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Festerz said:
Remember when the SA Parliament neutered the investigative powers of the States' Independent Commission Against Corruption? The legislation to cut its powers was introduced into Parliament and passed by EVERY MP in record time.

Outgoing ICAC Commissioner Ann Vanstone has just tabled her last report to Parliament and it includes reference to an unnamed Ministerial Adviser who was investigated for receiving large and regular deposits of money into his private bank account which was indicative that they "might have been engaging in corruption".

Vanstone wrote that an investigation found the adviser's financial situation was "tenuous", but

"There was no illegality, but there was vulnerability." :think:

"Notwithstanding that no evidence of corruption was found, the investigation did highlight the significant corruption risks for ministerial staff, and for the staff of members of parliament,"

"Appointments to ministerial advisor roles are likely to be made based on political allegiances rather than a merit-based recruitment process that agencies must follow," the commissioner wrote.

No wonder they wanted her gone and ICAC neutered - politicians are all about setting standards and rules for others, and throwing the book at those who transgress, but they never want the same rules applied to themselves.

www.abc.net.au

Unnamed ministerial adviser investigated over 'large sums of money' in bank account, SA ICAC says

A SA government minister's adviser appeared to receive "large sums of money" into a bank account, prompting an investigation into potential bribery, the state's outgoing anti-corruption commissioner reveals in a report tabled in parliament.
www.abc.net.au www.abc.net.au
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And 7 News Adelaide can exclusively reveal that they did, however, find a Port Power cap on the back shelf of the adviser's car...
 

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KrispyKremeMullanikka said:
This is one of the worst idea I’ve heard of, honestly it’s laughable
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It was a thought bubble with zero chance of implementation.

The public as a consensus would never allow such a policy to come into place, but if we remove that from the equation, why in your opinion is it such a bad idea?

The current SA government have got no answers to stopping the ramping crisis, and dare I say they're not really doing a good job supporting GP clinics either with the addition of the payroll tax. I think it was Penbo who wrote a column in the Tiser today suggesting the govt would be wise to admit defeat on its core election promise now (and take the backlash and criticism head on now), as opposed to waiting until the election campaign starts and have that failed policy at the forefront of people's minds.

There is never going to be an electorate who will vote to add costs to public health care in the hospital setting - so this thought bubble is merely that. But on the face of it, when you consider the amount of people going to an ED for the most minor of injuries and/or illnesses, these all add up to clogging up the health system. But if you were to put some sort of levy on a hospital ED visit for these types of frivolous cases which are most definitely not emergencies (nor are they requiring any hospital admission), the MP is probably right in saying that it would go some way to reducing the overall load for hospitals which would theoretically reduce ramping.

FWIW - I work in healthcare and some of the stories my patients tell me about their visits to hospital EDs quite frankly beggars belief, so I understand to a degree why the thought bubble was postulated in the first place.
 
Chewy316 said:
It was a thought bubble with zero chance of implementation.

The public as a consensus would never allow such a policy to come into place, but if we remove that from the equation, why in your opinion is it such a bad idea?

The current SA government have got no answers to stopping the ramping crisis, and dare I say they're not really doing a good job supporting GP clinics either with the addition of the payroll tax. I think it was Penbo who wrote a column in the Tiser today suggesting the govt would be wise to admit defeat on its core election promise now (and take the backlash and criticism head on now), as opposed to waiting until the election campaign starts and have that failed policy at the forefront of people's minds.

There is never going to be an electorate who will vote to add costs to public health care in the hospital setting - so this thought bubble is merely that. But on the face of it, when you consider the amount of people going to an ED for the most minor of injuries and/or illnesses, these all add up to clogging up the health system. But if you were to put some sort of levy on a hospital ED visit for these types of frivolous cases which are most definitely not emergencies (nor are they requiring any hospital admission), the MP is probably right in saying that it would go some way to reducing the overall load for hospitals which would theoretically reduce ramping.

FWIW - I work in healthcare and some of the stories my patients tell me about their visits to hospital EDs quite frankly beggars belief, so I understand to a degree why the thought bubble was postulated in the first place.
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People aren’t going to the GP due to how expensive going to the doctor is these days. Add a cost to go to the hospital, and no one is going to bother going there either.
 
KrispyKremeMullanikka said:
People aren’t going to the GP due to how expensive going to the doctor is these days. Add a cost to go to the hospital, and no one is going to bother going there either.
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Well the cost for the hospital would only be if the presentation is one that is not an emergency and thus clogging up the system. For those in a true emergency situation there would be no levy.

And if that stopped frivolous presentations to the ED, that would indeed theoretically help reduce ramping times, no?

The policy isn't a practical one because no one would vote for it, but in theory there is merit to it.
 
Chewy316 said:
Well the cost for the hospital would only be if the presentation is one that is not an emergency and thus clogging up the system. For those in a true emergency situation there would be no levy.

And if that stopped frivolous presentations to the ED, that would indeed theoretically help reduce ramping times, no?

