The first was the government abandoning the"surplus at any cost"economic objective. This has been the centrepiece of the government’s political story since 2013 – they are paying off Labor’s debt through sound budget management (never mind that net debt has more than doubled since they came to power). The mantra has survived three prime ministers,and more than a year of the Reserve Bank and other senior economists urging the government to support the economy through increased spending.
The government strongly resisted these calls. After six years of talking about it they were preparing to finally achieve their prized surplus in 2019-20. Nothing was getting in their way.Until last week when they abandoned it as an economic objective. The pressure to provide national leadership on the fires raging across the country was too great and gave a useful cover for ditching the goal.
This is great news for the government and for our economy. We are teetering on the edge of a recession that would cost tens,if not hundreds,of thousands of jobs,without any intervention from a government focused solely on protecting the surplus. While the government still needs to take firm action,they are thankfully no longer constrained by the need to achieve a budget surplus at any cost.
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The second failure was the launch of the $7.2 million Medical Cost Finder website,which set out to address spiralling out-of-pocket costs in private healthcare. These costs undermine confidence in private health insurance,and alongside higher premiums are driving thousands to drop their insurance cover.
The idea was that we could look up specialist doctors on the website and see what they charged for different medical procedures. This would out the so-called"greedy"doctors charging high fees and arm consumers with more information on the costs of healthcare. The website promised to end"bill shock"and help put downward pressure on costs.
It was a surprise,then,that when the website launched on December 31 it didn’t list the fees of any doctors;in fact,it didn’t list any doctors at all.Thanks to a lack of cooperation from doctors,the website only provides minimal information on average out-of-pocket costs by area.
While the government looks a little bit silly,this is actually good news. Based on the best available evidence there was a real chance that,if successful,the website would have made healthcare more expensive and lowered the quality of care.