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observa
observa
11 years ago

Crocodile tears from the side of politics that inherited a Future Fund and a $23bill surplus and pissed it up against the wall with the latest unbelievable rubbery figures $19.4 bill deficit and red ink as far as the eye can see. The disgusting politicking by this woman knows no bounds and certainly not the hopes of the severely disabled and their carers. Just a useful stick to beat her opponents with when it can’t be delivered.

Just what is being delivered? Supposedly a National Disability Insurance Scheme which presumably means a no fault system of care for those disabled at birth or by accident or circumstance. Just another grand flourish without the hard yards of policy detail, or the shifting of priorities to fund it. Yes there is some low hanging fruit to be picked up by keeping the lawyers out of the trough, but where is the detail on how to meld into an NDIS the disability pension, Third Party Bodily Insurance, Workcover, etc not to mention private tort, in order that the overcompensated pain and suffering recipients make way for the undercompensated severely injured now?

Nothing but a pissant pilot scheme and empty coffers promises and well may she blubber in public for her precious 410,000 when there are double that on the DP with aroused expectations of some slush funds coming their way. It’s all just the most disgusting wedge politics and grasping at a shred of any real achievement in order to try and mask the most ignominious and incompetent government in our memory. Just go!

Lee
Lee
11 years ago

Observa, you epitomise everything that is wrong with political discourse in this country. Mean spirited in the extreme, ignorant, a keyboard commando promoting a blind hatred of the Prime Minister gleaned courtesy of the Church of Alan Jones.

You bang on about how DisabilityCare will ‘meld’ with third party bodily insurance and WorkCover, while failing to acknowledge that if it weren’t for the ALP, most of those entitlements (including Medicare) wouldn’t even exist.

The Howard government decimated education and healthcare during its 11-year reign of terror, while showering the rich with tax cuts, and that is exactly what will happen under Abbott. His incessant negativity since failing to win the last election is unworthy of a two-year old, but it’s all he’s got, and that speaks volumes about the LNP’s vision for this country should he be elected in September.

observa
observa
11 years ago

I see the SA Govt have decided to save our current 3 car household around $300/year with no fault third party
Presumably by cutting out the middlemen lawyers and the plethora of back, neck and pain and suffering claims among others. Mind you these schemes always start out with good intentions and perceived savings until the PS get hold of them and every man and his dog drives a bus through it like the DP nowadays.

So we kick off a misnamed NDIS with a $19.4bill current deficit if you can believe the world’s greatest Treasurer this week and 824000 ‘disabled’ on DP out of a workforce of 11million. That’s $34/week in debt each week in my book for every member of the able bodied workforce and worth a good cry for sure. Another emotional outburst and another failed policy PM?

john r walker
11 years ago

The costs of regulating/defining/rationing who does not gets support will grow.
Some disability’s are real but are also much harder to define :test for, than typical medical conditions.
For example Mental health problems are a big and genuine factor in long term disability.
However ‘what’ is mental illness is still very hard to define :
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829164.000-how-a-scientific-dsm-will-transform-psychiatry.html

One of the issues that symbolizes the dispute in the US is that the latest version of the Diagnostic Bible moved; feeling sad because your life partner has died, into the classification :Clinical Depression.

Thomas the Tout
Thomas the Tout
11 years ago

It ain’t that good! Nice thought; trash in practice.
To whom will it apply. The healthy foetus that suffers oxygen starvation at birth? (Yes – good) . The chronic ice user who jumps off the balcony whilst under the influence? (Sorry, why should I pay for her?) . The self-employed business owner who falls into chronic depression? (Did he ignore the warning signs? Was he driven mad by the Tax Office)
The Devil is in the detail. The detail will reveal if we are a caring bunch of free enterprise capitalists, or a cowering class of communists.
And then the Government will make it a mess! See what it does to Workers Comp schemes , and to Crim Inj Comp schemes – rates go up, and benefits go down; procedural rights are removed.
Can I opt-out of this scheme?
Or, how do I get my moneysworth out of it?
In practical terms, it is a crock of trouble.
Observa might use robust langauge, but he has a valid message.

Tel
Tel
11 years ago

You can’t honestly call it “insurance” because this word describes a group of people facing risk of some future event and voluntarily deciding to amortise that risk between them.

You can’t honestly call it “charity” either, because charity requires a charitable donation, made by personal choice. Money taken at gunpoint can never be charitable.

So it is a wealth transfer scheme, that is the correct name for it.

The fact that they feel the need to be dishonest about the name of it, makes me very uneasy about whether to trust them with the administration, and yeah, all those details (like who really gets the money, and where is the public oversight, etc).

