In The Un-vaccinated This Spreads Like Wildfire – As It Is In Texas At Present.

This appeared last week:

‘A catastrophe of a disease’: Doctors sound alarm on spread of measles

By Henrietta Cook

April 27, 2025 — 1.30pm

Victoria is in the grip of its worst measles outbreak in a decade, as health experts brace for a rise in local transmission after the school holidays.

The state has recorded 22 measles cases over the past four months, more than the entire number of cases detected last year.

Unlike previous outbreaks, which have mainly involved returned travellers, the majority of recent cases have been acquired locally in greater Melbourne and Gippsland.

Chief Health Officer Dr Tarun Weeramanthri said while a genetic analysis of Victoria’s 11 locally acquired cases showed they originated from returned travellers, authorities were unable to determine how they came into contact with one another.

“This means there’s transmission going on in the community,” Weeramanthri said.

There are 15 active exposure sites including supermarkets, cafes, shopping centres, libraries and hospitals in Collingwood, Fitzroy, Kilmore and Cockatoo.

Property developer Tim Gurner’s luxury spa, Saint Haven in Collingwood, also appeared on this list, with members urged to monitor for symptoms until April 26.

Measles is an extremely contagious virus that spreads through direct contact or by inhaling air contaminated by an infected person.

Symptoms may include coughing, fever, red or sore eyes, a runny nose and a red rash that typically begins on the face and spreads downward and across the body.

The disease can cause pneumonia, ear infections and diarrhoea, and about one in every 1000 cases causes swelling and inflammation of the brain, which can result in permanent brain damage or even death.

Eight Victorians have been hospitalised with measles this year, and most people struck down by the virus have been aged between 25 and 30.

Weeramanthri said he was cautiously waiting to see if cases would rise after the school holidays.

“The incubation period can be up to 18 days,” he said. “We’re not out of the woods for another week or so.”

The latest outbreak coincides with a decline in the proportion of Australians vaccinated against measles.

About 93 per cent of Victorian two-year-olds are vaccinated against measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), which is below the national target of 95 per cent.

The most recent measles cases involved individuals who had not received two recorded doses of the MMR vaccine.

Weeramanthri said people had a much higher risk of contracting measles, and becoming sicker, if they were unvaccinated. He said some vaccinated Victorians had also become sick but had experienced a milder illness.

Measles is a disease that Dr Anita Munoz, Victorian chair of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, never expected to worry about during her career.

“I was told as a medical student that this was an infectious disease of the past,” she said.

But like many doctors in Melbourne, Munoz is now on high alert for the disease’s tell-tale symptoms.

“It is a catastrophe of a disease,” she said. “It is one of the reasons why entire populations in South America were wiped out during colonisation.”

Munoz said vaccine hesitancy following the pandemic, as well as dangerous messaging from public figures such as anti-vaccine US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, was fuelling a decline in vaccination coverage.

Measles cases are on the rise around the world. The disease recently killed two unvaccinated children in the US and made at least 800 people unwell. The World Health Organisation estimates that 107,500 people died from measles in 2023 – mostly unvaccinated children under the age of five.

Professor Benjamin Cowie, an infectious diseases physician who works at the Doherty Institute and the Royal Melbourne Hospital, said measles was a notoriously infectious disease, with one case able to generate 13 other infections within a susceptible population.

He is concerned cases will rise after the school holidays as Victorians return home from countries with current outbreaks, including Vietnam and Thailand.

“Many Australians visit these countries,” he said. “They might be completely unaware that they are susceptible.”

Cowie said he was on high alert for the disease and exercising a high level of caution with patients.

“If someone comes in with a sore throat, fever and rash, I think could it be measles and then put a mask on them and isolate them.”

Murdoch Children’s Research Institute professor Margie Danchin said babies too young to be vaccinated were at heightened risk. Australians born between 1966 and 1994 are also at greater risk of measles as they may not have had two doses of the measles vaccine, which is currently provided to Australian infants at 12 and 18 months.

While Danchin said there was a perception that most unvaccinated children had anti-vaxxer parents, one of the biggest barriers to vaccination was access and cost.

Her research found that 20 per cent of parents with partially vaccinated children were unable to afford costs associated with vaccinating their child, such as gap payments for a GP appointment or time off work.

