Tristan Ewins: "You obviously don't know the level of intensive and specialised care that is needed for many elderly citizens in the context of longer age expectancy."

Then you need specialised care, which means there's a market demand (which means incentive for workers to train, and employers to hire) which mean incentive to offer training (private education).
You expect all this to be provided by the state? Why?

"At the moment many facilities are understaffed."
Why? If there's such a demand, wages should be high enough to give incentive to workers.
If this is not happening, it is BECAUSE of public provision, not in spite of it.
Demand = High Pay = Incentive to Train = No lack of skilled workers.

"Quality of aged care, health care, education - should not depend on the size of your bank account..."

Did you even read my comments?
I said you could provide state financial assistance for access to essential services, rather than providing the services directly.
Then YOU have a choice. Will I use this service at all? Will I pay for the cheap, mid-range or luxury model?

"And families with their own work and kids don't have the time or training to commit to *full time care*."

That is a choice they make.
You live with the consequences of your choices (and pay for them).
If your career as a smarmy marketing executive is more important than your own parents (who you offload) and children (who you never see), then I don't really care about you.

LEGO: "I am very angry about the fact that our governments keep importing poverty into Australia"

Only 60% the immigrants from the last decade were "skilled".
(05-Mar-2001 to 04-Mar-2011)
http://www.immi.gov.au/settlement/

456,826 "family" and 126,227 "humanitarian".
Half a million people of no possible use.

rpg: "Why not get the government to live within its means, to manage on what it gets now"
For starters they could cut all those touchy-feely grants (you know the type: $53,000 for the Left-handed Lithuanian Lesbian Association).

Passy: "Between 2006 and 2008 40% of big business paid no income tax"

If that is true (?!), the solution isn't to increase taxes, but to stop allowing deductions.
Tax the gross, not net income. This would have the added benefit of making managers more mindful of their spending decisions.
The easiest way to do this, in fact to do any taxation, is a bank account transaction tax.

Tristan Ewins "Appealing to racism and fear"?

No, questioning the importation of foreigners with no skills isn't "racism", it's common sense.

"collective consumption of health, aged care, education - and social housing - actually helps ordinary Australian workers. Collective consumption simply being more efficient"

Perhaps, but at the expense of innovation and choice, which a private market has an incentive to provide.
State industries have the speed of a slug and the adaptability of a rock.

"partly because of the consequent market power (eg: PBS);"

i.e. virtual monopolies?
Since when do monopolies benefit the consumer?

"partly more competitive government borrowing rates re: infrastucture;"

If the state wasn't providing the service, it wouldn't need to borrow funds for it.

"public housing effects on supply and hence affordability in the broader sector"

Yes, it makes private housing more expensive, as the lower market is catered to by the state.

"If these are not provided socially then they need to be consumed privately - but if the consequence is that people pay MORE via private consumption, then what is gained by cutting taxes and social expenditure?"

People won't pay "more".
A truly competitive market would offer numerous options.
You pay for what you *want* to pay for.
Cutting taxes means you either have more to spend, or more to pay workers.
Employers might be willing to offer more than $6/hour if you weren't taxing the hell out of them, and supplying them with a virtually infinite supply of cheap labour through immigration.

While totally ignoring the serious social consequences of a non discriminatory immigration policy, Tristan, has always been the device of social utopians who dream the impossible dream of a perfect society.

Look mate, I know that you are claiming that you only want to “tax the rich”, but you see us ordinary working class taxpayers have heard it all before and we know that what your INTENT may be, the EFFECT is going to be that ordinary taxpayers are going to get slugged yet again.

We see it every day in our rising petrol prices, the outrageous price increases for essential services like electricity, phone, rates and water, the parking meters that grow like mushrooms, and the speed cameras which multiply faster than a welfare family on the dole. We know that the reason is because the administrators of our country can never find enough money to balance the budget. We also know that the welfare budget is the single biggest economic black hole sinking our economy.

Most Australians do not have a problem with the genuine unemployed, who because of circumstance or through ill health, are not able to work. But we have a very big problem with the large numbers of dole bludgers who have no intention working if they can get away with it, and too many of them today are foreigners who have not contributed a penny to our very expensive social security systems upkeep. And if you can “see no evidence of this”, then you are not looking very hard.

