KERRY O’BRIEN: Have you consulted the States on this? You've told them of your decision are they relaxed and comfortable about the prospect of up to 400,000 extra people coming back into the public hospital net?On the ABC today:
NICOLA ROXON: Those are estimates from the health insurance industry. They haven't provided us with the basis upon which they make those estimates or whether, in fact, those people will present at public hospitals.
KERRY O’BRIEN: At least they've given us some figures, you haven't given me any.
It's about time our PM had them both in his office for a cup of tea and introduction, isn't it?Treasurer Wayne Swan has confirmed his own department predicts 485,000 people will dump their private healthcare cover under changes to the Medicare surcharge that were confirmed in last night's Federal Budget.
The figure is well above what the industry was predicting as a result of the surcharge income threshold doubling to $100,000 for singles and $150,000 for couples.
Also in the Kerry O'Brien interview, there's a sign that he's starting to get sick of the way the Rudd government media manipulation works:
KERRY O’BRIEN: The decision on the health fund tax levy was leaked to both Fairfax and News Limited newspapers for Saturday morning and then Wayne Swan confirmed it on radio. Are you comfortable that this kind of media manipulation has now become commonplace? Why not, if you want it out, why not just announce it if you want it out there before the Budget? I would have thought that would be a more honest way to do it, wouldn't it?Why doesn't he ask pointed questions like this to Kevin Rudd himself, to whom he still gives a puzzlingly easy ride?
Media manipulation by the new Labor government! Your having a fucking larff ...
ReplyDeleteThe Howard government made media manipulation an art form. I mean after all they had the media in their pockets for the whole time they were in office,Packer being a regular visitor with the poison dwarf for tiffin,until he popped his clogs.
Sky news was and still is Liberal party h.q. Give me a fucking break.
Poor diddums! Grumpy at having the Labor Government exposed for the shysters that they are, are we? (And next time you might want to leave a comment under an actual name.)
ReplyDeleteI must admit I haven't seen many Red Kerry interviews lately Steve - haven't got a telly at the moment, and there's very little call for Rudd transcripts at work at the moment. Rudd doesn't have the same ingenuity in interviews that Howard does, I've noticed; his technique is more to avoid saying ANYTHING meaningful. Maybe Kerry doesn't know what to do with this.
Must admit the Howard Government obviously manipulated the media - hell, it's so easy. All the mainstream papers and radio/tv sources loved a good headline, so all they had to do was feed their insatiable addiction to these headlines, and thata was it.
Karma got 'em in the end, though. The MSM loved sinking the boot in about the IR changes, and the Howard Government were out on their arses. Such is life.
I think it is clear from other journalists that they can't stand the heavy handed nature of the control from Rudd's media minders. (I think Christian Kerr wrote about it last week?)
ReplyDeleteThe point Kerry O'Brien was making seems to me that it didn't even make any sense doing it as a "leak". It just seemed to be a stupid game for no reason.
Yeah, the Bolta did a couple of blog posts on it last week, I think linking Christian Kerr. Rudd does things like not allow cameras into radio studios (Howard did) - probably because he brings in a lot of papers, forms and documents into radio interviews, and it's not a good look.
ReplyDelete