Yesterday Kevin Rudd announced the biggest shakeup of the over-burdened, failing Australian health system in 25 years.  Experts on the 7:30 Report on the ABC last night saw fit to "nit-pick" the details and seemed skeptical, however they all concluded by saying "this should have been done 10 years ago" (ie perhaps when John Howard was Prime Minister and the opposition leader Tony Abbott was health minister...?).  Like him or loathe him Kevin Rudd undertook a massive analysis of the Australian health system and has come up with a plan that while clearly not perfect will absolutely remove some of the major inefficiencies and waste in our system.  Ask anyone who's been to a public hospital Emergency Department (patients or staff) in the last 2 years and you'll get the same response - the system is failing.  The State governments (who currently run public hospials) are clearly failing at their jobs, we as staff face intmidation by management to work harder, to not take breaks, to not even go to the toilet and "just hurry up" (which leads to errors, exhaustion and burnout) to make the numbers and KPI's look good, the small amount of federal government money that is delivered to the states to help with hospitals is handed over as a "blank cheque" with no accountability for how it's spent, and Kevin Rudd has come up with a plan to try and improve this situation, in a way that was consultative and at least in it's philosophy, seems to have the best interests of staff and patients far closer to the front than it's ever been.

Compare this to what Tony Abbott was doing yesterday:

While Kevin Rudd was delivering his new health plan, that took 2 years to develop, is aimed at reducing bureaucracy and waste of taxpayer dollars and obviously involved a shitload of hard work, Tony Abbott was lost in the outback, driving around on a quad-bike without enough petrol or water and with a phone that no-one knew how to use.  He then has the gall and the stupidity when he was finally rescued for one of his first comments to be "how can you trust a government that can't run a pink-batts scheme to run the hospital system?".  Um, der, Tony, have a look at the article in The Age today (see below).  This government actually reduced the risk from insulation installation, and has massively cut greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption thanks to the insulation scheme, and has at the same time delivered on it's education portfolio, and while doing all this has designed the biggest reform to healthcare in this country in the last 25 years (something you couldn't do while you actually held the position of Health Minister - your only achievement then was to block the introduction of RU-486 because you couldn't separate your own crazy religious beliefs from your duty as a minister...).  And what has Tony Abbott been doing all this time? Whining that Peter Garrett should be "sacked" and getting lost in the bush on a quad-bike, eating witchtety grubs and trying desperately to build a pre-election image as a "true blue Aussie hard-man" (obviously to appeal to blue collar masses), without having any new policy on the table and without any constructive criticism of the urgent health issues facing Australians at the moment.  And you know what, sadly, I reckon if they had the election today, Tony might just scrape through, because we are a nation of morons, tall-poppy choppers, who prefer football and beer to health and wellbeing, who (as Jeff Kennet once pointed out) "don't know how to vote".  We're more impressed by superficiality and image than we are by policy and actual political achievements. More likely to vote for the guy with the best advertisement rather than the best track record.  So who knows what the end of the year will bring, there are major obstacles in the way of K-Rudd's health plan so ot will probably never come to fruition thanks to petty political bickering and parochialism by the State Governments, and we'll all be a whole lot worse off than we were health-wise with crumbling hosiptal system, and Tony "God Bless Him" Abbott, who couldn't operate a mobile phone (but geez did you see him eat that witchety grub?) as our leader.  I can't wait.