If you are really interested in helping the genuine long term unemployed, you would be going after the dole bludgers with a vengeance for looting a social security system which is now struggling to meet its commitments. And you would also ruefully admit that some ethnic groups are noted for their high rates of welfare dependency and for their proneness to serious criminal behaviour, and we would be much better off not importing any more of them. But no, admitting that some people are just parasites is something which no social utopian could ever contemplate.

LEGO; You talk of: "rising petrol prices, the outrageous price increases for essential services like electricity, phone, rates and water, the parking meters that grow like mushrooms"

Yet increasing energy and water costs, as well as higher communications cost from would otherwise have been the case - have occurred in the context of privatisation - of which both the Liberals and Labor are responsible. And privatisation of infrastructure finance and ownership - for which both the Liberals and Labor are responsible - also drives up costs. Ordinary motorists pay the price every day as a consequence of private toll-roads.

Finally - privatisations of government business enterprises such as the old Commonwealth Bank, the Government Insurance Office etc - pushed up costs as cross-subsidies are eliminated, profit margins are accounted for, and boosts to competition in the context of oligopoly are eliminated.

Now a clarification re: natural public monopoly and collective consumption.

Collective consumption via the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme costs consumers LESS because medicines etc are bought in bulk - and the scale of government purchasing power drives costs down. And Medicare provides a fairer *and* more efficient health system than in the United States for instance.

Meanwhile - *natural public monopoly* can mean lower cost structures because of a lack of duplication. And opposed to private monopoly, though, there is no profit motive. So there is not the same kind of *motivation* to abuse market power. The way energy costs have gone up AFTER privatisation, and the breaking up of old public monopolies - demonstrates this.

Shockadelic:

re: Aged Care I actually don't mind the concept of community provision - and that's basically what we have now. But in the context of community care - these organisations still need funding. I am not asking for straight-forward government provision. I am asking for better regulation and higher government funding for the *community sector*. This is necessary to provide better nurse:resident ratios, fair wages and conditions for staff; better standards including food, heating, air conditioning, a better living environment and so on. With government support, this can be provided in the community sector. BTW - You can talk about laws of demand and supply, here - but that would just mean an awful lot of people would be excluded - as they are by such market mechanisms in other contexts. But where there's a case of basic human dignity and human rights that's not good enough.

re: arguments that public housing 'distorts the market'; the alternative would be people being priced out of the market and left on the street. I hope you don't think that's acceptable. There is anyway a chronic under-supply of social housing. Prices are so high because of the Howard-govt inspired speculative 'bubble' (deliberately encourged) with a growing population and lack of supply. To boost supply effectively, though, we need to invest in infrastructure - esp transport - at the urban fringes. And puruse urban conditions, regional hubs etc. This means public money. And massive investment in social housing *would* increase supply and hence bring down prices.

Finally all this talk of 'dole bludgers' is anecdotal. No doubt there are some - but for the most part 'work for the dole' is just a way of punishing the victim without taking responsibility for creating *real* jobs - and in that context, training. And as I've argued - onerous active labour markets programs are already in place.

BTW-I don't imagine a 'perfect' society is possible. I *do* think we can do better than we are now. I think Sweden, Denmark, Holland - show that a different model can work - and be fairer as well.

Tristan,

It is you and your ilk that have led the Labor Party to the position it finds itself in in NSW and soon Federally.

It is a dead carcass being picked clean by the vulture Greens.

You and your communist ideas had no relevance whatsoever to todays working people.

Your airy fairy idealogy didn't do anything for them ... it is the sort of irrelevance that has torn their party asunder and allowed the middleclass uni educated pseudo intellectual dregs, with their nepotism to wreck their party.

You middleclass university educated mindless pseudo-'intellectuals' should have just voted for them and p'ssed off and left them alone.

Now all they have got is 'hopefully' a benevolent Liberal Party And still you carry on with your rubbish ideas thinking the carcass you invaded is still alive.

If you are from a Labor background ... you parents and grandparents have failled or more probably you've failled them by staying in the rut they tried to extract themselves, their children and grandchildren from.

Their legacy is the likes of you and their once great and principled party's dead and you helped kill it ... you utter goose.