By Denis Bright

Widening access to affordable healthcare and access to diagnostic services is the key imperative from the Medibank model from the Whitlam era (1972-75). This access to national health was reinstated in the Medicare model of 1984 after two regressive terms of federal LNP government. This era ended with double digit unemployment, high interest rates and inflation during the recession of 1981-82.

The Impact of Tax Changes on the Federal Government’s Revenue Base

Decades later under the Morrison Government, Commonwealth’s revenue base to offer sustainable Medicare benefits and to maintain support for the public hospitals of the states and territories is being challenged by those opportunistic changes to taxation schedules which assisted in the re-election of the LNP in 2019. There are the added financial burdens of support for public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. The post-budget press release from the federal health minister places these costs at $25 billion since March 2020.

The revenue base for record levels of federal health expenditure has already been eroded in the delivery of Phase 2 of the LNP’s tax changes (ATO Data). These changes have extended the 37 per cent taxation schedule to taxable incomes of $180,000.

Opinion polling from Newspoll and Resolve Strategic is still inconclusive about the fate of the Morrison Government. Primary votes for the LNP have plateaued around 41 per cent. Some protest votes from ONP and KAP have moved to the LNP. Other voters have drifted to Labor with a firming of its primary vote by approximately 3.5 per cent since the 2019 election.

If the LNP hesitates on plans for an early election from the feedback offered by any future negative trends in opinion polling, the appeal of Phase 3 tax changes will be there as a last resort to stoke up interest in a 2022 election campaign.

The LNP might even decide to give Scott Morrison a few months at the helm before the installation of a new prime minister with a vastly changed ministry. There is the outside chance of having another National Party leader installed if Barnaby Joyce’s come-back is a source of instability for the Coalition.

These still highly speculative scenarios will make the implementation of Phase 3 tax changes a very important component of the LNP’s forthcoming election strategies whenever the election date is announced. The forthcoming tax changed are summarized by data from SuperGuide:

Changes to Marginal Tax Rates

• From 1 July 2018:Raising the lower threshold for the 37% tax bracket from $87,000 to $90,000
• From 1 July 2020: Raising the upper threshold for the 19% tax bracket from $37,000 to $45,000, changing the 32.5% tax bracket from $37,001-$90,000 to $45,001-$120,000 and raising the lower threshold for the 37% tax bracket from $90,001 to $120,001
• From 1 July 2024:Changing the 32.5% tax rate to 30%, raising the upper threshold for the 30% tax bracket from $90,000 to $120,000, removing the 37% tax bracket and raising the 45% lower threshold from $180,000 to $200,000

The Crawford School of Public Policy (ANU) estimates the costs of Phase 3 tax changes at $17 billion in lost revenue. Revenue losses for the delivery of affordable healthcare are also reinforced by easily accessible legalized tax minimization strategies to the 2 per cent Medicare levy on taxable incomes. Even the Low and Middle Income Tax Offset (LMITO) has been extended upwards to taxable incomes of $90,000 to tap into the LNP’s potential support base in disadvantaged outer suburban and regional electorates (SuperGuide data from ATO).

Additional Hardship Imposed at Medical Clinics and Diagnostic Services

Underemployed workers with taxable incomes below $18,200 remain exempt from Medicare levies but are often subjected to gap fees at private clinics and for the receipt of diagnostic services at the discretion of health providers. Out of pocket expenses for non-bulk-billed clinical and diagnostic services usually amount to almost half of the over the counter fees for the services provided.

Out of pocket medical expenses add to the current wealth divide in Australian society and are reinforced by the financial burdens of bonds or daily schedules at nursing homes and backlogs for alternatives to home care packages for disabled or elderly patients.

Assessing the benefits and costs of legalized tax minimization strategies for comfortably off families and business networks is a less complicated investigative tasks. Data from ACOSS NSW provides an update on the wealth divide in Australia as the frightful possibility of a third term of federal LNP Government is still possible in a strategically timed early election:

It is an insult to medical service providers to offer Medicare rebates at current scheduled rates which short-change providers for both consultation fees and minor procedures performed by GPs and specialists. In the case of X-rays and ultra-sonic scans, the out of pocket expenses can be quite substantial. Tolerance of bulk-billing for disadvantaged patients varies within the medical provider community.