She said some families were unable to attend council-run vaccination sessions, if available, because they worked during the week.

About a decade ago, Danchin treated a child with measles who wound up in hospital with pneumonia, a complication that arises in one in 20 measles cases.

“It is the most infectious disease we know,” she said. “It is a heat-seeking missile that will find people who are unvaccinated and spread.”

Here is the link:

https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/a-catastrophe-of-a-disease-doctors-sound-alarm-on-spread-of-measles-20250424-p5lu2m.html

The problem with vaccine preventable diseases arises when you have not had the vaccine – which sadly is becoming more common:

Need to keep an eye on this over the next month or two, Not good if is gets going!

David.

Dr Mackay Is Making Pretty Good Sense Here I Believe

This appeared last week:

Australia must seize its medical research sovereignty – before it’s too late

It should be easier to commercialise Australian medical research, a key industry figure says.

Fabienne Mackay

5:00 AM May 01, 2025.

As a federal election approaches on May 3, Australians are being asked to decide what kind of future they want. For us, the answer is clear: a sovereign, secure and self-determined Australia must place medical research at the heart of its national ambition, not as a cost but as a catalyst.

Medical research is about national capability. It’s about improving population health, growing new industries, creating high-skilled jobs and building a knowledge economy that will outlast any single election cycle. It’s a matter of sovereignty, of Australia owning its future rather than outsourcing it.

QIMR Berghofer is a Brisbane-based medical research institute established in 1945. Today it is one of Australia’s largest and most prestigious independent institutes, employing more than 1000 staff across 67 laboratories. Our researchers lead internationally recognised work in cancer, infectious diseases, mental health and chronic disorders. QIMR Berghofer is ranked second in Australia and among the top 100 globally for biomedical research, according to the Nature Index – a reflection of our scientific impact and global competitiveness.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Australian researchers made vital contributions, from vaccine development and antiviral research to public health modelling and genomic surveillance. However, unlike countries such as Britain, Australia lacked the domestic manufacturing capacity, streamlined clinical trial networks and investment readiness to bring a vaccine to market. At QIMR Berghofer, we supported national efforts by testing therapies, conducting genomic sequencing and modelling virus transmission. But without national co-ordination and investment, much of this work couldn’t progress further.

We demonstrated that, when empowered, Australian research delivers global impact. But now, with public investment plateauing and international funding becoming more politicised, the question is not whether we can lead again – it’s whether we’ll retain the ability to.

This is not a plea for handouts, it is a call to ambition. Countries that invest in medical research not only are improving health outcomes, they also are building entire industries – biotech, immunotherapy, precision medicine, mRNA technologies, cellular therapies. These are not abstract ideas. They are multibillion-dollar sectors that are transforming global economies.

The recent decision by the US to reduce funding to overseas research institutions – despite contributing $386m to Australian-based research in 2024 – is a wake-up call. That figure represents about 42 per cent of the annual budget of the Medical Research Endowment Account, Australia’s primary federal research fund within its main health research body, the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Such reliance on foreign support is unsustainable. Sooner or later it will come with strings attached – or disappear altogether. No sovereign nation should build its research future on decisions made offshore.

QIMR Berghofer has not been directly affected by US cuts but the environment is changing. Since January 2025, the new US administration has introduced policies deprioritising foreign funding and diversity initiatives, resulting in temporary freezes, delayed communications and lower cost recovery rates for international institutions.

A new US budget may bring clarity but uncertainty remains. We cannot ignore the risk.

Australia’s economy is among the least diversified in the OECD. We talk often about future industries – but here is one already delivering, already competitive and poised for growth. With the right platform, Australia could develop a globally competitive biomedical industry. We have the talent, infrastructure and breakthroughs. What is needed is national focus and long-term vision.

At QIMR Berghofer, we are developing advanced cellular therapies already being used under the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s Special Access Scheme – a regulatory pathway that allows clinicians to provide unapproved but promising treatments to individual patients when no other options exist. Demand is rising. We are ready to scale. But manufacturing each new therapy still requires individual TGA approval, a slow process that limits the pace at which we can meet demand.

This is not just a clinical challenge, it’s a national opportunity.

Medical research is not a lifeline, it’s an investment with expected returns. It drives technologies, companies, jobs and export markets. It strengthens our health system and boosts productivity. In a country where chronic disease causes nearly 90 per cent of all deaths, this is not just good policy – it’s smart economics.