The policy isn't a practical one because no one would vote for it, but in theory there is merit to it.
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Yeah, but then you create a situation where people will avoid going to the hospital in the same way they avoid the GP due to the gap. What, in my opinion, needs to happen, and having a family member who is a junior doctor currently doing the rounds at the hospitals and hearing things from her perspective is a number of things. One is more staff as doctors and nurses are burning out, working 12+ hour shifts; secondly, finding a solution for the elderly who are fit enough to not be placed in a nursing home but need additional care and support, and if more GPs allowed bulk billing at their surgeries, there would be a reduction in people going to the hospital.
 
The health system is always overtaxed. COVID has only made it worse. I'm not in the OneGreatClub camp of lock everyone up, but hospital beds are still clogged by COVID patients and health staff are regularly off due to it. Schools and public places are some of the biggest points of transmission so actually fitting improved ventilation and raising required standards for non-government buildings around it would be a start.

The other one is Australia is a country of lard arses. So many diseases and related hospital admissions are either caused by or made much worse by this. Up the medicare levy by a couple of percent, then discount it back to the current level for those a healthy weight (not done by BMI, using DEXA or similar). Of course these days saying fat is unhealthy will get the 'love your curves', 'body positivity' types screaming discrimination, so it's a no go unfortunately.

A bit less controversial measure would be to make sports / fitness services / products tax free, or even tax deductible. To treat someone for heart disease / cancer etc. is (very) many thousands, an order of magnitude or more over what allowing someone to claim gym membership or yoga classes across their working life would be. That's discounting any benefit to just having more healthy people, outside of an economic benefit.

Much more needs to go into health and since personal responsibility for health is largely out the window these days, so either increase the medicare levy or increase taxes to pay for it.
 

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Chewy316 said:
Gee I wonder who could possibly have leaked this?
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Agree- Vincent Tarzia has sunk to a new low in his war with Speirs in leaking that.

Looks like one line for each of his investment properties too.
Screenshot 2024-09-10 at 11.18.36 AM.png

Speirs says it's deep fake which it most probably is but tbh the idea of the self obsessed God botherer being a cocaine user is the sort of image profile booster he could have used before he quit as leader of the Libs.

He's been trying hard to be one of the cool kids for a while now.

Screenshot 2024-09-10 at 8.54.21 AM.png
 
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Re the continued problem with ambulance ramping I'm not too sure the lib backbencher was that far over the top with his suggestion to charge extra to those who waste emergency services time and clog up an already over taxed system, but it would definitely need some fine tuning to be effective.

Eg I have a female relative who calls for an ambulance at least 5 or 6 times a year and mostly for minor issues and a mate whose wife is similar, and I suspect the problem isn't isolated to just a couple of people who could probably be described as hyperchondriacs.

In both situations the costs are covered by their medical benefits regardless of them wasting the medics time but more importantly clogging up the system, and I can recall a situation when a young asthmatic girl of 10 or 11 passed away some years back due to no ambulances being available and reports at the time suggesting some of them were tied up on calls that may have been unnecessary.
 
1954 said:
Re the continued problem with ambulance ramping I'm not too sure the lib backbencher was that far over the top with his suggestion to charge extra to those who waste emergency services time and clog up an already over taxed system, but it would definitely need some fine tuning to be effective.

Eg I have a female relative who calls for an ambulance at least 5 or 6 times a year and mostly for minor issues and a mate whose wife is similar, and I suspect the problem isn't isolated to just a couple of people who could probably be described as hyperchondriacs.

In both situations the costs are covered by their medical benefits regardless of them wasting the medics time but more importantly clogging up the system, and I can recall a situation when a young asthmatic girl of 10 or 11 passed away some years back due to no ambulances being available and reports at the time suggesting some of them were tied up on calls that may have been unnecessary.
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You are right in suggesting that people unnecessarily calling ambulances or turning up to hospital emergency departments are a big issue in terms of clogging the system.

But the hospital ramping issue is something different entirely. And that's where that idiot Liberal MP shows what a lazy feck wit he is in trying to link the two- and he isn't alone in that sort of rhetoric.

Ambulance paramedics are medical professionals who are experts at determining who needs to be admitted into our emergency departments and who doesn't, as are the doctors and emergency staff who man the admission centres of emergency departments. They aren't lining up sick people in hospital car parks or in gurneys in hospital corridors for people who don't need to be admitted.

People are waiting for long periods in ambulances ramping outside hospitals or queued in emergency corridors because there are no emergency beds for them. And that's largely because there are people who should be discharged from emergency hospital wards into at-home or aged care support but they do not have those alternatives available to them.

It is a huge system-wide problem that is being faced by all state hospital systems because of a failure in funding and support linkages between the state funded hospital systems and the commonwealth support for aged and housing. It will take billions to fix and a complete overhaul of our medical and care system.

