A Leftist government that slashes welfare payments

The bureaucracy is sacrosanct: Must not fire any of them -- even though firing just one would free up money to pay dozens of welfare recipients. It is clear where the real priorities of a Leftist government lie. The power to control people is what matters -- not helping them. And the "climate change" fairy matters more than the old and the sick, of course

LABOR will scrap annual bonuses of $1600 paid to carers as its budget razor gang carves deep into welfare programs to cut spending and curb inflation. It will replace the payments with a higher utilities allowance but will leave the sick and disabled and their carers hundreds of dollars a year worse off. Although Families Minister Jenny Macklin refused to confirm the plan last night, she stressed the payments, created by the Howard government and paid for the past four years, had never been written into budget forward estimates and were "one-off".

As senior sources confirmed the payments were to be scrapped, Wayne Swan yesterday told a business lunch the Howard government had engaged in the "old politics" of pork-barrelling, leaving the incoming Government facing the need to make dramatic budget cuts to reduce the inflationary pressure that was driving up interest rates.

Terminally ill Queensland pensioner Ashley Norman, 73, contacted The Australian to attack the Rudd Government over its plans, saying Labor had supported the bonuses in Opposition. "My wife gets $100 a fortnight to look after me," Mr Norman said from his home in Mackay. "She's got to do everything I did, everything she did and care for me like a baby. "What he's (Kevin Rudd) doing is criminal. To take $1600 off us after giving it to us every year for four years, it's criminal."

Opposition frontbencher Tony Abbott accused Labor of using carers as "human shields in the fight against inflation". "You've got this big surplus; you've got to do something with it," he said. "Let's not victimise carers."

Mr Abbott said the cuts brought to mind a 2006 essay by the Prime Minister in The Monthly magazine entitled Howard's Brutopia: The Battle of Ideas in Australian Politics, in which Mr Rudd said Australia had become a brutopia because of the Howard government's "market fundamentalism". "(The cuts) suggest that Rudd's essay was a political marketing exercise, not a statement of real personal belief," Mr Abbott said. "What happened to Rudd's compassion? Rudd, it seems, is more capable of running a brutopia than Howard ever was."

Almost 400,000 Australians have received the Carer Bonus for the past four years. The bonus paid $1000 to carer payment recipients and $600 to carer allowance recipients. Because many households received both payments, the bonus had become a regular $1600 windfall.

Ms Macklin yesterday refused to rule anything in or out in the budget, in line with the rote response being given by all ministers. But she said the Rudd Government understood the difficulties faced by carers and was extending the Utilities Allowance to Carer Payment recipients for the first time with an increase to $500 a year, every year. "The Carer Bonus payments were only one-off payments, which the previous government never guaranteed into the budget," she said.

Carers Australia chief executive Joan Hughes said she held grave fears for the bonus. "We've already heard from various departments there's not going to be any more growth in our programs," she said.

The payment is one of at least 30 Howard government programs, worth $3.6 billion, to be dumped under Labor as it struggles to slice spending to curb inflation it blames on reckless spending and vote-buying by the previous government. Prior to the federal election last November, Labor produced costings of its own election promises along with $5.4 billion in savings to be achieved through scrapping or modifying Howard government programs. The razor gang is striking across all areas of government, with many slashed programs to be replaced by other new payments.

While some, such as the Carers' Bonus, will leave recipients worse off, others will be replaced by more lucrative spending schemes based on changed priorities. For example, Mr Swan will replace the low-emission technology demonstration fund, worth $140 million over four years, with a range of climate change related spending worth significantly more. Similarly, many old rural grants programs are to be replaced by others aimed at helping farmers adapt to climate change. And Labor's abolition of a $359million dental health plan will be countered by more than $600 million in new spending.

Mr Swan, who has spent the months since Labor's election softening up the electorate for the spending cuts and attacking the failure of the previous government to guard against inflation, repeated the message yesterday in a speech to the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce. The Treasurer said the previous government had spent public money to win elections rather than ensuring the long-term productivity of the economy. "Our election struck a blow at old politics and left us confronted with its legacy - a legacy of the old way that elections had to be bought, spending could be reckless, there was no need to invest in the future because pork-barrelling could get you through," he said. "Put simply, the economy hasn't been adequately equipped to meet the challenges that have come with our 17 years of expansion coupled with the terms of trade boom. The supply capacity of the economy isn't keeping pace with demand."