Paul Bamford (aka Gummo T)
Editor
Reply to  Tel

So what would you propose as an acceptable libertarian alternative then, Tel? Do enlighten us.

murph the surf.
murph the surf.
11 years ago

Ah yes the wonder of the bad back.
Everyone over 50 has multiple, small, back joint lesions – rather like the coming wave of diverticulosis sufferers- 1/3 of people over 60 have that so watch out for a surge in numbers of those suffering from grumbling colons too.
Well I know one neurosurgeon who is fighting the good fight.There maybe a long queue waiting but the malingerers are given short shift-“No, you don’t have a bad back, there are no lesions which would elicit your symptoms on your MRI ( the modern miracle of improved imaging), so I won’t sign your certificates.”
As a hard working immigrant herself she states she is amazed at the numbers of scroungers she sees being fully supported.
But you know , medical specialists…..what would they know?
Once she starts on about the refugee claimants and their state paid for surgery for bad backs or recently arrived immigrants with TB lesions in their spines ( another great scheme by the way – overseas Drs signing off on immigrant’s health certificates- absolutely no chance that process will be corrupted ) well her determination to not spend our tax dollars is a heroically defiant but ultimately pointless gesture of welcome to life long state support .
Oh and by the way Thomas drug addiction is a disease too you know and just because they have to do a bit of dealing , you know , to keep themselves supplied , well that isn’t income you know , and they should also get support too .You know?
Hey ,if mental health services can help find them an apartment and send around staff twice or three times each week to check they are keeping themselves together and clean up their flats , well how’s a bit of extra funding going to hurt anyone?

observa
observa
11 years ago

Well Lee when Ms Fair Work Gillard rang Mike Smith’s employer to get him sacked for confusing trust fund with a slush fund that was it for me, particularly after an ex Slater and Gordon partner returned from OS to go the closest I’ve ever heard Lawyerspeak calling another lawyer a crook. Then the scheming in the Lodge with the Misogyny Maidens, etc and I realised this consumate Machiavellian student politician will do and say whatever it takes.

Glad you brought up Medicare but don’t confuse a Blewitt and his peers with this gaggle of jumped up uni students and union hacks. All announcement and no homework. Having said that It might surprise you to know we did get medical attention before Medicare and both it and the PBS are in trouble now with insatiable demands and I can assure you if they keep squeezing the dispensing rates for pharmacies to control burgeoning costs there will be mass closures of chemists in the near future.

I won’t go over all the hair-brained schemes, emotional sorryness and wasteful spending of this Labor regime but leave that to the Opposition in the official election campaign to remind us all. Just spare me the poor education sector needing another few billion Gonskis for another revolution or I’ll gag. Sufficeth to say if the severely disabled were front and centre of of Labor’s hearts, they had ample opportunity and tax income to direct it that way when coming into office but why now when the cupboard is bare and the debt collector is knocking at the door? The poisoned chalice from Gillard, Swan, Conroy and Co at the expense of raised expectations by the most vulnerable now. Disgusting in my book and I’m not alone.

You don’t set the PS up to fail with this open ended cheque book as they haven’t a chance administering the margins against another poor hard done by prospective claimant on the evening current affairs show. They get no kudos for all the correct decisions but just get hammered for the odd heart tugger and once bitten twice shy.

I was looking for the NZ experience when I came across a fairly succinct summary of the poisoned chalice State Leviathan, Gillard and Co have ever so thoughtfully and emotionally dumped on our plates. So much for more Gonskis for the lockstep congratulators of our wonderfully achieving politicians, but there is the odd dissenter from the emotional Groupthinkers.

murph the surf.
murph the surf.
11 years ago
Reply to  Nicholas Gruen

WC and NDIS are markers of having attained a higher degree of care and civility within a society.As such they reflect well on any society which institutes them.
Many will be less sanguine about the prospect for endless growth and mission creep that such a vast scheme may entail.If we fear an overdeveloped sense of entitlement among some this scheme will be a challenge to those administering it as you have noted.
Fine and noble sentiments won’t always translate into effective and prudent administration but as a start and as we are discussing disability surely decision making with regard to entitlement needs an august review panel of suitably qualified persons on it- health care professionals only.
One of the main points as I understand the new scheme is that the disabled person will have the power to decide which care provider can access their funds in exchange for a service.Sounds great in theory but will the best overall decision for society be made out of this collection of individual actions?
‘Care in the Community’ as a plan to change and improve mental health services delivery has been a mixed success- there are now problems of empire building NGOs replicating services and wasting public funds and the consumers are often left isolated and remote from community. It has been very hard to say this change has been for the better.
Still let’s all just push hard and hope and pray that with all that straining nothing herniates or exits prematurely.

observa
observa
11 years ago
Reply to  Nicholas Gruen

Well WC like motor TPB insurance and even public liability and accident/sickness insurance are dedicated insurance schemes with premia and if not specific payouts then Court awarded precedents and that can be an escalating problem in itself. Yes they all make sense as murph describes but that problem of rising expectations if not some treating it as a personal slush fund.

