Water campaigners are optimistic that new minister Tanya Plibersek will deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in full. Tracey Carpenter reports.
Productivity Commission
Graham Matthews argues that now that the National Disability Insurance Scheme has matured,聽the federal government wants to disown it, down-size and destroy it.
The Productivity Commission鈥檚 main remit seems to be giving advice on cost savings, which is at odds with its annual budget. The upkeep and functioning of the commission costs taxpayers about $33 million a year.
"The Coalition government's plan is not only to privatise Medicare, but to destroy it as a universal, national healthcare system," Peter Boyle, the Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of Sydney, said on July 1. "The plan is based on a form of 'creeping privatisation,' together with undermining its coverage of the majority of community health services around the country."
Eight short months ago, much of the population celebrated Malcolm Turnbull's ascension to power. Small-l liberals were drunk with joy and rumour has it that even some self-styled socialists joined the love-in. Turnbull was the Great White Knight who had slain the Abbott Dragon. He would turn the political rudder to the left, so we were told, and we would all live happily ever after.
Many writers, no doubt, were also sucked in by this master of spin and his chorus of sycophants. Eight months on, the illusions of those spring days pile up like dead leaves.
Happy New Year for a few weeks ago or coming up in a couple of weeks, depending on whether you rely on a calendar or the moon for such things. I hope you had some time off and got to spend it relaxing with people you love, or if you were working, that you got plenty of time and a ... WATCH OUT FOR YOUR PENALTY RATES!!!
Yes, that's right, while most of us were working or preparing for the strange rituals of the season, those busy little elves at the Productivity Commission had been slavishly working, day and night, to deliver a lovely big present to business and the government.
In much the same way that the Tony Abbott government鈥檚 attacks on Gillian Triggs deflected media attention away from the horrific substance of the Human Rights Commission鈥檚 report on children living in detention, his 鈥渓ifestyle choices鈥 comment this week ensured the media has paid little attention to the government鈥檚 cuts to Aboriginal services.
One of the pre-election promises of Tony Abbott鈥檚 government was to initiate an inquiry into workplace relations by the Productivity Commission.
But the spectre of former prime minister John Howard鈥檚 WorkChoices, which lost the Coalition the 2007 election and the PM his seat, meant there was no great rush.
The plan was to pave the way for an assault on wages and working conditions by first attacking unions through a Royal Commission specially set-up for the purpose.