The Howard government has been criticised for the generosity of its middle-class welfare, but in his first major speech since the election defeat, Mr Howard last night defended his record. "The taxation system should generously recognise the cost of raising children," he told an American Enterprise Institute dinner in Washington DC. "This is not middle-class welfare. It is merely a taxation system with some semblance of social vision."

Mr Norman has spent weeks attempting to find out whether the Rudd Government would continue with the carer's payment for his wife, Patricia, 70. He said he had written seven letters to Mr Rudd and received no reply. Despite gasping for breath from chronic emphysema caused by laying asbestos roofs during his working life, Mr Norman has pestered anyone who would listen to him about the payment. Yesterday he said he was told by Mr Rudd's Parliament House office that the payment would be axed. He said Ms Macklin's office told him they were considering dumping the payment while local Labor MP James Bidgood indicated there still might be a chance of saving it. On Monday, he was admitted to Mackay Base Hospital. It was there that the doctor told him he would not have long to live. "They told me it's only a matter of time," he said.

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Bureaucracy stymies healthcare again

An offer by 26 Queensland surgeons to fly to the Northern Territory to treat indigenous children with ear infections has been ignored because of bickering between two federal government departments, doctors claim. Harvey Coates, a clinical associate professor at the University of Western Australia and a senior ear, nose and throat surgeon at Perth's Princess Margaret Hospital, said ear disease was a silent epidemic among indigenous children in some communities, and it was tragic that offers from doctors who were willing to help were not being accepted. "It is frustrating that when a group of specialists is ready and willing to go and help, that they can't just go and get on with it," Professor Coates said.

He said a dispute between the federal Department of Family and Children's Services and the federal Health Department had meant that the offer, which was made shortly after the Howard government's intervention into the Northern Territory was launched last year, had yet to be acted on. It is believed the departmental dispute revolves around how the doctors would be organised and funded.

Since the federal intervention was launched, more than 800 doctors have volunteered to fly into remote communities in the Territory. But so far it is believed only a handful of specialists has been sent to provide follow-up care for the thousands of cases of ear disease, tooth decay and skin conditions discovered through the emergency intervention.

The Health Department said four ear, nose and throat surgery blitzes were planned for Alice Springs, starting on April 14 and providing surgery for up to 200 children. It acknowledged that the work would be carried out eight months after the intervention was launched. "Finding sufficient numbers of skilled specialists to supplement the NT specialist pool, along with accommodation, is challenging but within the next few weeks an initial cohort of health professionals will be deployed to local health services in the Alice Springs region," a spokeswoman for the Health Department said. "In relation to ear disease, there are important preparatory procedures that must be carried out before children can undergo surgery. Therefore children are currently receiving ear mopping treatment and audiological assessments in their home communities."

Professor Coates said it was especially frustrating not to be able to effectively address the huge problem of ear disease among indigenous children because the long-term effects were largely preventable. The prevalence of chronic discharging ears among indigenous children in the NT is at 94 per cent, yet the World Health Organisation says a rate of more than 4per cent is indicative of a massive public health problem. "Throughout their childhood, the average Aboriginal child will have middle ear disease and hearing loss for 36 months compared with an average of three months for the non-indigenous child," Professor Coates said.

The disease often leaves the children with hearing loss, which in turn impedes their ability to communicate and learn at school. It also leads to a "downward spiral of truancy, underperformance, early school leaving and a life-long impact on vocational outcomes", he said. The disease, which has few accompanying symptoms until the tympanic membrane ruptures and pus discharges from the ear, can be treated by a relatively simple surgical procedure.

Professor Coates, who is the chair of the indigenous sub-committee of the Australian Society of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, said he was keen to adapt a New Zealand ear disease program to suit Australia's needs. In New Zealand, a fleet of "ear buses" visit schools and towns to examine children and provide direct referrals to GPs and ear, nose and throat surgeons via video diagnosis. "Mobile operating theatres have been advocated where day surgery can be performed adjacent to a hospital," Professor Coates said. Such a bus could travel to remote indigenous communities and not only treat ear disease among young children but also perform other basic surgeries with lower risks of complication such as the removal of skin lesions.