It’s clear State WC schemes have been under the pump but at least there’s competition between States to see they’re business costs are not getting out of line or simply incurring large unfunded liabilities. In that respect the SA Labor Govt had to reign in the generosity of SA’s WC scheme only recently, much to the union howls, but even Labor Govts recognise the problem of loading Oz business up with uncompetive costs and doubly so for the import/export competing sector.

Now that CIS ‘State Leviathan’ analysis doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that a no fault universal disability scheme would be any different to WC schemes and even public liability. It was back in the FAI collapse days when PL insur premiums suddenly got ugly. particularly as we wanted liab cover for primary school building work. Old folks homes were fine but chidcare and kindy stuff were yikes and even Govt tenders relaxed the liability cover rules to get more tenders. Talking to my broker at the time he said hairdressers were getting impossible to insure. Hairdressers you ask and so did I. Well it seems the scallywags had cottoned on to claims for bad hairdos and were getting $2-3k confidential payouts out of the insurers for stress and suffering, etc. The alternative was for the insurers to fight in the Courts and probably get done for more(lefty lawyers become judges remember) and advertise the rort more widely.

Well if my peer group are good at extracting middle class welfare out of the great taxpayer/union/shareholder/banking slush funds and you know who and how, then the battlers have their own ways and means as well as the back fence grapevine and fairs fair when their elites seem to have lost any sense of self control. While PE has an incentive to control costs the PS is governed by the need not to offend the shock jocks and nightly CA shows and pollies recognising that heat naturally opt to privatise unseemly collections and claims and wipe their hands clean.

One of the lad’s mates D is a private dick which almost univerally involves hanging about compo claimants incognito and he tells some fascinating stories, although the work isn’t much like the movies. One WC claimant with a bad back claims he can barely walk, let alone carry anything, can’t go fishing, stress, yada, yada but what he doesn’t know is D and his offsider are camping with him in the sandhills down the Coorong and the camera is rolling while he sets up camp with his 4WD and humps eskys and gear and beach casts his rods with no signs of impediment whatsoever. Said film will subsequently be presented to the claimant with the advice that forthwith all payments are stopped and thank his lucky stars they’re not prosecuting for fraud and case closed. The word gets around and the claims are reduced to a manageable level with the uninitiated dummies.

I just don’t see any of that happening with an unfunded NDIS and aside from the NZ experience you only have to look at our DP numbers and how hard it is to reduce them once they’re on and there are plenty who never should have been. Around half according to those NDIS prospective numbers.

Thomas the Tout
Thomas the Tout
11 years ago

Nicholas
I appreciate your civil discourse.
To equate NDIS with workers comp is a bit of a long bow.
– Workers comp is (basically) a ‘no-fault’ scheme. Employer pays premiun; You are injured; in the course of your employment; insurer pays for your treatment until you are repaired, or pays you a lump-sum to go away. In days gone by, there was a second layer: you are injured; in the course of your employment; the employer caused it; you can (could) claim a higher amount (common-law claim). SA Govt removed that right. (It is an ex-right; it has ceased to be; it is pining….)
But in all things, someone was notionally at fault – the employer.
In NDIS there is no fault..
It is not an insurance scheme (see above)
There is little that the premium payers can do to reduce “injuries” and therefore claims. ( an extreme – will the State sterilise alcoholic women to prevent chance of foetal alcohol injuries? If not, why not?). Whereas, with workers comp, the boss can direct how the work is done. With motor vehicles, the police ( read ‘the State’) enforce traffic controls so as to reduce injuries.
So, NDIS will be ‘compulsory charity’ . That is a non-sequitur, so it will be social welfare. And we already have that, albeit in a very fragmented way.
And with the bureaucracy running it, it will go to custard (ref. C Northcote Parkinson).
Nice theory; nice warm feeling; another step whereby the individual is subservient to the State.

john r walker
11 years ago

Nicholas
I have through family and friends seen how woeful/painful our current system for chronic disability (be it MND or schizophrenia) can be.

Problem is that every time we add a new improved level of care to deal with problems of the existing general system of medical type care we also add a new level of admin and often indulge in robing peter to pay paul.

And in particular , circular, useless ‘referral’ , ‘facilitating’,’advocacy’ and ‘advice’ services just grow like mushrooms.