Belly,I understand fully what our NSW PS gets up to.I know some personally and it is a joke.Those at the front line have to work but the fat cats do Sweet F--- All.Michael Coster said 2yrs ago that we in NSW have 30,000 too many fat cats.He was silenced by the PS unions,thus we have a state that is both broke and impotent.

Perhaps you are one of the fat cats,so consider doing something for your state and country.Perhaps a job in private enterprise so you you can pay taxes to support your commrades.

ah GREAT! THANKS ARJAY TRULY you and I have crossed verbal swords here for a few years.
Verbal tennis even but you have just served straight aces against your self giving me the latest game.
I am not a government employee, you have served me often because of what I do for a living think about it!
Now my thoughts came from the front line the ground the very bottom the formen who are useless the first line of management who get the job because they are no threat to the next.
Yet I share some of your thoughts, the very fact you such a conservative can use Costa as a tool to hurt Labor proves my point he at least can best serve the party by leaving it.

There is no more reason why governments should be running hospitals than there is reason for them to run hotels, service stations of grocery shops.

The sooner the State gets out of running medical services the better. The medical industry should be able to provide these services to its customers like any other industry, without protection money from the State.

The medical industry is protected to the tune of $60B a year. And you guessed it, it has become a bloated, blood-sucking worm that charges outrageous fees for the services over which it has a monopoly. They say that if you're lucky enough to be in the bone or X-ray business you can turn $10 Grand a day if you put your mind to it, most of which will come out of the public purse.

This protection is dressed up as a subsidy which customers feel they have a right to - so everyone's happy. People are rocking up to hospitals in Commodores and Falcons wanting treatment for free at an average cost to taxpayers of $9,000 a pop; no means test, no delayed payment scheme, not even so much as an account, just thousands of hands slipping into the public pocket and extracting a subsidy for a services that they can either insure against or pay for themselves.

But it's worse than that. If you don't insure yourself and you're happy to wait a couple of months (and squeal while you're waiting) you can get whatever you want done for free. Who was the dill who thought that one up; its unsustainable. Plus it doesn't seem to be doing a very good job. People are becoming more and more unhealthy. Governments are protecting the wrong industry.

What we're witnessing is the protection of an industry that's more precious, sacred and untouchable than the Catholic Church. Not many people can see it, certainly the Productivity Commission can't.

And students keep paying that abominable tax on enterprise, called HECS to pay for their relatives to get a free ride into the surgery.

It's bunkum.