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Our proud record

By John Howard

THE former Australian government, which I led, was accused of many things, but never of betraying its essentially Centre-Right credo. We pursued a blend of economic liberalism - in the classical sense of that term connoting as it does a faith in market forces - and social conservatism. Far from being in conflict, the one reinforced the other.

From our election in 1996 we pursued reform and further modernisation of our economy. On the social front we emphasised our nation's traditional values, sought to resurrect greater pride in our history and became assertive about the intrinsic worth of our national identity. In the process we ended the seemingly endless seminar about that identity that had been in progress for some years. When we left office in November last year Australia was a stronger, prouder and more prosperous nation than it had been 12 years earlier.

Of particular note, economically, were our major reforms to the taxation system, the complete elimination of net federal government debt, and changes to our labour market laws that produced a freer and less union-dominated system. These last reforms, strongly supported by small business, not only boosted productivity, they helped reduce unemployment to 4.2 per cent, a 33-year low, when the government left office, compared with 8.5 per cent in March 1996. They included the abolition of unfair dismissal sanctions on smaller firms, which had been discouraging those enterprises from taking on more staff.

The new Government in Australia has pledged to reverse those labour market changes. That will be a mistake. It will be the first time in 25 years that a major economic reform in Australia has been reversed. In particular, bringing back the old unfair dismissal laws will stifle employment growth among small businesses.

Today's world remains confronted by the ongoing threat of Islamic fascism, a new and quite unfamiliar assault on our values and way of life. It relies on indiscriminate terror without regard to the identity or faith of its victims. It also calculates that it is the nature of Western societies to grow weary of long struggles and protracted debates. They produce, over time, a growing pressure for resolution or accommodation.

The particular challenge posed by extremist Islam means therefore that more than ever before, continued cultural self-belief is critical to national strength. We should not think that by trading away some of the values that have made us who we are will buy us either immunity from terrorists or respect from noisy minorities. We should not forget that it is the values of our societies that terrorists despise most. That is why we should never compromise on them.

It is not only their intrinsic worth that should be staunchly defended. It is also because radical Islam senses - correctly - that there is a soft underbelly of cultural self-doubt in certain Western societies. There are too many in our midst who think, deep down, that it is really "our fault" and if only we entered into some kind of federal cultural compact with our critics, the challenges would disappear.

Perhaps it was this sentiment that led the Archbishop of Canterbury to make the extraordinary comment several weeks ago, that in Britain some accommodation with aspects of sharia law was inevitable. It is fundamental to the continued unity and purpose of a democratic nation state that there not only be respect for the rule of law but the state have but one body of law, to which all are accountable, and from which all are entitled to an equal dispensation of justice.

For almost a quarter of a century now, the Western world has enjoyed low inflation. The result has been stronger growth, lower unemployment (except in those nations that still persist with absurdly regulated labour markets) and the liberation of hundreds of millions from poverty. We should be concerned if the world were re-entering a period of higher inflation. The right responses will be grounded in free market orthodoxies. We should avoid resort to re-regulation. We should preserve the independence of central banks. We should maintain open and free labour markets. We should continue cutting taxes where possible and we should seek to increase savings. If individuals won't save then governments must add to public savings by running budget surpluses or significantly reducing budget deficits.

Above all there must be no return to protectionism. Freer world markets, particularly, but not only, in agriculture are essential. For certain poorer nations the dismantling of trade barriers by developed nations will be far more helpful than foreign aid.

A conservative edifice must always have at its centre the role of the family. Despite the repeated attempts of some social engineers, the field evidence suggests that united, functioning families remain not only the best emotional nursery for children but also the most efficient social welfare system that mankind has ever devised. Holding families together in preference to picking up the pieces when they fall apart must always be the major driver of social welfare policy. It remains a reality in Western societies that two of the greatest contributors to poverty are joblessness and family breakdown. We should maintain a cultural bias in favour of traditional families. That doesn't mean discriminating against single parents but it does mean ceaselessly propounding the advantages for a child of being raised by both a mother and father.

Taxation laws should promote, not penalise, marriage. The taxation system should generously recognise the cost of raising children. This is not middle-class welfare. It is merely a taxation system with some semblance of social vision. The tax-payment system must also support choice for parents about who cares for their children. When a parent elects to withdraw from the workforce, either wholly or partly, to care for a child that decision must be supported by the taxation system.