What’s needed now is a bipartisan commitment to research sovereignty: the ability to set our own priorities, grow our capabilities and build economic strength from our scientific success.

This election is a chance to think bigger, to move beyond the rhetoric of scarcity and commit to ambition. Medical research doesn’t need saving – it can help save us.

Fabienne Mackay is director and chief executive of QIMR Berghofer.

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/health/medical/australia-must-seize-its-medical-research-sovereignty-before-its-too-late/news-story/31e5f9c5f922d16b3aed4afca49849de

I have to say I find this article pretty compelling!

David.

The Heads Of Australia’s Medical Colleges Are Worried About Excess Paperwork.

It seems we are getting close to a crisis point:

This tells the story.

Medical colleges warn of health system breakdown in face of ‘bureaucracy gone mad’

The heads of Australia’s medical colleges are warning our public health systems face a dire future of chronic understaffing, unmanageable workloads and critical threats to patient safety unless bureaucratic overreach is overhauled.

Natasha Robinson

5:59 PM May 02, 2025.

The heads of Australia’s medical colleges are warning our public health systems face a dire future of chronic understaffing, unmanageable workloads and critical threats to patient safety unless bureaucratic overreach is overhauled in favour of proper clinical practice.

The call by the specialist medical college chiefs reflects the magnitude of alarm among clinical leaders at the direction of Australia’s health policy, which across multiple policy fronts is downgrading clinical expertise amid pernicious workplace cultures in hospitals that are seeing an exodus of registrars and senior clinicians from public systems.

Doctors across the gamut of specialties are describing what they say is a profound disconnect between health administrators and clinicians, who are frequently subject to reprisals or hostility if they attempt to raise patient safety concerns or improve systems.

Frontline clinicians who have spoken to The Australian say that many administrators are obsessed with meeting government-set targets – for the likes of elective surgeries and emergency department waiting times – instead of delivering the best care to patients.

The chair of the Council of Presidents of Australia’s Medical Colleges has warned that Australia’s globally top-ranked patient safety status in hospitals is at risk of being lost because clinical expertise and leadership are being disregarded and ignored in favour of politically driven imperatives designed to Band-Aid over widespread dysfunction in the delivery of care.

“We see in failed private companies that when key performance indicators are set with a short-term view, they lead to catastrophic consequences,” clinical professor Sanjay Jeganathan said. “Around the country, we are seeing KPIs in healthcare set with a view to largely wanting a political outcome, for the public to see that there are quick perceived wins being made.

“Whereas when you look at it more closely, the failures in Australia’s healthcare systems are being papered over, and the pursuit of these politically driven measures or outcomes are leading to larger and longer-term problems.

“Really, in each and every jurisdiction around the country that I’m looking at, there is only one source of truth that is being spoken to the politicians, and that is the health bureaucrats. The health bureaucrats are the ones who feed the information to the political masters. And there is no other alternative view that is being heard or listened to.”

Dr Jeganathan’s comments have been backed by the heads of Australia’s most influential individual specialist medical colleges, including the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.

The colleges are registering a high level of concern at the issues documented in The Australian’s Life Support series, which is laying bare dysfunctional cultures and administration in public hospitals, triggering unprecedented dissent among clinicians, who are warning of systems breakdowns and a growing flight of skilled staff.

Doctors across the gamut of specialties are describing what they say is a profound disconnect between health administrators and clinicians, who are frequently subject to reprisals or hostility if they attempt to raise patient safety concerns or improve systems.

The medical colleges say the situation is so acute that public hospitals are struggling to hold on to as many as one in five registrars they have trained. Some are leaving medicine entirely.

“These doctors are Australia’s next generation,” said Jennifer Martin, president of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. “To see these doctors that we’ve actually trained and who are so committed to healthcare leaving, is something I’ve never seen before. These colleagues have spent many years training and working long hours and they just can’t imagine that it’s going to be an enjoyable career when they get to be seniors anymore, that’s what people say to me.

“I’ve also never seen senior clinicians leaving the workforce before at the rate we are currently seeing.”

State and territory health ministers are facing a perfect storm of spiralling demand and rising health system costs.

Rather than investing in nurturing a long-term healthcare workforce, they are taking politically expedient shortcuts at every turn, with task-shifting and importing doctors from countries that can scarcely afford to lose them.