One eminent specialist in Brisbane even sends his patients off to YouGov Medicare offices for refunds on biopsies because of a personal ideological opposition to Medicare. Most specialists, however, have a working relationship with Medicare that requests credit card patients for those out of pocket expenses. Without such co-payments, current Medicare rebates are insufficient to maintain viable medical practices and diagnostic services.

The issue of out of pocket expenses for diagnostic services was covered in one of my previous articles for The AIMN (Rising Health Costs in the COVID-19 Era, 7 March 2020). The schedule of fees quoted in this article may have changed slightly but this article is still relevant. Mention was made of Sonic Healthcare Limited in this article. Queensland X-Ray is part of this Australian corporate network which has a vast global outreach particularly in the USA.

What has not changed since March 2020, is the company’s commitment to market ideology as summarized in its latest annual report for 2020.

The company’s chairman was up-beat about the performance of his company in difficult times at his annual address to shareholders on 12 November 2020:

“Another point to note about commitment of Sonic’s people was the willingness of Sonic’s Board, managers, doctors and other staff to take voluntary pay cuts, reduce hours, take leave or assist the company in other ways when the outlook was at its darkest is sure testament to the strength of our culture. Fortunately, we have since been able to repay and modestly reward our staff for their sacrifice and loyalty. Sonic reported a net profit of $528 million for the 2020 financial year. Revenue increased 10% to $6.8 billion. The strength of our balance sheet going into the pandemic and the recovery we saw in our base businesses enabled us to continue our progressive dividend policy, with a modest 1.2% increase, to 85 cents, in total dividends per share for the full year.”

Other providers such as CitiScan Radiology in Brisbane are more receptive to bulk-billing for patients with pension and healthcare cards on the written recommendations of GPs and specialists. CitiScan operates within Peloton Radiology Pty Ltd. I sought details from Peloton Radiology Pty Ltd. about its corporate profile. Should this information be forthcoming, I will pass the relevant web address onto readers in a comment in the replies section to this article.

When it comes to MRI scans however, pensioners and social security recipients must negotiate for fee reductions on compassionate grounds. MRI scans for private outpatients do not attract Medicare subsidy under the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS). The current over the counter rates for MRI scans to both knees costs $518. This includes the cost of injections for contrasting dyes. The company literally cannot generate bulk-billing schedules when they are not available through Medicare and no criticisms of its charges are intended.

The case of MRI scans is part of a wider review of MBS subsidies which were set to change on 1 July 2021. The scope of the changes to MBS subsidies has been reviewed by Melissa Davey from The Guardian (8 June 2021) and generated only passing coverage in the mainstream media:

“In one of the most significant changes to Medicare in its history, more than 900 health services and procedures eligible for government rebates are set to change on 1 July.

The changes to the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) items make a number of procedures significantly cheaper for consumers, but doctors and consumer health advocates say the government should hold off on implementing them.

Medical advances mean that over time, some procedures become quicker to carry out, far less complex, and the cost of medical devices and tools can come down too.”

MBS subsidies must of course be subjected to ongoing rationalizations based on best medical practice and financial accountability. Readers might take up the challenges of assessing the changes as explained on MBS Online.

In a more socially divided society with its patchy levels of national health coverage, the imperative is surely to stay healthy for as long as possible while being on guard against tax changes which further entrench less accessible healthcare services and negative impacts on funding for NDIS and care of the elderly through the preferred access to home care packages.

CEDA Media Release

The 2021 Intergenerational Report (IGR) shows Australia can’t afford another lost decade of policy reform, says CEDA Chief Executive Melinda Cilento.

We must tackle the costs of climate change, our reliance on income tax, boost productivity and digitisation and fund essential services like health and aged care if we are to manage well the impacts of our ageing population.

“The report rightly highlights the costs of these challenges, and points out that with a solid and growing economy, we are better placed than most other countries to meet them,” Ms Cilento said.

“Now is the time to take serious action to address these challenges.”

Population

The IGR highlights the generational challenges posed by a population that is expected to grow more slowly, and age more rapidly, than previously expected, due to the pandemic population squeeze and our closed borders.

