By 2353NM  

In October 2019, this website discussed the fate of the Murugappen family who were forcibly removed from their home in Biloela, Queensland by Border Force. At the time we questioned how someone who claims to have a fundamentalist Christian view of the Bible as the absolute truth (despite the ‘over 700 inconsistencies’ listed here) could justify his Government’s callous treatment of people while his Christian beliefs apparently direct him to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Since then, the Murugappan family have been detained as the sole inmates at the Christmas Island Detention Centre – costing you and I as taxpayers an estimated $6million. The political need for proof that the Coalition Government is ‘tough’ on falsely claimed ‘queue jumpers’ or ‘illegal immigrants’ has, to borrow a phrase from former Treasurer Joe Hockey, turned the Murugappan family from lifters – as they had jobs, paid their taxes and were active in the Biloela community – to leaners that have soaked up literally millions of dollars with no hope of a return to the ‘investment’. And it’s not the family’s fault – the Morrison Coalition Government is entirely to blame.

We all know the outcome here. The younger daughter, 3 at the time, was airlifted to the Perth Children’s Hospital with her mother on 7 June after her parents had been advising Border Force’s contracted medical staff she was unwell. After a week of continual requests for medical assistance, young Tharnicaa was transferred to the Christmas Island Hospital where doctors unrelated to Border Force determined she had a blood infection, possibly septicaemia. As reported on the 9 News website, Tharnicaa’s father and sister were relocated to Perth a week later for the mental health of both of the sisters. The Morrison Coalition Government relented to public pressure and granted the family temporary approval to stay in Australia with Immigration Minister Alex Hawke claiming “It is the right decision, a compassionate decision.”

What complete and utter rubbish. A compassionate decision would have been to leave the family in Biloela some years ago and let them get along with their lives. The Morrison Coalition Government’s hounding of this family have ensured that all members of the family have physical and mental health concerns that they will have to live with for a lifetime.

And while we’re speaking about ‘compassion’, let’s look at the Morrison Coalition Government’s mandating the ‘cashless welfare card’ for social security recipients in certain ‘trial’ areas around Australia. We also discussed the Morrison Government’s punitive social security system in October 2019, questioning the implied claims that those on welfare couldn’t manage their measly payments without ‘big brother’. While it is probably true that some who collect social security do act in a manner that the Pentecostal Christians in the government consider inappropriate, it’s also true to say that Australians didn’t elect any Government to be the sole determiner of individuals’ moral or ethical views. If this was the case, the Marriage Equality legislation would never have been voted on, let alone passed by Parliament.

The Saturday Paper recently highlighted another concerning aspect of the ‘cashless welfare card’ – the potential dangers of those subject to domestic violence or coercion having ‘big brother’ telling them what they can spend ‘their’ money on

Dr Karen Williams, a psychiatrist who specialises in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and works with many women who have survived long-term abuse, says the cashless card, “mimics exactly what a financial abuser and coercive controller would do”.

Williams points out that women fleeing abuse are at high risk of poverty and homelessness, and that these things in themselves can be used as reasons to take a woman’s children. She says that the welfare system, far from supporting women to leave abusers, is “actively working to keep marginalised women in the relationship while gaslighting her by telling her she should leave.”

Morrison’s Coalition Government has promoted assistance to those who need to escape violent or abusive relationships. The assistance includes $1500 in cash, $3500 in goods and services and a $2000 no interest loan. Women who subsequently are deemed eligible for the single parent payment and live in the ‘wrong’ postcode are made to go onto the ‘cashless welfare card’ – which according to a number of sources is almost impossible to get off (even if you move away from the ‘trial’ areas). As observed in The Saturday Paper

There is a contradiction here. Australia is spending $1.1 billion to help women escape violent and abusive relationships, the country is moving towards legislating against coercive control. Yet if a woman lives in a cashless welfare trial site and manages to leave her partner, she can find the abuse replicated by the very government that claims to want to help her.

Considering these trials have been running for 14 years with little evidence that they achieve their original purpose – preventing welfare recipients spending their money on alcohol, drugs or gambling – it’s hard to see why so many vulnerable women are still being forced to use the cards.