The core of the malaise facing public hospitals nationwide is not just the pressures of an ageing population and chronic disease, it is also the rise of administration cultures that have become a force unto themselves.

At the same time, government-led scope-of-practice creep is seeing other professions take over some of the roles of doctors with far less training, while the colleges are being stripped of stewardship of professional standards, including among overseas-trained doctors who are now subject to expedited pathways.

The colleges emphasise they want to work with governments on shoring up long-term health system sustainability.

The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons is now calling on governments to “immediately engage in genuine negotiations … to address the critical issues facing the NSW Health surgical workforce”. It comes as a three-day strike action – the likes of which hasn’t been seen in decades – recently rocked NSW, which has also lost scores of its psychiatry staff specialist workforce, who reached such a point of despair they walked away en masse from the public system.

RACS is asking for a recognition of the importance of clinically led governance, with senior medics meaningfully involved in the highest levels of planning and auditing of surgical care.

“Our surgeons are dedicated to providing the highest standard of care for patients across

NSW Health public hospitals,” said outgoing RACS president Kerin Fielding, an orthopaedic surgeon in rural Wagga Wagga in central western NSW. “However, they cannot continue to do so under the current conditions.

“The system has become very bureaucratic. I think that what’s happened is a bit of, dare I say, bureaucracy gone mad. We are increasingly seeing instances of bureaucratic overreach and planning without senior clinician collaboration escalating during the past year.

“This has significantly affected surgeon work practices, surgical workforce wellbeing, surgical training experiences and patient care.

“It has also resulted in resignations and industrial action across multiple jurisdictions, with well-publicised issues in the ACT and NSW, culminating in actions such as the recent strikes.

“The industrial action reflects the consequences of chronic understaffing, unmanageable workloads and poor working conditions across NSW public hospitals, placing increasing pressure on surgeons and ultimately jeopardising patient safety and care.

“We absolutely want to be part of the solution because, frankly, if we’re not part of it, our members will just leave the public system. The majority of training occurs in the public hospitals ... without us, it would cost governments multiple millions of dollars to support training in Australia, and if we don’t turn these trends around soon, we’ll be in dire straits.”

A recent national survey by the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation revealed the country was on the verge of a widespread exodus of medicos from public systems.

Associate Professor Fielding described the issues playing out in NSW as a boilover of trends that were occurring in public hospitals around the country.

“The situation is very serious,” she said. “This is really a call to arms that we should work together – the system is under threat.”

The ASMOF survey found that only about 40 per cent of more than 700 doctors surveyed said they intended to stay working in public hospitals nationwide within the next five years.

Only 6 per cent of specialists said administrators managed hospital budgets in line with clinical need, and about a third would not feel comfortable to report patient safety or clinical concerns. Half of all specialists said they had been subjected to retribution or reprisals after reporting concerns.

Almost a quarter said administrators were “highly disrespectful” towards clinicians. Doctors believed management did not understand the frontline work of doctors, rarely listened, and mostly only engaged in token gestures towards staff wellbeing and safe staffing. They said administrators “weaponised the complaints processes” routinely.

The first signs of staff flight from the system by surgeons who had expected to spend their whole career in public hospitals are already being seen. As many as 20 per cent of all registrars do not stay in the public system, or in medicine at all, after finishing their training.

Australia and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists president David Story said doctors’ status was being “downgraded” by governments across multiple domains. Management cultures in public hospitals and health ministries at the same time become “toxic” and characterised by “anti-doctor sentiment”.

Professor Story, a staff anaesthetist at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne and Foundation Chair of Anaesthesia at the University of Melbourne, said the situation in psychiatry in NSW was ultimately a tragedy for patients.

“As one of my anaesthesia colleagues has said: What’s happening to the suicide rate in NSW?’,” Professor Story said. “If you want to look at a dreadful metric, it’s probably going to be that.”

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/health/medical/medical-colleges-warn-of-health-system-breakdown-in-face-of-bureaucracy-gone-mad/news-story/c6c75b6087fced6a362bf74e448d376b

Right upfront I must say having a measurable suicide rate (or worse) has to be a pretty extreme alert that something is deeply amiss!

I have no direct experience of the present coal-face for working clinicians but all this is sounding pretty grim!

