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Monday, September 2, 2013 NEWCASTLE HERALD 11
OPINION&ANALYSIS
ONLINECOMMENTtheherald.com.au
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ONLINE poll
VOTE NOW
TODAY’S QUESTION
Has Cessnock
City Council gone
overboard in offering
its interim general
manager a $60,000 car?
YESTERDAY’S RESULT
Are cycleways on Hunter
Street a good idea?
YES, 74.4%
NO, 25.6%
Mixed opinionsON Saturday the Herald reportedthat parklets and cycle lanes areset to add new life to Hunter Streetas early as next year if councilapproves the trial. Cycleways willbe built on both sides of a1.6-kilometre stretch of HunterStreet and parklets will sproutbetween Auckland and Crownstreets. Here’s what you said.
Great idea. Make Hunter St anattractive destination rather than abarren thoroughfare. Works forcities all around the world and agreat solution for Newcastle. Noneed to wait years and spendzillions . . . Well done!
Good sense
When someone stops to reversepark or is just sightseeing alongHoneysuckle Drive the roadbecomes a gridlock. And now let’stake two lanes out of Hunter Street.Really this is so so stupid. The bikelane should wait until the rail line isremoved and go in there.
sam
A great way to transform the cityfrom a car-reliant area to a safe andenjoyable area for families andcommuters to travel.
cyclewell
Where will light rail fit? The LM wasquoted in the Herald saying ‘‘hewas determined to have light railgoing down Hunter St’’. Thiscomment seems at odds with whatis being proposed with thecycleways. Does the left handknow what the right hand is doing?
Renee
Please do it before another persongets run over.
Pedro
Parklets, a cycleway AND a tram alltogether?? Something very strangegoing on here.
James
Great. Another boondoggle. There’sno reason to travel into NewcastleCBD anyway. Why bother with thisridiculous waste of money.
Garry
Visionary thinking at last.Newcastle – moving into the 21stcentury. Hooray!
City Mouse
Cobbers play fair incity stuck in 1960s
KINGPIN: Nightclub owner Abe Saffron’s presence in town was a blip in Newcastle’s relative innocence.
PhillipO’Neill
ACCORDING to Evan Whitton,crime reporter for the SydneyMorning Herald during the 1980s and1990s, there were 21 major inquiriesinto allegations of corruption andorganised crime in NSW between1970 and 1995.
Strangely for a place its size,Newcastle doesn’t feature in theseproceedings.
Sure the place has had anassortment of crooks over the years,and a few of the big boys fromSydney seem to have known theirway around. Notorious nightcluboperator Abe Saffron spent sometime in Newcastle at the end ofWorld War II, while corrupt KingsCross copper Detective InspectorGraham “Chook” Fowler is reportedto have been a keen visitor to theShortland pub following hisretirement in the 1990s.
But having such folk around hasbeen exceptional, leaving Newcastleas one of the few Australian citieswithout a history of organised crime.We are unlikely to claim an episodein an Underbelly series beyond theodd bikie bomb and bust-up.
Likewise, it is hard to nominate acase of serious political corruption.Sure, local politicians have beenfound to have breached properprocedures or dunked themselves insleaze. A small few have lostministerial appointments as a result.One local politician, MiltonOrkopoulos, is in jail for under-agesex offences.
But the Hunter has yet to host apolitician proven to have beeninvolved in persistent and seriouscorruption of political power – likethe behaviours exposed by ICACconcerning Labor MPs Eddie Obeidand Ian Macdonald, and like theearly prison releases arranged byLabor MP Rex Jackson in the 1980sin return for bribes to pay down hisgambling debts.
The taint of corruption is alsoabsent from the Hunter’s state andlocal government offices and publicauthorities. Impropriety is alwayspossible when public officials hold
power over land rezonings andbuilding approvals, with big profitson offer, especially in localgovernment. Certainly, it’s notuncommon to see your localcouncillor winging off on an exoticstudy tour. But it’s hard to nameanyone suddenly filthy rich orbehind bars, even though massiveproperty deals have been approvedin the Hunter in recent years.
Our list of ‘‘colourful characters’’and ‘‘well-known identities’’ ismeagre by Australian standards.
I think there are three reasons forour good behaviour. One is thatNewcastle doesn’t have much powerto play with. Power comes when youare high up in a chain of command,or inside a network of significantpeople you can manipulate.
For example, Ian Macdonald wasthe state’s resources minister. Thisgave him the power to nominate andapprove coal leases, which ICACsays he did in a corrupt way. ButEddie Obeid didn’t have ministerial
powers. His power came from hisuse of a network of people built upover the years. He levered people todo favours and deals to hisadvantage, perhaps in return forfavours he had done for them.
