Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

Not happy, John!

Dissatisfaction with the Howard Government is manifesting 
itself in all sorts of unlikely places, especially within the 
ruling class itself. There was the intriguing spectacle of John 
Valder, formerly head of the Stock Exchange and President of the 
Liberal Party, launching the "Not happy, John!" campaign to a big 
and enthusiastic crowd in Howard's own electorate.

(Incidentally, you can get free bumper stickers from that 
campaign via their website: http://www.nothappyjohn.com)

There was the highly critical ad placed by various eminent 
retired public servants, military officers, etc. Howard publicly 
dismissed it, but criticism of a Lib government from within the 
ruling class is not so easily dismissed in reality.

And on September 2, my local paper the Central Coast Express 
Advocate, not normally noted for having a radical posture, 
came out with a blistering editorial attacking the Government's 
health care funding and privatisation policies.

The immediate cause of the paper's wrath was the news that 
Central Coast Radiology, a company that provided a mobile X-ray 
service to the elderly, would close on September 3. In future, 
patients in nursing homes, or elderly people living in their own 
homes, would have to go to Wyong or Gosford hospitals, in many 
cases by ambulance, to have hips, chests, etc, X-rayed.

As the Express Advocate said in its front page news story, 
the decision will "place more strain on the Central Coast's 
embattled public health system". It would also "stretch ambulance 
services".

The company has operated the service for ten years, but claims it 
is not profitable (a claim the Express Advocate, as we 
shall see, readily accepts).

However, local health care workers and the newspaper suspect the 
closure has more to do with MIA, the company that owns Central 
Coast Radiology, "rationalising" services and assets in 
preparation for an impending mega merger.

On June 7, MIA announced that DCA would acquire the company for a 
cool $700 million. The merger will make DCA not only "Australia's 
largest diagnostic imaging provider" but a "health and aged care 
company with an expected market capitalisation of more than $1.2 
billion".

The merged company, reports the Express Advocate, will 
employ more than 350 doctors in about 275 clinics.

However much the paper may have been impressed by DCA's size or 
market share, it was not impressed by the company's closure of 
the mobile X-ray clinic. In fact, in an editorial, the Express 
Advocate called the closure "another example of how our 
health services are badly underfunded by all levels of 
government".

It went on to compound this subversive view with the startling 
observation: "Part of that problem is the view in some circles 
that privatisation is better than government control.

"This X-ray service has been provided by a private operator. It 
should not have been".

Not, mind you, because of the need to sustain government income 
as well as provide services at low cost to all on the basis of 
need. No, it should not have been privatised because "no private 
company could ever hope to make a profit from it" and could not, 
therefore, sustain the service.

In fact, the paper recognised in a backhanded way public need 
counts for nothing with the corporate world unless it is 
profitable: "no private company can turn a blind eye to losing 
money".

However, John Howard can take little comfort from the conclusion 
the editor of the Central Coast Express Advocate reaches: 
"The answer is not to shunt the elderly around to hospitals, 
using ambulances as de facto taxis.

"The answer is for governments to properly fund the service."

Dramatic licence

Another political figure was in the news recently: Arnold 
Schwarzenegger, the Austrian-born Governor of California. The 
former body-builder turned actor, whose politics are very 
reactionary, made a speech predictably supporting his mate George 
Bush's attempt to get re-elected as President.

Arnie tried to justify his and Bush's conservative politics by 
harking back to the Cold War and "the Soviet threat". Just like 
Bush would have done. And, of course, just like Bush, Arnie could 
not avoid making assorted gaffes.

He told his audience that he came from a country (Austria) that 
had suffered under a Communist government after WW2. He spoke 
movingly of his memories of seeing Soviet tanks in the streets of 
his home town.

While it is true that for several years after the War, Austria 
was occupied by the Allies and, like Germany, divided into 
occupation zones, one for each of the four Allied powers — 
Britain, France, the USA and the USSR — the country was never 
socialist, never had a Communist or even a socialist Chancellor.

To make matters worse, various experts were quick to point out 
that the moving memories were a figment of his — or his speech 
writer's — imagination. As Austrian historian Stefan Karner 
observed: "The fact is that as a child in Styria, he could not 
have seen Soviet tanks.

"By the time Schwarzenegger was born in 1947, the province was 
occupied by the British."

Terrorist at large

Boy, nothing gets past those American counter-terrorist guys, 
does it?

Veteran US Senator Ted Kennedy has flown between Boston and 
Washington regularly for 42 years, but since Bush's "Homeland 
Security" laws went into effect, he has been refused permission 
to board the aircraft on no less than five occasions because his 
name is on a "no-fly" list — as a suspected terrorist.

When the blue-blooded Senator from Boston, whose two brothers 
were assassinated, asked why his name was on the list, he 
received the answer, "We can't tell you".