All we can hope for is that some of the “higher-ups” will get onto the problems and solve them! One suicide is one too many for work related stress causes! It goes without saying that some health bureaucrats can be pretty good at generating absolute mountains of un-necessary paperwork. Been there, fought that back!!!

David.

I Am Not Convinced Things Are This Off The Rails – What Do You Think?

This appeared on Sunday:

Opinion

Australia has chosen the Labor way of dependency

If Australians knew the country was at a tipping point, they deliberately chose the tip. Becoming the poor white trash of Asia is now a distinct possibility.

Pru Goward Columnist

May 4, 2025 – 10.24am

By definition, democracies are never wrong. In a compulsory voting system, there can be no doubt that the very decisive election result was intentional. So determined was the electorate to continue the Labor course of the last three years, the opposition leader lost his seat.

No doubt there will be millions of words and hours of effort devoted by the Coalition to working out what went wrong. Many others will critique their performance, their lack of policy effort and their apparent lack of hunger, but what is obvious is that Australia has chosen the Labor way.

If Australians knew the country was at a tipping point, they deliberately chose the tip. Alex Ellinghausen

It cannot have been because the electorate preferred one set of cost-of-living bribes against another; these were much of a muchness and if households really had done their own accounts, I suspect the result would have been more mixed and less decisive.

It cannot have been because the electorate feared the Coalition’s radicalism, because there was none, unless you count the nuclear power proposal, which they failed to explain.

It cannot have been because the electorate considered that the country was at a security and economic tipping point and chose to remain with the party that was demonstrably able to manage the future better. Rather, the government denied the existence of such a tipping point and the only crisis either party was prepared to acknowledge was the cost of living. Yes, the cost of living was an issue, but nowhere near the social and economic crisis of the Great Depression, which was an issue for the one-term Scullin government.

There can be no business, economic or security analyst in the country who will not appreciate the disaster now likely to unfold under an emboldened Labor government.

Becoming the poor white trash of Asia is now a distinct possibility.

There will be more anti-business red and green tape, more industrial changes designed to reduce work effort and the profit share, more effort to appease China and a great deal more government spending on programs that play to cultural differences instead of cultural unity. School curriculums will no doubt need revision to ensure acceptance of Labor’s plan for the future. The rising number of children leaving school unable to read, write or add up is already of great assistance.

Industry super funds, dominated by union officials and former ALP leaders, will seek to exert even greater influence on business investment to ensure consistency with union interests. Which would not matter so much if only unions represented working people.

If, by some remote possibility, Australians knew the country was at a tipping point, they deliberately chose the tip. Becoming the poor white trash of Asia is now a distinct possibility. Australians are clearly very comfortable with government dependency, with little or no interest in who pays for it. The long march of the left through the institutions has finally arrived at its destination. Labor can now argue it is the natural party of government.

Short of a disastrous fall in the Australian dollar and a severe depression, it is hard to see anything changing in the next three years. The slide will continue, but we will be reassured that this can be fixed with more temporary relief measures and investment announcements, which will never result in an additional house, road or cost-effective energy and go back to sleep.

The new Liberal leadership, however bold and brilliant, will not change any of this. In fact, it is likely to be mocked for its efforts if it even starts to tell this story and there are many in its ranks who will argue the party should become more like Labor, but with a leader who has hair and who smiles. Ah yes, those factions will need some work.

“The supine silence of employers, industry groups and investment houses on any of this ... has signalled their acquiescence to the new model.”

It is time for the country’s employers and investors to take the lead. The supine silence of employers, industry groups and investment houses on any of this over the past 30 years has signalled their acquiescence to the new model. They fund university chairs in medical science or metallurgy, but not in economics or political science. What did they expect would happen with a media decreasingly interested in prosperity and more interested in culture wars?

Prime Minister Albanese will see no need to bring the country’s employers and labour movements together to forge a new economic accord for productivity reform. Saturday’s result is enough mandate for him. It is something the owners of capital, to borrow a Marxian concept, must now do for themselves. There needs to be an unrelenting determination to change the story, bring young Australians on a different journey, to demonstrate that national pride is more than winning a cricket match, that there is wealth to be had and a greater fairness in reward for effort. Reliance on the Liberal Party, whose spirit was broken on Saturday night, or their voter base, which is devastated, is no longer an option. Business needs to clean out its leadership, stop apologising for believing in prosperity and do it for itself.

