Doog what happened was I went into the emergency in the middle of the morning. A nurse stopped me and said hold on a minute, I did. I noticed twelve people (I counted them) around a person on the floor. I did not peer in as I felt some privacy was required but could not help seeing them lift the person up and carry them through the large swing doors.
I mention this because there was no shortage of people there. My point is still that people are always happy to go if it is "Free", i.e. they do not have to pay. Five dollars would reduce those figures and in answer we get a spurious ad where a "Mother" is going to die because she would have to pay $5? Instead of that, the usual suspects berate their current ogre TA. Five years ago it would have been John Howard.
Do you not understand everything has to be paid for? Rudd and Gillard are very free with other peoples money but both get immediate extravagent pensions as soon as they bail out. They should be mightily ashamed of themselves and certainly not your heroes. Or anyone else's heroes either.

Since the 2013 election...

Business profits down by 11%.

Private business investment down by a whopping 27%.

Business confidence fell through the floor when Abbott started with his unheard of antics after the election. The only thing to lift that is a change of govt. Abbott is still a danger while he is still in parliament. He may even get the ase.
Public hospitals are meant to be free. So you don’t know where those 12 people came from, but you are quite willing to condone the hospital for having 12 people standing around. That sounds like the assumptions of an Abbott worshiper to me.
The worst liar of any election campaign ever was Abbott. He sold his backside to get elected and then what did he do. He turned against the very voters that put him there. That is why the voters went against Abbott and caused his dramatic back stabbing. Just rewards for just injustice.

Doog, my tip is Turnbull will win, then get rolled, either by Morrison, Dutton, or even Abbott. Someone with some balls at least.

As for self inflicted medical conditions.
Obesity, unless its a chemical imbalance, user pays.

Smoking, excessive drinking, user pays.

Dugs, lock them in a safe room with bottled water and check them in the morning.

The point is that will an aging population, most having paid their taxes, we must stop wasting money on preventable issues.

The only free medical should be through hospitals, and if its an emergency then ambulances have priority. The free lunches must stop.

JBower, unfortunately, charging everyone $5.00 to attend an emergency department would be a false economy. There are definitely people out there of low intelligence, extreme poverty, or mentally ill, who would just not go and see ANY medical person anywhere, if they had to pay anything at all.

This would be fine if it just lowered the numbers of non-emergency patients clogging up the ED, but unfortunately it would only mean that these same patients would end up being brought in to ED much sicker, and thus costing the health department much more in the long run than seeing them for free in the first place!

Yes, I can remember being happy to support TA when he 'promised' to give us a 'world class' Parental Leave Support system in Australia. This was ultimately dropped after he was elected. I don't know why I ever thought he would come good on his signature policy in the first place...

Poirot,

Last I heard, you were ignoring my posts.

Still, I quite happy to give the reasons why I loathe ('don't like is too gentle) Turnbull.

He did to Abbott what he criticised Labor for doing to Rudd, even to the point of sympathising with Rudd, directly, in parliament. Turnbull is, therefore, a hypocrite.

I disagree that he is following the same policies as Abbott; the polls show that most people share my disagreement - Labor or Liberal. And, it is quite clear that an Abbott-led Coalition would have romped in, unlike Turnbull's motley lot who are very much at risk of being kicked out, as they deserve to be.

There is also the obvious, apparent to everyone. Turnbull's entire rationale for stabbing a first term PM in the back, a la Labor, was that Abbott was a poor communicator. Turnbull himself has failed miserably as a communicator, and stuffed up on in every area he criticised Abbott. That's why the Coalition is now in the parlous state it is. If he remains PM after the election, he is going to have a hard row ahead of him that Abbott would not have; an even more hostile senate being the least of his worries. There are probably already plans to get rid of him, win or not. Turnbull has put the seats of some of his supporters, like Christopher Pyne in peril and, no matter how much they have adjusted their beliefs to curry favour with 'progressives', they don't want to lose their beaut jobs - or the money they are not capable of getting anywhere else.

There is nothing to like about Turnball.