Politicians from the Hunter,however, rarely hold genuinepolitical influence, and our regionlacks networks of people with realsway – meaning that Newcastle isn’ta good place from which to assembleand wield power.
A second reason for ourgoodliness, perhaps, is the survivalof an old-fashioned ethic of ‘‘doingthe right thing’’. I was at a funeralrecently in Adamstown, at a smallchurch. I moved out of the wind andsoaked up the sun, leaning against awarmed wall. I smiled at thequaintness of a church service thathadn’t altered since the 1960s, and Ilooked up and down a street that wassimilarly locked in a time past.
Newcastle is like the 1960s still,isn’t it? Sure there are fractures but
people grow up here sharing anunderstanding of what it means todo the right thing: to look out for yourneighbours, respect property, playfair. Being a crook copper or acorrupt politician or public officialdoesn’t accord with theseexpectations.
And a third reason is theinsularity of the suburbs and townswe live in. Each town’s got not a lotof secrets. Life’s transparent. Mostknow how much is in a neighbour’spay packet, what rent they pay orwhat their home’s worth, what’s intheir shopping trolley, where they gofor holidays, and so on.
At work, people know the ins andouts of who’s done what to whom inthe past, and what is at stake inmajor decisions. These get dissectedad nauseam in workplace talk, somewhispered, some outside of workhours.
Keeping a dodgy deal underwraps wouldn’t be done easily inthese parts.
World-class health care comes at a price
Mark Fitzgibbon is chief executiveofficer of NIB Health Fund.
Quality care comes first in
NIB considerations, writes
Mark Fitzgibbon.
AUSTRALIANS enjoy health careas good as anywhere in the world.
Our doctors are highly trained andhospitals are of the highest quality.If you’re sick, having a baby or hit bya bus you’d want it to be here.
However, as with all the otherhealth-care systems around theworld, ours isn’t free ofimperfections.
Within the public health systempeople encounter long waiting timesfor many procedures and often justto see a GP or specialist.
More generally, our enormousreliance upon the public system andtaxes to pay for it (public spendingaccounts for about 70 per cent of ourtotal national spend of $130 billion)means eventually the whole showbecomes unaffordable. You simplyrun out of sufficient working
taxpayers to pay for an increasinglyolder, retired population.
But that’s a topic for another time.During the week I observed that
one of the weaknesses of our health-care system is the amount of medicaltreatment occurring that is ofquestionable clinical and economicvalue. That is, treatment that doesn’treally remedy the medical problem,or treatment that is overly expensivecompared to the benefit of otherclinically acceptable options.
This risk of unnecessary treatmentis of course by no means unique toAustralia, as a collection of studiesworldwide demonstrate.
Given that health care accountsfor an incredible 17 per cent of theentire USA economy (we’re a bitover 9 per cent) Americans havebeen very focused on ensuringmedical treatment is not onlyeffective in getting a good outcomefor the patient, but also cost-efficient.
Numerous studies in the US havemade this all the more compelling –
studies that show that if you live inSanta Barbara (typically richer)you’re six times more likely to havesurgery than if you live in The Bronx(typically poorer), studies that showfaking knee surgery with just a scarwas as effective in relieving patient-reported pain than actual andexpensive arthroscopic surgery.
Last week Greg Ray (“Ensuringinsurers pay”, Herald, 29/8) suggestedmy observations about the incidenceof unnecessary care was a harbingerfor NIB going down the path of themuch-maligned “managed care”regime.
I’m not sure exactly how Gregactually defines managed care but ifit’s about telling doctors, dentists orother clinicians how to do their job,then he’s wrong.
Our philosophy at NIB is that it’snot for us to interfere with clinicaldecisions. We’re simply not qualifiedto do that.
What we do want, however, is toplay more of a role in helping peoplebecome more informed and better
purchasers of health care. Providingthem with more information aboutwhat the latest medical evidence issaying about their condition,actively assisting them manage theirchronic condition, helping themchoose a hospital, doctor, dentist orother clinician and creatingpayment schemes and incentives forbetter treatment outcomes, are allpart of our vision.
Helping people access and affordhealth care when and where theywant it is why NIB exists. And wewill never compromise the need forquality of health care because ofpure commercial considerations.
Mitigating unnecessary medicaltreatment just makes good sense.Apart from reducing costs andthereby premium pressures onconsumers, it also avoids the risk ofmedical complications that cansometimes flow from surgery.
