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Labor’s Scurrilous Lie On Medicare!

Ok, we all know that if Labor is elected that our borders will be weaker, the deficit will blow out, the tax cuts for companies won’t go through, it’ll rain all day except in drought areas and the chooks will stop laying. Not only that, we won’t have the stability that we now have because Labor changed Prime Minister twice in six years and the Liberal have only done it once in three years.

However, it’s the Labor Party who are running a scare campaign on Medicare. The Liberals have no plan to privatise it. Didn’t Malcolm say “never ever” and while some people are reminded of John Howard’s “never ever” on the GST or Tony Abbott’s “ironclad guarantee” on the Medicare safety net before the 2004 election, that’s rather unfair on Mr Turbull. He’s not the sort of man to say one thing one moment, and another the next. He said that he supports same sex marriage and the Republic and action on climate change, and he still supports all those things. Ok, he may not do anything about them but that’s because he’s been busy with the job of being PM. It’s a big job which involves working very, very hard to ensure that Labor isn’t elected because they’ve promised action on all the things that Turnbull supports, and if that happened there’d be nothing left for Turnbull to do if he ever actually gets into power instead of just being the figurehead.

Some people have unkindly suggested that the Brexit vote should be good for Labor because it should show the people the consequences of not thinking before you vote and just blindly taking your lead from the Murdoch papers. Only after the vote to leave the EU, the argument goes, did Rupert’s papers start to explain what the consequences of leaving would be. Surely it should be a wakeup call to the people of Australia. However, this overlooks the fact that most people who read Andrew Bolt will hardly be aware that the vote took place, let alone the fact that many of the “Leave” voters are rather unhappy now that they’re discovering that it may have consequences that they hadn’t considered. Not only that, but the leaders of the “Leave” campaign, such as UKIP’s Nigel Farrage now saying that they never promised that there’d be oodles of extra cash for spending on Health… Somebody else painted that “promise” on the side of buses.

But let me be quite clear here. Labor’s suggestion that just because the Liberals have a Medicare Privatisation unit set up is no reason to think that Medicare would ever be privatised. If you’ve still got doubts I suggest that you read this article from “The Guardian” written last year:

There now, what could be clearer than that. They don’t want to privatise anything. They just think it would be better if the whole thing were opened up to competition from the private sector. I mean, look how long you spend waiting to speak to someone at Centrelink, whereas when you ring any private company, your call is answered by the next available operator.

No, there’s no doubt at all. The Government has given us their assurance and they know that if they lied to us, there’d be consequences. Why just remember how people over-reacted when Tony Abbott’s “No cuts” statements were misinterpreted as meaning that they wouldn’t cut spending. People got very cross and they had to change Prime Ministers. If Turnbull was lying, why the Liberals would just have to change leaders again to appease people. And Malcolm certainly doesn’t want that. As he keeps saying, “It’s a very exciting time to be Australian now that I’m PM and anybody who isn’t saying how lucky they are is just an ungrateful whinger!”

So vote Liberal this Saturday. You know that Medicare is safe and will “never ever” be privatised and that the plan to let Telstra manage the data has been shelved and was never a real plan like the one where they support jobs and growth. You know the one; if we create enough jobs at $4 an hour then there’ll be a really big growth in the bank balances of the people employing them.

 

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9 comments

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  1. Michael

    Or, the new clayton’s mantra (when you don’t have one) is:

    10. The long term leasing for 99 years of MediCare is intergenerationally equitable because, while its value can be released by the upfront payment of rent/profit potential, the site/service will remain in public ownership.

    11. The asset recycling by long term leasing of MediCare is consistent with current best practice for governments to deliver new and enduring infrastructure.

    Understand?

  2. wam

    even in jest words are important. Little billy got caught unprepared by sales on look me in the eyes and….
    This election has a greater con than the rabbott’s slogan lies.
    Labor has policy turnball has plans. slimey sales said policy of privatising medicare.
    billy could have said they don’t have policies they have plans which they keep secret but he didn’t then and still doesn’t.
    on the economy howard sold telstra, weapons of mass destruction and children overboard. gillard maintained a AAA rating through a GFC and had a word class economy trashed without challenge to the rabbott’s lies who doubled the debt and still billy doesn’t challenge today’s crap by morrison.
    WTF doesn’t he want to remind us how labor is the economic manager? doesn’t he want to remind us of the rabbott’s debt crisis tirade then doubling of gillatd’s debt??

  3. Gangey1959

    Wam. I don’t get it either. Unless he’s going to do it after the election. Or maybe he has a pre- election doozy of a speech where that stuff will all come out.
    I sure as shit hope so, because voldemurdoch is going to crucify him during the course of the week. I’ll bet my nuts on it.

  4. Keitha Granville

    I always enjoy reading your pieces – they are so bitingly correct.

    Part of me wants Turnbull to win so that all of his lies will be exposed like TA, and at the NEXT election they will not have a leg left to stand on. By then of course there will be no Medicare left to save, and employers will have a workforce of 457s on $2.50 and hour. If any Australian wants a job guess we’ll have to move to China and take our chances. Do they have 457s too ?

  5. townsvilleblog

    Some of us get your sarcasm mate, but not all. It’s tricky sarcasm in writing, best to stick to facts only when writing.

  6. Jason

    Keitha, I often wonder if labor should just let the libs pass their policies so they see the reality labor and the independents stopped. I’m conflicted as so many people have no idea especially liberal voters.

  7. Carol Taylor

    From what I’ve noted from the few comments which have been dragged out of Turnbull, he is choosing to use the word ‘privatise’ in it’s most specific sense, that is, to alter ownership from public to private. So of course Turnbull would be technically correct if most of Medicare was ‘outsourced’, basically leaving Medicare as we now know it as an empty meaningless shell but still ‘owned’ by the public..what’s left of it…

  8. Zathras

    It reminds me of the time Howard sent a boatload of troops to the middle east “just to acclimatise” in case we decide to take part in the war but with the assertion that “no decision had yet been made”.

    Pull the other one.

    Privatisation of Medicare is number 49 on the IPAs 75 item policy wish list and along with tax cuts and deregulation is one of the core aims of the Liberal Party.

    If not done directly it will be done slowly and by stealth.

    .

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