Here is the link:

https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/australia-has-chosen-the-labor-way-of-dependency-20250504-p5lwd2

Talk about a poor looser! I would see this editorial as an hysterical over-reaction and that Ms Goward should realise the sky has not fallen! We have survived 3 years of Labor government so I suspect another 3 will not be such a stretch!

The bottom line is that the Goward / Duttonesque way of exploiting the poor and down-trodden for their profit has been called out and balance has been restored to a reasonable balance between work and reward.

Sorry Pru the slaves do not choose to be flogged anymore! She should give up the nasty pills!

I see no evidence of becoming “the poor white trash of Asia” What drivel.

David.

Please Ignore - Author Confused - Blog Deleted!

AusHealthIT Poll Number 792 – Results – 4 May 2025.

Here are the results of the recent poll.

Do You Have And Use An Apple Watch?

Yes                                                                11 (46%)

No                                                                   8 (33%)

I Have No Idea                                               5 (21%)

Total No. Of Votes: 24

It seems clear there are a lot of Apple watches out there on the basis of this poll! I would not be a Swiss watchmaker for quids!!!

Any insights on the poll are welcome, as a comment, as usual!

Medium voter turnout.  

5 of 24 who answered the poll admitted to not being sure about the answer to the question!

Again, many, many thanks to all those who voted! 

David.

A Webinar That May Be Of Interest:

Here is the information.

Core clinician use cases for a national HIE and related national interoperability initiatives

Date & Time: May 20, 2025 01:00 PM in

Description: A one hour expert webinar looking at how our proposed national Health Information Exchange and key related national interoperability initiatives, such as upgrading the My Health Record and the development and mandating of standards of data sharing for our major software platforms, might directly benefit the day to day operational efficiency of clinicians working at the coal face in our hospitals, general practice and the community.

Webinar Registration

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Information you provide when registering will be shared with the account owner and host and can be used and shared by them in accordance with their Terms and Privacy Policy.

Use this link if interested:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_15AmPIacQCy9VIArATsl2Q?mc_cid=17a6aadc2c&mc_eid=4930439b08#/registration

Might be worth a watch.

David.

It Is Rather A Pity That Politics Gets Played At Such A Venal Level!

We have an election in a few days so it is on for one and all!

12:06 PM Apr 27, 2025

Albanese expands Mediscare campaign

Sarah Ison

Anthony Albanese has sought again to expand the Mediscare campaign to argue Labor is stronger in its defence of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme than the Liberals.

“Despite opposition from the Liberals, universal and affordable access to medicines through the PBS was an idea that survived to become one of our country’s true pillars of strength,” he said.

“Like Medicare, it is part of the Australian story and one of the most meaningful expressions of the fair go that we have.”

In a clear swipe at Donald Trump, Mr Albanese said the PBS would never be on the bargaining table in trade negotiations.

“Let me be really clear to anyone who’s listening or watching or hearing about this in Australia or anywhere else in the world,” he said pointedly.

“(The PBS) is not and never will be on the bargaining table under Labor.”

Mr Albanese used the rally to launch his new 1800MEDICARE policy, which will offer Australians free health advice over the phone and telehealth consults. 

“It has been the honour of my life to serve as your Prime Minister to have the opportunity to make a positive difference and to lead a government that sees a stronger, safer future for Australia in an ever more uncertain world,” he said.

“The biggest risk to that is the alternative. Peter Dutton struggles to keep some of his policy ideas for just three days – but he wants Australians to give him three years.

Sky News host James Morrow says the federal election has become a “debate of personalities”. The federal election campaign has entered its final week with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese exuding confidence as he fights to retain…

“But look past all the flip-flopping, all the reversals, all the contradictions, and you see a pattern emerge. A risky and expensive nuclear policy he doesn’t want to talk about … a defence policy that’s little more than a media release and handouts that disappear after just 12 months.

“These are policies with huge price tags, but the last thing Peter Dutton ever wants to talk about is where he’s going to get the money from.”

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/dutton-to-embark-on-lastminute-teal-seat-blitz/live-coverage/baf69d8e0489f9d6dd5d0fbe4dc0a9e8#/entry/11556743

One wishes they would all grow up!

David.