Potentially the reason why vulnerable women are being forced to use the ‘cashless welfare card’ and the Murugappan family are still detained at the ‘pleasure’ of the Minister is the Coalition’s predilection for punitive punishment rather than working with people to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. Making the assumption that those on various social security payments in certain areas of the country are all ‘up to no good’ despite the lack of hard evidence that should easily be apparent in a ‘trial’ that has lasted 14 years to date is criminal and has potentially cost the lives of some women who haven’t been able to escape violence financially. The hospitalisation of a 3-year-old girl with serious health issues despite the parents seeking assistance from contracted staff with claimed medical qualifications working for the government is a horrible indictment and stain on our national history. To claim that these measures are in place to stop tragic outcomes is duplicitous at best and certainly not evidenced in the reality.

Neither side of politics can honestly claim to be above blame here. Both the Coalition and the Labor Party have played their part in the increasingly inhumane immigration and welfare practices imposed in the name of ‘compassion’. Both side of politics have weaponised human lives. It needs to stop.

What do you think?

By 2353NM  

The wailing and gnashing of teeth that you can currently hear in your community isn’t a product of the sporting results last weekend or the sudden correction of housing prices. Rather it is the anti-vaxxers and their fellow travellers living the experience they feared – namely those who are vaccinated against COVID-19 don’t drop dead a week or so after the injection, they aren’t suddenly 5G transmitters, their wi-fi at home is no better than it was and there isn’t a sudden increase in the number of mindless automatons roaming the world randomly yelling ‘exterminate’. Apart from some usually manageable side effects (using the 2021 version of a ‘cuppa tea, Bex and a good lie down’), pretty much everyone is quite well and capable of continuing with their daily lives. The few who do have blood clots are well treated in the Australian health care system and with (sadly) two possible exceptions to date, have gone home to go on with their lives.

Essentially there are two ways out of a pandemic. Either everyone dies or there is the development of a ‘herd immunity’. Sweden initially chose to naturally develop herd immunity showing us all the strategy was a complete and tragic failure. From a population of around 10 million people, they have recorded 14,451 deaths to the end of May 2021, were forced to introduce restrictions and have vaccinated a far larger proportion of their population than achieved by the ‘world leading’ Australian response. Similar evidence comes from Bolsonaro’s Brazil, Johnson’s UK and Trump’s USA where the ‘business as usual’ attitude ultimately and sadly cost people’s lives. A vaccine creates ‘herd immunity’ provided sufficient people are vaccinated.

Prime Minister Morrison, even while castigating the Premiers of Western Australia and Queensland for closing borders to those from other states introduced severe restrictions on Australian’s leaving and attempting to re-enter the country. As pointed out in the The Australian Frequent Flyer Gazette

Among its peers in the Western world, Australia is unique in banning its residents from leaving the country.

New Zealand, which has adopted a very similar strategy to Australia in dealing with COVID-19, has not banned its citizens from travelling overseas. It just strongly discourages it.

Although it too discourages non-essential travel, Canada does not ban people from exiting the country either. Neither does Singapore, although the Singaporean government won’t cover the medical expenses of nationals who return home with COVID-19.

For a few months earlier this year, the UK government did impose a ban on non-essential travel out of the UK. But anyone with an urgent reason to travel simply had to fill out a form. This restriction was removed earlier this month.

Clearly quarantining works for a period, but there is a cost to it. If you are only allowing a certain number of people into a ‘sterile’ area once certain pre-conditions are met, you need to have sufficient purpose-built space for the expected demand. Clearly, Australia doesn’t. With multiple cases of variants of the COVID-19 virus ‘escaping’ from quarantine in hotels in Australia’s largest cities, the current process isn’t good enough. While hotels are probably a reasonable stop gap as their usual business has been decimated, they are not designed for the purpose of keeping people, their potential illnesses and possible avenues of cross-infection apart forever.

For most of the 20th century, the Federal Government owned and managed quarantine facilities in most states. As they were built in the age of sea travel, most were near ports and as the land became valuable, they were sold off. The quarantine centre at Howard Springs just outside Darwin, apparently the only purpose-built current-day facility in the country has reportedly not let the virus into the community. Morrison has recently, and very reluctantly, agreed to a new quarantine centre in Victoria somewhere near the international standard airport and the construction of a centre in Queensland near Toowoomba should also be progressed. Toowoomba’s Wellcamp Airport is an international standard airport that routinely accepts and dispatches 747 and 777 freight aircraft owned by a number of foreign airlines. Toowoomba is also less than 2 hours from Brisbane by road. The NSW State Government is also asking for a specifically designed and built quarantine facility.