It warns the most enduring economic effect of COVID-19 is likely to be this smaller population: while the 2015 IGR projected Australia’s population would hit almost 40 million by 2054-55, this IGR projects it will only reach 38.8 million in 2060-61.

This is the first time there has been a downward revision of the long-term population projections in an intergenerational report.

“With our ageing population, and the population freeze caused by our closed borders, our future growth will rely on productivity,” Ms Cilento said.

“CEDA has been calling for Australia to re-open its borders sooner than mid-2022.

“The Federal Government should ramp up the vaccination program now, to help us on this path.

“Australia must also recalibrate its skilled migration program to attract not only the best and brightest migrants, but also those with the right skills and experience for the jobs we need to fill – and we need to start now.

“Right now, governments around the world are fine-tuning their migration programs to respond to greater competition in a post-pandemic world. We will fall behind if we don’t do the same.”

Productivity

The report makes clear that Australia faces an enormous productivity challenge.

It assumes labour productivity will return to 1.5 per cent per year, our 30-year average to 2018-19. But our productivity growth in 2019-20 was roughly one-third of that and averaged just 0.8 per cent in the five years to 2019-20, with GDP growth largely driven by population growth in the lead up to the pandemic.

“Lifting annual productivity growth to 1.5 per cent over the next decade will require sharp policy focus and depend on more Australian businesses performing at or close to world’s best,” Ms Cilento said.

“We can’t underestimate how tough this will be.

“Research by Federal Treasury before the pandemic showed leading Australian firms were not keeping up with leading global firms on productivity.

“Australia had its worst result in 25 years in the recent IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2021, a global ranking of the competitiveness of 64 nations.

“Business efficiency led Australia’s slide, driven by poor performance on management practices, company agility and entrepreneurship.”

“Our rapid digitisation through the pandemic brought opportunities, but moves to establish domestic supply chains may reduce competition and scale and specialisation benefits.

“On trade, we have also heard that seizing new market opportunities and maintaining relationships are getting harder the longer borders remain closed.

“The growing share of services in our economy – particularly personal services, which have traditionally shown low levels of productivity – will also create headwinds.”

Climate change

The impacts of climate change and the transition to carbon neutrality must factor into our longer-term thinking and planning.

The recent NSW IGR found climate risks would have a material impact on the state’s long-term economic and fiscal outlook. We would have liked to see a concrete effort from the Federal Government also to model these scenarios.

Ratings agencies such as S&P are increasingly considering climate risks in their long-term risk assessments.

Meanwhile, 60 per cent of Australia’s major trading partners have committed to net-zero emissions by 2050.

“The Federal Government should commit Australia to net-zero by 2050, and it should announce more ambitious policies to get us there, to provide greater certainty to business and the broader community,” Ms Cilento said.

“More than nearly any other country, Australia is ideally placed to be a renewables superpower. This is our new energy advantage.

“We have the sun, the wind and the minerals needed to build and power new renewable technologies. If we don’t take advantage of this, we will miss out on enormous job opportunities along the way.”

Digitisation

The 2021 IGR highlights the opportunities Australia must leverage through digitisation to boost productivity across the economy.

“Our success in adopting new technologies will determine whether Australian business can compete with the best in the world,” Ms Cilento said.

“Making the most of data and digitisation is also essential to improving the quality and efficiency of care services, amid rising costs and service expectations.

“Australia really must become a leading digital nation if it is to meet the challenges outlined in this report.

“While there were important initiatives in the recent Federal Budget, including the $1.2 billion digital economy strategy, greater clarity is needed on what it will take to achieve the Government’s aspiration to be a leading digital nation.

“A good way to start is by appointing a Chief Technologist to guide the implementation of digital and tech services, and communicate the opportunities and risks of these technologies, as CEDA has previously recommended.”

Tax

With a shrinking working-age population, this report shows Australia’s tax mix will rely mostly on income tax.

“This is not a realistic assumption,” Ms Cilento said.

“Comprehensive tax reform must be put back on the table, with a renewed resolve to reshape the system to sustain a strong and dynamic economy and pay for the essential services so important to our communities.”

Federal-state relations

This report reinforces that both federal and state governments face growing budget gaps and can only close those gaps and boost the tax base by working together.

“Australia should move to a whole-of-federation intergenerational report for National Cabinet,” Ms Cilento said.

