After six months of doggedly attempting to push the highly controversial Federal Budget through an increasingly hostile senate dominated by a motley crew of rogue crossbench senators, the Abbott Government has now seemingly resigned itself to the idea that key elements of their cost cutting baby are simply not going to survive.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has reportedly conceded in private that one of the more controversial elements of the budget, the $7 GP Co-Payment, will be scrapped altogether before the end of the year.
This, in turn, means the Government’s proposed Medical Research Fund will also not come to fruition, as its funding was to have been directly derived from part of that co-payment.
Earlier in the week Prime Minister Abbott referred to key issues hampering the Government’s standing in opinion polls as being “barnacles” on the hull of the Government’s ship. The shelving of the GP Co-Payment represents the removal of the first – but by absolutely no means the last – of these blemishes on the Coalition’s popularity.
It’s being reported that senior Government officials have Abbott’s signature Paid Parental Leave scheme in their sights next, with the sitting days of Parliament winding down for 2014, and the Government bracing itself for an exceedingly bleak mid-year budget statement, which is due to be delivered in December.
The shelving of this proposed co-payment represents a minor victory, and sigh of relief, for low income families, and should avoid the knock to public health that in all likelihood would have occurred.
Photo: Cole Bennetts via Getty Images.
via SMH.