However, we can’t welcome everyone to Australia for the next 20 years by bunging them into quarantine for 2 weeks at a small number of quarantine centres. Despite initial vaccine nationalism and political skullduggery, it now seems that there is an increasing understanding that if the world isn’t protected against COVID19, none of us are. The US Government has announced it will be donating 500million COVID19 vaccine doses as well as the billions in funding that it has already given to the UN’s COVAX initiative. Other G7countries are also playing their part to ensure there is a billion donated COVID-19 vaccine doses available for those countries that can’t afford to vaccinate everyone.

Despite muttering that ‘it’s not a race’, primarily because it shows up Morrison’s lack of action in comparison to his ‘world class response’ promises, vaccinating all those who can be vaccinated is a race. The race that will allow those that want to visit dear Aunt Doris in Dalton-in-Furness (UK) for her 95th birthday; pursue business opportunities with a firm in Talent, OR (USA); introduce the kids to their grandparents in Hue (Vietnam) or even see Niagara Falls in Canada the ghost of a chance to do so. Businesses across Australia will certainly be better off if they are not disposing of perishable stock in trade on a regular basis because of yet another lockdown. Who knows, those that routinely read The Australian Frequent Flyer Gazette may get their kicks by sitting on a plane for 13 hours to Los Angeles again, if that’s how they enjoy themselves!

And it can’t be just a race in one country, it has to be world-wide. Those countries that can afford to do so should be vaccinating their population as quickly as possible. Australia isn’t. The vaccination allocation and booking system is confusing, duplicated and unfathomable to those that really do have other things to do with their lives. There is no transparency on the number of vaccine doses Australia has, where they are and how they are being used. The best way of engendering confidence in the capability of a organisation to deliver a required service is for the organisation to be open and transparent on the process and delivery. We are doing somewhat better in donating funding to COVAX and assisting some countries in the South West Pacific that don’t have the financial means to ensure that their populations are vaccinated.

While some have good and valid reasons, such as allergies to one of the vaccine components to consider in regard to this or any other vaccine, the majority of us have nothing to fear except fear or irrationality itself. Jane Gilmour produced a lot of statistics in The New Daily that proved there is more risk in using a battery drill or driving to the local green box hardware store next weekend than getting a blood clot from the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

So, while this website doesn’t profess to offer medical advice – do yourself (and the rest of us) a favour as soon as you can – just get the jab(s).

What do you think?

By TBS Newsbot  

As we endure another pork barrelling scandal, we should not forget how our federal anti-corruption watchdog was quietly put down.

This week, the nation has endured the whiff of another acrid pork barrelling scandal, this time involving commuter car parks. As Crikey put it:

“… a report from the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) revealed the government had funnelled money from a program to fund commuter car parks towards projects in Coalition-held or marginal Labor seats ahead of the 2019 election.

“The report found 87% of the projects, funded through the Urban Construction Fund, were in Coalition held electorates or target electorates. The seats with the most projects – like Goldstein and Kooyong in Victoria – are all held by the Coalition. Then-urban infrastructure minister Alan Tudge and staff in the Prime Minister’s Office were involved in the key decisions.”

But while Labor and crossbench ministers clamour for a hearing on the issue, one has to wonder what happened to the anti-corruption watchdog we were repeatedly told was coming.

After promising to establish a federal anti-corruption body in December 2018, the Morrison government finally produced its draft legislation outlining its proposed version of a federal ICAC in November of 2020.

Having dragged his feet for near on two years, the attorney general only produced the exposure draft of the Commonwealth Integrity Commission (CIC) Bill 2020, after Independent Helen Haines introduced her own legislation outlining a more robust version of the watchdog a week earlier.

While all states and territories currently have their own such bodies, there’s no one keeping an eye on politicians at the federal level. So, the CIC would investigate federal level public sector and law enforcement agencies, with an integrity commissioner overseeing it.

The commission would subsume the ACLEI, which already weeds out corrupt practices within federal law enforcement agencies via public hearings. But when it comes to the public sector – 80% of the public service, including politicians – the CIC would hold closed-door hearings.

This lack of transparency has led to it being labelled a toothless watchdog. And while the hidden aspect seems suspect, it’s in keeping with the Coalition’s enhancement of state secrecy, whether that be with the closed-door trialling of whistleblowers or matters of “national security.”

But all of that is now seemingly irrelevant, as there was tiny admission hidden in the recent budget, one that reduced the staff number of the department from 76 to zero.

In conversation with The Guardian, Australia Institute senior researcher Bill Browne suggests the government are trying to “pull a fast one” by sneaking through the erasure in the finest of fine prints. Very simply put, there will be no independent body that will investigate federal corruption either this year, or next; which also means that it will not be done before the election.

