WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

Lid posted:

The Turnbull government is preparing to trump Labor in the budget by cracking down harder on high-income superannuation tax concessions to raise four times as much as the opposition's policy.

Labor has promised to cut the income threshold for more heavily taxing contributions from $300,000 to $250,000. The Coalition now plans to cut it to $180,000.

Recoome posted:

Turns out the UPF dudes can't tell the difference between an actual "communist" [sic] music and Hymn for Red October which was composed for a movie.

Zenithe posted:

Not that I don't agree with this kind of policy, but this seems a bit weird coming form the Libs oh yeah, forgot Boomers are retiring soon anyway, nevermind.

Lid posted:

The Turnbull government is preparing to trump Labor in the budget by cracking down harder on high-income superannuation tax concessions to raise four times as much as the opposition's policy.

Labor has promised to cut the income threshold for more heavily taxing contributions from $300,000 to $250,000. The Coalition now plans to cut it to $180,000.

Lid posted:

The Turnbull government is preparing to trump Labor in the budget by cracking down harder on high-income superannuation tax concessions to raise four times as much as the opposition's policy.

Labor has promised to cut the income threshold for more heavily taxing contributions from $300,000 to $250,000. The Coalition now plans to cut it to $180,000.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Can an expert on taints confirm if this is true?


https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/31386481/coles-stupid-culpable-leyonhjelm/?cmp=st

quote:

http://www.crikey.com.au/2016/04/19/alcohol-domestic-violence-myth/
The City of Casey in outer suburban Melbourne is concerned because, despite having high levels of domestic violence, the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation has approved construction of a Dan Murphy’s packaged liquor outlet in the municipality.

According toThe Age the proposal to establish the bottle shop in a “family violence hot spot” has sparked calls for an overhaul of liquor licensing approvals.

The newspaper says the City of Casey experienced the highest number of family violence incidents of any council in Victoria in the 12 months to September 2015. With 70 bottle shops it also has the highest number of packaged liquor outlets in the state.

It’s well established there’s a relationship between alcohol consumption and family violence, but is there a causal relationship between the number of bottle shops and domestic violence?
At first glance, the answer might seem to be yes. After all, as The Age reports, Casey has both the largest number of packaged liquor outlets and the highest level of domestic violence in the state.
But hang on; with around 283,000 residents, the City of Casey is by far the largest municipality in Victoria. So it’s not that surprising it has the most bottle shops and the most family violence incidents.

When differences in population are taken into account, Casey ranks 27th in the number of bottle shops per capita of all 31 Melbourne municipalities.

And it ranks eighth in Melbourne (the numbers are in the graphic at the bottom of The Age’s article, but you have to look for them) for domestic violence.
In fact, six of the seven Melbourne municipalities with higher per capita rates of family violence than Casey also have fewer bottle shops per capita.

On the basis of the numbers provided by The Age, it doesn’t look like there’s much of an association between bottle shops and family violence.

The Age only shows the rank order of municipalities. So I also looked at the Victoria Police statistics for the rate of domestic incidents; these are based on 2011-12 data but that won’t change the broad points I want to make.

They show Casey recorded 12.0 domestic violence incidents per 1000 population. With 23.9 incidents per 1000 population, the regional City of Latrobe had the highest rate in the state. In fact, the seven highest rates were recorded in country municipalities. This is consistent with a story in The Age early last month.

The key thing these statistics show, though, is that there is no correlation between the rate of domestic violence and the density of bottleshops in Melbourne’s municipalities.

I don’t find that surprising. As the Royal Commission into Family Violence points out, alcohol use is associated with a relatively small proportion of domestic violence incidents (but they tend to be more severe and chronic).

Also, this is packaged alcohol; whether there are 60 or 70 bottle shops might affect travel time a bit, but it isn’t going to change consumption all that much. That’s probably especially so in the case of those who get repeatedly violent with their families when drinking.
Short of something approaching prohibition, putting a cap on the total number of packaged liquor outlets seems more likely to inconvenience the great majority of men and women in Casey who drink responsibly than it is to measurably reduce domestic violence.

