT on earth is the Gillard Government doing wasting so many taxpayers’ dollars on dental health for children, education, and support for the disabled.
It should be getting on with the job of making conditions better for wealth creation by lowering or abolishing the mining tax, increasing subsidies for industry, and introducing new tax breaks for business.
The trouble with schemes like free dental care for children, or subsidised dental care for adults, or allowing children from poor backgrounds to get anywhere near a university is that they can become entrenched.
The history of Medibank and Medicare proves the point. These schemes have to be nipped in the bud. After the Whitlam Labor Government introduced Medibank in the face of a fairly good scare campaign, it only ran a couple of years before the Fraser Coalition Government grabbed power and chiselled away at it until it was all but gone.
But after the Hawke-Keating Government reintroduced it, it ran for nearly a decade before there was a change of government.
By then, it was too late. Once the people see that a scare campaign has come to nothing, they actually like these reforms, and no new government dare take them back. The Howard Government had to promise at every election not to unwind Medicare.
It finally had to chuck in the towel and announce to the rich that if they can’t beat it, they should join it. So the Medicare safety net was introduced which in effect subsidised the wealthy’s excessive use of the system. And health-insurance schemes were allowed to subsidise the wealthy’s exercise and diet regimes.
So it is imperative that the Coalition act now with a fierce scare campaign against dental and disability schemes. Tell voters that under the dental scheme good teeth will be extracted rather than saved just to save money. Tell voters that they and their children will be forced to go to whatever inferior dentist the government tells then to. Tell them the disabled will have to be put in government homes to give their carers respite; that inspectors will have to approve at-home living conditions for the disabled; and so on.
The Coalition should look at the US example where the Republicans succeeded in watering down universal health before the people got a chance to sample it. They used great scare campaigns: compulsory abortions; no choice of doctor; cheap care options; squalid hospitals and so on.
In Australia, even with a change of government in the offing, it will soon be too late for these new schemes. Voters might get it into their silly heads that spending government money on fixing children’s teeth is a good idea. And then where will we be: money that should be spent on wealth generation will be wasted on teeth.
The spending on education is even more insidious. The more money that goes to public schools, the greater the danger that people educated in them will get to positions of power and influence, and in turn waste even more money on public schools.
And this is money compulsorily confiscated through the tax system. There is no choice. And choice is what we need.
The Howard Government was quite good on choice. Why waste money on classrooms and teachers in public schools when you can give voters cash allowances to spend the money in the way they choose – on plasma TVs so their children can watch educational programs, for example.
The disability scheme presents an even greater problem for the Coalition. The Coalition will have to be really clever to finish it off before the whole misguided scheme begins. People should accept their lot in life, or do something about it through their own efforts. Once the idea that government should help the disabled gets a toehold, untold amounts of money will be wasted.
The trouble here is all the recent on-cue free publicity the disabled have been getting with the Paralympics. Sport touches the Australian psyche. The danger here is that, at least in the sporting arena, Australia might for a change have live up to its self-anointed reputation for giving a fair go to the underdog.
The task for the Coalition is to undermine this wasteful scheme without being seen as unpatriotic in the face of our Paralympic medallists or worse – being seen as anti-sport.
It will require great skill. Once again, the US – a robust, wealth-generating, individualist country — points the way. They routinely come first in the real Olympics and come a fair way down the table (for the wealthiest country on earth) in the Paralympics – leaving nations with a history of socialism, communism and the welfare state to waste their money on such things.
The Coalition must do something before wasting money on educating the poor; helping the disabled, and repairing rotten teeth become accepted government roles.
DOT DOT DOT
AMERICAN exceptionalism continues to abound during the US presidential election campaign. The idea that the US is exceptional pervades both sides of politics.
It goes beyond mere national pride or even excessive patriotism. It is the view that the US is not only the best country in the world but that it has a god-given duty to promote democracy and the American way throughout the world, and that its way of doing things is best.
Sure, the US has got a lot going for it, but exceptionalism makes it very difficult to change abruptly from a policy, however obviously wrong it is, especially in foreign affairs. Doing so would be an admission that the US was not exceptional and that its god-given duty had been misdirected.
Barack Obama, therefore, found it impossible to withdraw from Iraq – indeed, he instigated the surge. He could not close Guantanamo. He continued the war on terror and continued to maintain the vast security apparatus built up by his predecessors.
So, the US stayed in Afghanistan, even though the result will be exactly the same in 2014 as it would have been if they had withdrawn in 2008 – a return of the Taliban and continued violence and corruption.
Australia, of course, remains in the same boat – not because we or our political leaders think Australia is exceptional, but because we do whatever the Americans want us to do. Sad really.
CRISPIN HULL
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times on 8 September 2012.
Nice one Crispin