“Clearly something has changed between last October when budget papers revealed 76 CIC staff expected in the coming year, with the budget yesterday revising that figure down to zero,” Browne said.

As MP Tim Watts put it, it is “… yet another example of a Scott Morrison announcement that will never be delivered. Always looking after themselves, not the national interest.”

So, let’s take a closer look at why Morrison and company are so obviously reluctant to establish an anti-corruption body.

Bad weather

“Strategically, any government wants proposed new laws, like a federal ICAC, to be made public and debated in a quiet period,” explained Civil Liberties Australia (CLA) CEO Bill Rowlings. “But the Morrison government is bedevilled by the background climate being so poor.”

This problematic backdrop, Rowlings continued, includes “police excesses” during the COVID lockdown, abuse within the ranks of the “previously godlike SAS,” and the alleged “sexual misogyny of senior cabinet ministers,” which just came to light this week.

The last incident involves attorney-general Christian Porter, the minister responsible for the drafting of the CIC legislation. And there are a number of other issues hounding the nation’s chief lawmaker, such as his prolonged nondisclosure of NSI orders and the gagging of defence contract information.

The Coalition opened up 2020 with the sports rorts affair, which saw the demise of a cabinet minister. Although the PM assures he had nothing to do with the scandal that involved the awarding of grants to community sporting clubs in marginal seats prior to the federal election.

“From their perspective, the last thing AG Porter and PM Morrison want to do is to launch the CIC into such a boisterous and poisonous environment,” Rowlings told Sydney Criminal Lawyers.

A patchwork of deceit

According to Rowlings, Porter has drafted close to 50 versions of the CIC before begrudgingly releasing the current one. And the changes he’s been making along the way have involved removing powers that could hold politicians and senior bureaucrats to account.

“The people don’t want a CIC watchdog which is held on a tight chain,” declared the long-term civil liberties advocate. And he ought to know. His organisation has been proactively lobbying for a federal watchdog over the last 12 months, but, unlike Porter’s, they’re pushing for one with teeth.

“The people want a watchdog that can round up the obvious nasties,” he added, “but also prowl the outer boundaries of propriety, where much of the usually unseen patronage is dispensed by people in power.”

An example of prowling around to unearth suspect behaviour that “would normally fly under the radar” is the “Leppington Triangle” affair. It saw the federal government use $30 million in public money to purchase a strip of land for the Western Sydney Airport that was later valued at $3 million.

And while the Morrison government has finally come to the table with its version of an anti-corruption watchdog after a two-year hiatus, it’s actually guaranteed further delays, as it’s opened up the draft exposure bill to a six month consultation period

Razor-sharp teeth

The NSW ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) is seen as the sterling example of a watchdog with reach. And funnily enough, it was the Liberal Party that oversaw its establishment with Nick Greiner being elected NSW premier in 1988 on a platform that included anti-corruption.

If established, Porter’s CIC would have the same enhanced investigative powers of the ICAC, which include those testifying not having the right to remain silent or the ability to refuse to produce documents.

However, while those powers are on the table, the Coalition model ensures that they won’t be exercised, as public sector hearings will be held in secret, the scope of corruption is limited to criminal offences, there’s an offence allowing for the prosecution of whistleblowers over questionable claims, and basically, only a minister can make a public sector referral.

Indeed, the NSW example might be what’s leading the Liberals to fear instating a body with the ability to sniff out corruption, as within years of its establishment, revelations from the ICAC led Greiner to resign, while it also claimed the scalp of then-premier Barry O’Farrell in 2014.

No shortage of fodder

When asked about recent scandals that might warrant the establishment of a federal anti-corruption commission, Rowlings was not short for words.

“Just in the past year, we have had some classic cases that should attract formal attention for possible corruption,” he said.

Along with the sports rorts grants, he pointed to Angus Taylor’s grassland issue, the alleged use of federal electorate offices for branch stacking – possibly by both major parties – and ASIC’s failure to take action against corporations.

Rowlings also pointed to a few more discrepancies that involve the architect behind the Coalition’s proposed CIC.

There was Porter’s stacking of the Administrative Affairs Tribunal with favourable judicial officers right before the last election, which “he thought the Coalition was going to lose”, and then there’s the attorney general’s decision to approve the prosecution of Witness K and lawyer Bernard Collaery, after his predecessor George Brandis refused to do so.

“The list can go on and on,” Rowlings concluded.

This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.

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 MyGov 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.