It's a bit hard to work out what are my top things, i know what i don’t care about all that much about though. This is what procrastination does to me, only got 3 so far....
I guess mine would be these:
1. The economy/Taxes As Bill Clinton said, "
It's the economy, stupid". I realise it's boring as shit and people’s eyes glaze over at the mention of it. Managing the economy is one of the prime functions of government; I’m more interested in how they handle spending rather than social or moral policy. If we don't have money, any other policy talk is useless.
Closing loopholes is important, some are gone, plenty left.
I really believe we need a mining tax
with balls . Right now, it only covers a few minerals and has so many loopholes that companies are paying none of it. It's ridiculous, minerals can only be dug up once. These companies’ shareholders are 80% foreign. We shouldn't serve them, they should be generating a gain for the Australian public. It needs to cover more minerals with fewer loopholes. Many nations have nationalised their oil resources, the country owns them, sells them, and gets 100% of the profit. Historically, for oil, taxes on foreign companies were huge - 50% or more. That’s the smart thing to do considering we can only use them once.
Obviously, Labor did a good job of staving off the recession but we still need to keep watch and stimulate the economy as needed. The loophole that allows the rich to put their income into super at a much lower tax rate needs to be fixed too. They're essentially legally avoiding tax in my view.
2. HealthcareI think everyone agrees the system is far from optimal. A lot of GP's and other doctors charge above the scheduled price. Mine charges $70 for a 15-minute visit, up front. The official Medicare fee is $35, so, we get $35 back, the rest is out of pocket. Obviously, we *don't* have to see him but Medicare was designed as free, universal health care. In many situations, it's no longer that. We need to fund Medicare better and raise the scheduled so there are less out of pocket costs.
Dental care is another big one. Many dentists are rolling in the cash due to it being 99% private. They can charge what they like. You can get Medicare treatment for every part of your body but your teeth? That's ridiculous. Significantly increasing the number of public dentists will fix these things.
And from my own academic interests: We need better mental health systems since it can really impact someone’s quality of life (and reduce productivity, harming the economy). It needs to be more affordable. We've made massive strides with things like headspace, which is awesome, but it needs to be better. Any medication at most will cost you $35.70 (around there). It used be a few bucks. It's getting more and more expensive, people are taking more and more. That needs to be looked at as well.
3. Drugs & GamblingNo surprise given my major. We need to take a long hard look at our drug policy.
Alcohol causes massive social harm, not to mention health costs. We need to take steps to fix this. The tax needs to be fixed too.
It's based on the wholesale price and the type of drink rather than its alcoholic content. Take Wipeout, it's a cheap knockoff of Malibu. It's very alcoholic
for its price because it's "wine based". If it were made with vodka, even at the same alcohol level, it would cost much more. Students joke about goon but there are people out there who buy 4L daily. I know people who work in bottle shops and they tell me it’s just plain depressing. You can get 5L of wine, about 40 standard drinks, for 15 bucks. It's ridiculous. We need an alcohol tax based purely on alcohol content and possibly some protection for Australian wine growers retained(without making goon shockingly cheap).
We need to work on harm reduction projects for drugs. Putting dealers in jail and intercepting shipments work by choking the supply of drugs, i believe they do work to a degree. The best way to reduce consumption is not to cut supply but
cut demand. I've noticed even within my major there are so many young people out there who have no idea how harmful some of these things are and treat it as a joke until they wind up in hospital.
We need to ban all those "legal highs" as well, stuff like "spice" or "K2". Most of them are untested research chemicals. We have no idea what’s in them or what they do to a person. I've heard anecdotally they really mess you up. They're way worse than weed they try to replace. It sends a false message that they're safe since they're for sale legally. They're sold (mostly) in sex shops, they’re not at all qualified to be selling substances like that (this is why the sex party is against banning them too, they want their money).
[Bonus Vid]Gambling is another one for me, in particular, pokies at local clubs. The rules and enforcement are more lax than casinos. I'd wager there are a more addicts at these small clubs as well. Even in my area, which is low-medium SES, one of the hotels makes ~10 million. This is just a local pub with pokies, all money people have lost. We need pre-commitment and limits on each spin, say a buck or two. Given that machines have x spins an hour (which should be limited so they’re not insanely fast), limiting the amount bet per spin obviously limits how fast gamblers can bleed money. Tom waterhouse should not be on an expert panel either... get all that shit out of the media.
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