But as dumb as Pederick's brain fart idea of a gap payment for those turning up at hospital EDs was, the biggest fraud here is Premier Malinauskas' election pledge to fix hospital ramping - something that he knew at the time will never happen with band aid measures like employing more paramedics or a 5% increase in public hospital beds. He needs to be held to account for it.

Nothing short of a nationwide crisis plan will fix this - focussed on all steps in the health aged care system. But neither side of Federal politics is interested in dealing with this as a 'crisis' because that would be an admission of failure and political suicide. So just like the housing crisis they pretend it's not a problem and focus instead on bickering over sideline issues like gaza refugees or census questions on gender identity.

/rant
 
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Ford Fairlane said:
Lol this is the problem with the state Libs dirt unit, it attacks its own. :tearsofjoy:
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That's what it looks like. As to the authenticity of the video, the Advertiser used a pretty highly regarded forensic analyst (Dr Mathew Sorrell, 'an internationally recognised expert in the field of digital evidence who is regularly used by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions for high profile cases of murder and organised crime') who seems to confirm it as real:

'Dr Sorell broke the pictures down into a series of numbers using a 'hexadecimal file viewer and found no anomalies'. He found consistent lighting and reflections and says the image resolution and metadata of the photos and video are 'mutually consistent with their content' even when viewed at the hexadecimal level.'

"I have checked multiple points of reference including the digital file structures of each photo and video, the embedded metadata and the content of each graph/video", he says and "It is in my opinion that each file is internally consistent and shows no indication of alteration of content or metadata". I am unable to identify any of the characteristics of photograph manipulation that would be consistent with photograph alteration and video synthesis- so-called 'deepfake' video.

Regardless of the authenticity of the video, the leaking of it to the Advertiser is clearly politically motivated to deeply embarrass Speirs and destroy any chance of him reviving his political career either within the Liberal Party or as a rogue independent or even turncoat Minister in a Labor Government as happened with former Liberal leader Martin Hamilton Smith.

Probably stating the obvious but my guess is that the only people who feel so violently opposed to David Speirs to do this are his opponents within his own Liberal Party as he poses no threat to the Labor Govt now he has resigned.
 
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Schulzenfest said:
Am I the only one who doesn't give a shit what people put up their nose in their own time?
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Do you care if people bash other people after sticking stuff up their nose? It happens.

If people want to snort cement powder and diesel with a bit of crushed cocoa leaves up their noise and don't do any damage to anyone or anything, then fine, but then as a politician, don't talk about law and order and drugs affecting the community and the kiddies.
 
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I just can't imagine David Speirs doing coke. I get the vibe he would think he was being an outlaw by having sparkling mineral water instead of still.
 
Actually its not fine.

Poor farmer types and people in rural settings in Colombia and Bolivia are ****ed over by people in the first world snorting white powder up their noise.

Drug cartels go and threaten them with violence if they don't grow coca leaves, and drug enforcement and military backed by yankee law enforcement dollars go and destroy crops and the only income they can make. And both cartels and military shoot and kill poor farmers and rural peasants and people in the first world don't give a flying **** if povos in the third world get killed, maimed, injured and forced into a life of drudgery as long as they can have a bit of fun.

If you are from the first world go to Colombia and Bolivia go and get some Coca seeds, bring it back home, find an altitude tent to help grow your Coca leaves, once grown, then go to Bunnings and buy some cement powder and a whipper sniper, on the way home buy some diesel, then go make your white powder and don't sell it to anyone and profit from it and just use it between you and your mates, and then it will be fine, because you haven't enabled anyone to be killed, maimed and involved in corruption and illegalities.

Nothing wrong with making home made beer or wine, so nothing wrong with home made white powder for personal use.
 
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Ford Fairlane said:
I just can't imagine David Speirs doing coke. I get the vibe he would think he was being an outlaw by having sparkling mineral water instead of still.
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I worked with Speirs for many months. I dislike him for what I perceived as his hypocrisy and sense of self importance. But especially I disliked him for my perception of him as someone with a lack of empathy for those who he considered beneath him. A trait demonstrated when he disclosed deeply personal information for a joke about one of his tenants to a group of people at a party. It was when I met that delightful young woman, barely 20 at the time, at a party months later that I connected the dots. I have never forgotten it.

He struck me as someone who wanted to be seen a champion of the underprivileged for self promotional reasons - his charity work in Uganda and for the Brighton Surf Life Saving Club for example - while privately lecturing others on his philosophy that they needed to lift themselves out of their own problems. But when has being a two faced hypocrite been a negative trait for a politician?

But despite that, his work ethic and commitment to his career and his personal religious and political beliefs was admirable in their transparency and consistency. To those who work and socialise with him he never hides from who he is, for good or bad. And I genuinely think he wants to be a 'good' person, both in in his public and private life.

So I absolutely agree with you that him snorting coke or doing any illicit substance just beggars belief. I refuse to believe it.

(edited multiple times for accuracy on reflection)
 
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