“We need an authoritative baseline to examine future spending and revenue trends.

“A combined report would also provide a fuller picture of the challenges we face in the decades to come. Having that picture would make the opportunities for reform in areas such as tax more clear.”

The Federal Government should also ask the Productivity Commission to kick off its next five-yearly productivity review, which should focus on how to drive business-led productivity.

It is now nearly four years since the PC delivered its previous review.

By Ad astra

Here she is – looking at us, looking right into us, right into our soul, just as she was on the title page of the UK version of The Big Issue.

Writing in it, Adrian Lobb begins:

In August 2018, Greta Thunberg took a stand. One small act of defiance for a 15-year-old Swedish girl became one giant global leap forward for change. One simple act of refusal – skipping school and sitting in silence outside the Swedish Parliament with a homemade placard saying: School Strike for the Climate – Thunberg sparked schoolchildren around the world into action.

She was joined by hundreds of thousands of young people taking their first steps into activism, no longer able to tolerate the failure of a generation of politicians to act fast enough in response to the climate crisis.

”It’s just spiralled out of control”, Thunberg says, speaking from her home in Stockholm…”in one way it feels like it was yesterday. But on the other hand, it feels like it was 10 years ago…”

Here we have a schoolgirl doing what our politicians haven’t the guts to do – demand that we take immediate action to counter the climate change effects that we hear about from climate experts every day – on radio, on TV, on current affairs programmes, on commentaries that play all night on our radios. We would need to be deaf or have tin ears to avoid their dire messages.

Yet we have a PM who habitually seeks to avoid the issue, who refuses to commit to zero emissions by 2050, who bends to the demands of the array of climate change deniers that sit at his side, fearful of losing their conditional support – an obscene example of politically motivated cowardice.

Ahead of official G7 talks, PM Morrison travelled to Cornwall for dialogue with the leaders of South Africa, South Korea and India about ‘climate change, nature and open societies’. G7 environment ministers had already agreed to deliver climate change targets in line with the Paris Agreement, which limits the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees. But burdened by Australia’s indolent record on climate change, its unambitious targets, and its unenviable status of being a major fossil fuel producer and exporter, what could he, what did he, contribute?

On arrival there, in his typically grandiose style, Morrison announced: “This is a very important place for Australia to be today as we touch down here in the United Kingdom to join the G7-plus dialogue.” That was it!

In The price of arrogance: we asked if you were embarrassed by Morrison’s response to Biden’s strident message to the climate change forum he sponsored: “The signs are unmistakable. The science is undeniable. But the cost of inaction keeps mounting.” Our PM shamed us by telling the world that he will run his own race irrespective of other countries and their opinions. With characteristic arrogance, he refused to bow to pressure from the US to use the summit to announce an increased target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He told an astonished summit: “We are well on the way to meet our Paris commitments“ thereby exposing the enlarging gulf between Australia and its allies about how best to tackle the climate crisis. For good measure, Morrison added: “We’ll update our long-term emissions reduction strategy in time for the Glasgow COP26 climate action conference”, scheduled for November. Another ‘nothing to see here’ move.

So where is our steely-eyed Greta to refute Morrison? One of the Greens? A Labor politician? An independent, perhaps Zali Steggal, the one who ignominiously ejected Tony Abbott in Warringah to a state of irrelevance?

Please offer your own nomination. Who is your Greta? Readers will be interested. For me, the one most like Greta is Penny Wong. Strong, articulate, well-informed, outspoken, believable.

She’s my Greta!

After decades as a nurse and midwife, one of the reasons I entered politics was to bring the standards I saw in my professional life, upheld by everyday people, into politics.

On Tuesday, I stood beside 59 eminent Australians who wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister calling on him to immediately establish a strong, effective and independent integrity commission.

The letter was signed by some of Australia’s most formidable legal minds including former Justice of the High Court Mary Gaudron QC, Tony Fitzgerald AC of the famous Fitzgerald police corruption inquiry, as well as the former Member for Indi Cathy McGowan AO. When these people put their name to something, you’d be a fool to ignore it.

But that’s exactly what this government is doing.

The 8th of September 2021 will mark 1,000 days since the Prime Minister promised the Australian people that he would legislate an integrity commission. But still we’ve seen nothing.