Maintaining a cultural bias in favour of families also means that governments should reinforce the role of parents in choosing what form of education their children receive. The major growth sector among independent schools has been in the low-fee independent Christian category. This is a direct result of more liberal funding arrangements initiated by my government. Our funding policies have, in practice, produced the same outcome as education vouchers by significantly expanding the choices available to parents of relatively modest means.

Much to the surprise of many experts - and to the chagrin of many who are critical of the US and of the Bush administration in particular - the surge strategy in Iraq is beginning to bear fruit. The most convincing sign of all that some progress has been made is the significant decline in media coverage of Iraq. The dominant left-liberal elements in the media in both our countries apparently cannot bring themselves to acknowledge good news stories coming out of Baghdad.

There is a view in some quarters that Afghanistan is the "good" war and Iraq somehow a distraction from winning the war on terror. While it may be politically convenient, this view is profoundly naive and dangerous. You only have to look at al-Qa'ida's own words and actions to know that Iraq is every bit as much a major front in the war on terror as Afghanistan. We simply cannot afford to lose in either. And despite all the reverses I remain convinced we will prevail in both.

What is critical now is that the surge is given time to work. The Iraqi people desperately need the time and space created by the surge to sustain the tentative political progress we are seeing. It would be a tragedy if those gains were surrendered now by premature drawdowns.

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Noel Pearson on Aboriginal drug and alcohol abuse

My home community was built on the ruins of historical dispossession. Our people rebuilt relatively stable families and worked hard in a discriminatory society and economy, while retaining an indigenous cultural identity and languages. Then our people were given welfare money, free time and more access to addictive substances and processes. Epidemics of addiction and a corresponding collapse of social norms ensued.

When the epidemics gained momentum, they became the primary cause of recruitment of novice substance abusers and gamblers. The social chaos in some communities is more severe than can be explained by underlying issues such as inherited trauma. Too many people from relatively stable backgrounds were sucked into the vortex of dysfunction. Genetic susceptibility on the part of some individuals and negative formative experiences cannot, in my opinion, explain the magnitude of the Cape York disaster.

The symptom theory of addiction (of which the self-medication hypothesis is the most extreme special case) is the most damaging idea for Cape York communities when they try to reverse their descent into dysfunction. No matter how isolated from progressive mainstream debate, every dysfunctional person in the backstreets of Cape York communities can give an account of some variant of the symptom theory as the explanation and the excuse for their behaviour: "I drink because...".

This is why I rejected in my article of December 8-9 former footballer and drug addict Gary Ablett's contentions (The Australian, November 29) that use of psychoactive substances is "basically self-medicating, a coping mechanism" and that "it's time we realised that drugs are not the problem but a symptom of far deeper issues, both in people's lives and in our society".

Gaughwin conceded that Ablett is wrong to reduce and simplify the problem of addiction to one dominant construct (that addiction is treating psychic pain). But he maintained that my criticism was insensitive and cruel because it denies people such as Ablett the tolerance, understanding and empathy that are crucial to their recovery from addiction. Ablett has my empathy and my support in his decision to remain drug-free. I did in fact conclude my article by stating that it is possible that "the initial susceptibility to experimentation on the part of an individual such as Ablett is explained in his need for relief from (psychic) pain".

My criticism of Ablett is that he advocates a social theory of self-medication as the main cause of addiction. Patently, the general public's ability to take a principled stand against abuse of addictive substances and processes is compromised if they are led to believe that experimentation is generally a symptom of deeper problems.

Interestingly, Gaughwin shares my belief that, in spite of the biological and neurological basis of addiction, "the ideas and values we hold about freedom and free will" are the most important determinants of the spread of addiction in society: "If there is a root cause of addiction, it is ethical," Gaughwin concluded.

The symptom theory is a hideous idea that is deeply embedded in our society's consciousness about substance abuse (how many times have you heard a colleague or family member or a professional on television say "The drugs are just a symptom of..."?). It is hideous because it furnishes those who are engaged in substance abuse with a perfect justification for their indulgence. Beyond its crippling effect on individual users, it has a devastating social effect: it debilitates any decisive social response because it discourages a social response to addiction as the problem in its own right, and instead deflects attention towards a vast array of so-called underlying factors, most of which are beyond the reach of social policy. So we are left sitting on our hands while the addiction epidemics continue to grow.

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