My analysis might be “quick and dirty”, but it suggests policymakers should actually make sure they’ve got reliable evidence that it works before they resort to imposing caps on packaged liquor outlets.

Importantly, focusing attention on what might be of limited relevance or even possibly a dead end takes attention away from developing the sorts of policies that might really ameliorate the association between domestic violence and alcohol consumption.

Policymakers might instead note that outer-growth area municipalities in Melbourne have higher rates of domestic violence than middle and inner municipalities. It’s likely the characteristics of those populations provide a better explanation than bottle shop density.

For example, outer suburbs have high proportions of young families, households on low incomes, high levels of housing stress and disadvantaged households.

It’s worth noting too that although the Royal Commission into Family Violence specifically discusses regulation of alcohol supply, its recommendation relating to this aspect (one of 211 recommendations) is hardly forceful:

“The Victorian Government ensure that the terms of reference of the current review of the Liquor Control Reform Act 1998 (Vic) consider family violence and alcohol-related harms. The review should involve consultation with people who have expertise in the inter-relationship between family violence and alcohol use.”

It pays to look closely at proposals to address social problems indirectly. They can give the appearance of action but too often achieve little or nothing and avoid tackling the underlying cause.

open24hours posted:

People should only be able to buy live animals. If you want to eat them you should have to get blood on your hands.

Zenithe posted:

I'm pretty sure making everyone slaughter live cattle in their backyard would lead to some pretty big health/waste issues.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

We should always be vigilant when some big vested interest unveils a scare campaign. Can anyone with knowledge of the pathology bulk billing issue weigh in?

Anidav posted:

"The realities are that we are acting in the interests of a sustainable health system."

Mr Chips posted:

So they're going to get rid of the private health insurance rebates, and stop cutting funding for primary health care interventions/research?

Jumpingmanjim posted:

We should always be vigilant when some big vested interest unveils a scare campaign. Can anyone with knowledge of the pathology bulk billing issue weigh in?

MysticalMachineGun posted:

All I know is that my wife is having a blood test today and if it cost $30 it'd be a much bigger pain in the arse.

Imagine struggling for cash and your bulk-billing GP telling you to go get a bunch of $30 tests

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Hey at least you don't have to deal with patients.

Inge posted:

Sorry for double posting:

Just as an example as to how it works for bulk billing - to test for chlamydia (which also tests for gonorrhoea in our method), the reagent cost is roughly $15 per sample. They are run 95 at a time. It takes approximately 5 hours from coding the sample to receiving a result. The two operators are on $37 an hour.

Full MBS rebate is $35.85. So for every fully bulk billed test you do, the government pays you $35.85

So with $370 labour total, that works out to about $3.90 per sample.

$18.90 per sample to actually perform the test - looks ok with $17 profit...

But then there's specimen collection labour and consumables, transport costs, specimen reception labour, analysis labour, reporting and releasing labour, repeat testing, electricity costs (my section of one department does roughly $80,000 a year), and most importantly the capital costs of the validation and development of the assay, the equipment which is hideously expensive, and ongoing costs associated with internal and external quality assurance programmes which are NATA mandated and also hideously expensive.

All things considered, we lose about $0.80 per sample, and we do about 300 a day, every day. If that were to blow out to $3 per sample with the removal of incentive, that translates to $6,300 per week and this is on a SINGLE test in ONE SMALL section of a state laboratory doing HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF TESTS per week.


I am not ungrateful for this. Although mistakes do happen, and when they you have to deal with their lawyers which is arguably much worse.

Vladimir Poutine posted:

Yeah, gently caress working in path. Everyone in my student cohort basically just ended up sitting the GAMSAT or becoming teachers.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

So the Gold Coast is basically driving you bankrupt?

Starshark posted:

Man I hate it when they sit the loving GAMSAT.