I’ve had enough of the government’s stalling tactics, and I’ve been letting them know in Parliament House. While we’ve been waiting for them to deliver on their promise, scandal after scandal has been piling up.

Time’s up. Integrity can’t wait. Sign my petition to demand Scott Morrison establish a robust federal integrity commission now.

In Question Time yesterday, I asked the PM whether he would deliver an integrity commission before 8 September. In his answer, we saw the same obfuscation and delay he’s brought to getting this body established. A Government clearly not taking this issue seriously.

Tell our politicians that you expect better. Sign my petition to say time’s up and integrity can’t wait.

Last October I introduced the Australian Federal Integrity Commission Bill into Parliament, to establish an integrity commission that could hold politicians and public servants to account.

So the PM has two choices. Deliver a robust integrity commission now. Or let Parliament vote on my Australian Federal Integrity Commission Bill.

Yours faithfully

Helen Haines MP
Independent Federal Member for Indi

By Matthew Reddin

With the government choosing to shelve the AstraZeneca vaccine, it’s time they tell us how much this failure cost the taxpayer.

The federal government has now decided to shelve the AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccine. It was announced last week that the vaccine will be restricted to those over 60 because of how it had links to an extremely rare blood clotting condition.

Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) is a rare syndrome which has been reported after being given the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. It involves blood clots (occurring in body sites like the brain or abdomen) together with low platelet levels. The clotting may occur in around four to six people in every million after being vaccinated.

The Guardian is reporting the government has announced plans to shelve the supposedly controversial vaccine by October, suggesting it will have enough supplies of other vaccines to meet ‘allocation horizons’ for vaccinating the population by year’s end.

It also seems to have enough supply of biz-speak weasel words like ‘allocation horizons’; we’ll soldier on.

To this day (Thursday 24 June), the Health Department website continues to bloviate on the A-Z’s bonafides:

“50 million doses will be manufactured in Australia by multinational biopharmaceutical company CSL, in partnership with the developer, international pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. Distribution of these Australian-made CSL doses has commenced and will continue on an ongoing basis.”

Per the website, in July and August, AstraZeneca will continue to be administered, with up to 2.6m doses being doled out each week, mostly to those over 60, through state and territory clinics and the primary care network.

Show me the money

Canberra is being extremely tight-lipped about the detail of the A-Z contract, admitting the amount of doses it ordered, but not their cost. There’s nothing on the AusTender site, and there’s very little that’s been reported in the press about how much it all cost. The federal government is refusing to say how much it is paying the four companies it contracted to help distribute the COVID-19 vaccine, saying the information is “commercial in confidence.”

BioPharma-Reporter.com initially covered the deal last September, noting the Australian government had made a $A1.7 billion supply and production agreement for Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccines, with the first doses set to arrive in January 2021. At the time, the reporting was that 33.8 million doses were coming from AZ, an additional 30 million doses being manufactured by CSL, and 51 million doses to be secured from the now-abandoned University of Queensland operation.

Per the government’s own vaccine info on the Department of Health’s website:

“Australia has entered into 5 separate agreements to secure more than 195 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines if they prove to be safe and effective.” [The ‘if’ in that sentence doing a lot of the heavy lifting there].

The Australian Government has invested over $5 billion in these agreements (Pfizer, Moderna, University of Oxford/AstraZeneca, Novavax, and the Covax Facility). This will, according to the Health site, “strengthen Australia’s position to have safe and effective vaccines as they become available.”

Somewhere in there among the $5 billion is the $350 million invested:

“… to support vaccine research and development. The investment will contribute to the global effort to find successful vaccines and treatments to stop the spread of COVID-19.”

Safety first

According to the University of Melbourne:

“Nearly all the world’s immunologists, virologists, medical professionals, and public health experts agree that COVID-19 vaccines, including AstraZeneca, have minimal risk to recommended subgroups and significant benefit.”

But enough cases of TTS, with a few fatalities, is not a good look for a government already pedalling fast to control the story. Pfizer is clearly the vaccine to have, but its available numbers are nowhere near meeting the demand.

Dr Norman Swan claimed on ABC Radio that Australia was offered the same preferential Pfizer vaccine access that Israel has enjoyed since late 2020, but the government took a different route.

“I’ve now had three sources telling me the same story, including from the United States, of what happened with Pfizer last June,” Swan told ABC Radio Melbourne’s Raf Epstein.

From what we can gather, the option was presented to the government to have enough Pfizer doses to vaccinate the entire (willing) population, but they seem to have gone all-in on the AZ instead – for whatever reason. Now that the AZ has been presenting with infinitesimally small, yet tangible enough statistics to take the sheen off the brand, they’re trying to quietly put the AZ in the too-hard basket and double-down on Pfizer, whose popularity vastly outweighs its availability.

Meanwhile, 177 million doses being administered in the US (53.9% of the population), and 5.5 million doses in Israel (60% of the population).

All up, 10.1% of the global population have been vaccinated. 6.72 million vaccine doses have been administered in Australia, with 1.09 million Australians fully vaccinated against COVID, constituting 4.3% of the population.

As NSW teeters on the precipice of another lockdown, feel free to insert one’s own ‘gold standard’ reference here.

This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.

By 2353NM

It’s not only Crikey subscribers that have read the list of Prime Minster Morrison’s lies and falsehoods they published recently as it’s not paywalled. Crikey claims they applied a rigorous test to their claims and only ‘counted’ those lies and falsehoods they could provide evidence to validate. The criteria used for classification as a lie is intentionally misleading while falsehoods are those claims Morrison made that could have initially been a product of insufficient briefing albeit without correction when the facts were known. Crikey also claims they would do the same to any Prime Minister regardless of gender or political preference should the circumstances warrant.

So why is it important that those leading the country get called out for lying and promoting falsehoods? In the words of Denis Atkins, a veteran political commentator who these days writes for The New Daily and other online publications

While politicians like Mr Morrison fulfil – or even just appear to fulfil – those twin demands of keeping the community safe through proactive health policies and cushioning any economic fallout, the public seems to have otherwise unavailable reserves of tolerance and forgiveness.

Giving politicians a leave pass for bad behaviour – whether it is doing it or lying about it – carries a heavy price.

It tells those politicians they can get away with it and encourages them.

Morrison has a bit of work to do to catch up to ex-President Trump, who according to The Washington Post lied 30,537 times during his presidency. Trump’s average lie count per month grew as his presidency continued. Atkins is correct, not calling out the lies shows politicians that they can get away with it.

In comparison to the major media outlets in Australia, Crikey doesn’t have the reach, staffing or facilities to cross reference and fact check information quickly. Yet we don’t have any of the Nine or Newscorp papers regularly reporting information like the fact that the internal enquiry into the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins had been put on hold a few weeks before Morrison was still claiming in Parliament that the enquiry was continuing, until well after the event. If Crikey can do it, why can’t Channel 7 or even the Herald-Sun?

At least the ABC tries. In conjunction with the ‘Factcheck’ Unit at RMIT, ABC regularly publishes articles that report on reported claims and their accuracy. A recent claim by Morrison that Australia was outperforming other countries with the vaccine rollout was found to be ‘misleading’ which probably isn’t a surprise to anyone (maybe with the exception of those that believe that Morrison is the new messiah).

Every television network and the major newspaper outlet in Australia has reporters that are based at Parliament House. Each outlet will tell you that ‘their experienced expert’, be it Chris Uhlmann, David Speers, Mark Riley, Hugh Riminton or someone else will ensure politicians are held to account. It’s a sad commentary on the reporting or the editorial policy of the major media outlets in Australia when live to air generalist interviewers like Natalie Barr on Channel 7’s Sunrise, Karl Stefanovic on Channel 9’s Today or the panel on Channel 10’s ‘news done differently’ The Project can cut through the political spin far more successfully than the ‘seasoned and experienced’ political reporters. Even satirists like Sammy J, Charlie Pickering and Shaun Micallef seem to be able to hold politicians to account better than the ‘specialists’.

Every lie that Morrison doesn’t get challenged on is another nail in the coffin of democracy in Australia. If you have doubts, The New Yorker recently reported that the Republicans are stalling a proposed bipartisan Congressional investigation into the civil unrest by a pro-Trump lawless mob on the Capitol building last January which probably would make the link to Trump’s false claims of election rigging at a rally earlier the same day as the insurrection occurred. Effectively the Republicans are circumventing democracy to support the lies of a former US President. As The New Yorker reminds us in an earlier article,

on January 6th, “one hundred and forty officers were injured, and we need to care about that.” Many Republicans seem to have willed themselves into a state of not caring about it. One route to obliviousness is by disciplining any Republicans who won’t go along, as with the removal, last week, of Representative Liz Cheney from the Republican House Conference leadership. Another is to express outrage that the commission, and maybe everyone in America, would not, instead, be fixated on last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests and any violence that accompanied them.

If our kids are caught out lying, there is most certainly a discussion on why the behaviour is unacceptable. If someone in a court of law is caught out lying, it is actually a crime called perjury. If you lie on an insurance claim or in an application for finance and it is found out, the company will void the contract. That Morrison seems to believe lying and deceit are acceptable is concerning enough – more concerning is that those with the ability to produce and promote the evidence that he is doing it have apparently chosen not to.

What do you think?

CEDA Media Release

Australia’s competitiveness drops to lowest level in 25 years: WCY 2021

Australia has fallen four places to 22nd in a global ranking of the competitiveness of 64 nations released today. It is Australia’s worst result in 25 years.

CEDA Chief Economist Jarrod Ball said our performance in the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2021 showed we could not afford to stand still, despite our early success in managing the COVID-19 pandemic and recent strong economic recovery.

“Australia cannot waste any time getting match-fit for the post-pandemic era,” Mr Ball said.

“The rankings show business will need to do a lot of the heavy lifting, with business efficiency leading Australia’s slide in the rankings, driven by a lacklustre 58th place for management practices.

“We are among the lowest-ranked of 64 nations on company agility, entrepreneurship, customer satisfaction and credibility of managers.

“But it is not just our management practices that are deteriorating. Our heavy reliance on mineral resources and a narrow set of markets sees us rank in the 50s for our export sophistication.

“We will need to be a lot more dynamic, innovative and open up new markets for new goods and services in future to deliver another generation of solid economic growth, jobs and rising incomes.”

Mr Ball said Australia slipped 11 places on technological infrastructure and ranked just 44th for ICT services exports this year, showing we must lift our game on the digitisation of our economy.

“Governments also need to play their part,” Mr Ball said. “Australia’s tax regime is called out in the survey as a drag on competitiveness, with Australia ranking 54th and 57th respectively for its corporate and personal income tax burdens.”

Australia also continues to rank poorly on energy infrastructure (56).

“We must boost our climate resilience and regain our energy advantage,” Mr Ball said.

“The Federal Government should commit Australia to net-zero by 2050 and announce more ambitious policies to get us there.”

“On the positive side, Australia limited the economic damage of COVID-19 far more than other economies, which saw us move up the rankings on economic performance,” he said.

“Australia’s skilled workforce, policy stability, legal environment, healthcare and life expectancy are all strengths for the competitiveness of our economy.”

This year, Australia must speed up its COVID-19 vaccine rollout and build fit-for-purpose quarantine facilities to help in the safe reopening of our borders, so we can rebuild the competitiveness of our economy for future generations.

Overall, Switzerland rose to first place from third in 2020, while Sweden jumped from sixth to second and Denmark slipped one place to third. Rounding out the top five, the Netherlands remained in fourth place, while Singapore dropped from first to fifth in 2021.

The report found that globally, this year highlighted the importance of “innovation, digitalisation of the economy, welfare benefits and social cohesion”.

“Highly competitive countries have been able to tackle these challenges by strengthening their institutional and social frameworks,” the report found.

It also found that “trends in highly ranked economies show that the health and education systems remain at the core of competitiveness, contributing to having successfully endured the pandemic – so far.”

The rankings are part of the Swiss-based Institute for Management Development’s (IMD’s) World Competitiveness Yearbook 2021, which ranks the prosperity and competitiveness of 64 countries on more than 330 criteria.

The four main factors are economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure.

Two-thirds of the criteria are based on statistical indicators, and one-third on a survey of more than 5700 international executives taken from March to April this year. CEDA is the yearbook’s Australian partner.

Media can access the Australian results here.

The full results are available here.