How is the peak body for people with disabilities to be funded?

Sinclair Davidson, Professor of Institutional Economics, at RMIT University. Here is what he is reported to have said about the proposed GP co-payment scheme.

Then there is the Medical Research Future Fund. This verges on the incoherent. The government will invest all the money from the GP co-payment, increased medicine payments, and savings from medical expenditure into the fund which will then finance research. In other words, the GP co-payment and increased medicine prices will not be used to reduce debt or deficit. So why have it at all? Clearly there is no urgent need to introduce these higher prices and co-payments; they are driven purely by ideology. The Medical Research Future Fund exists to detract attention from that decision. Why deprive people of actual medical attention in order to finance research when there is no guarantee of any actual benefit?

In other words: Is the federal government just attempting to introduce another social dilemma? A social dilemma is when a collective act is in opposition to private interest. It seems that public policies that can directly affect social inclusiveness are framed to create what seem to be social dilemmas. This plays off the perception that welfare policies are an incentive for a growth in individual selfishness. Public Choice theory has taken this on board and identifies some policies that presuppose the creation of social dilemmas.

This is driven by the belief that an even worse social dilemma can be created to cover up the first. Is that what the cut to advocacy is all about?

Or consider the views of Lawrence Abeln, Dean of the Business School at University of Adelaide

There is no concern for a structural deficit in Australia and therefore no need for such repairs. The Australian national deficit is among the lowest of our G20 peers. There is too much preoccupation with the public debt in this federal budget, and we should focus instead on using debt as an instrument of growth rather than employ measures to reduce spending. Relative to our G20 competitor nations, Australia has one of the strongest economies in the world.

This prompts me to ask a question, and give a logical, coherent and factual response. Can individual self-interest be altruistic? Of course it can, but the chances of it being plainly selfish and greedy are much greater. The effects of such a way of life can be witnessed today by the problematic growth in the economic divide between rich and poor that is encountered everyday by those who keep alert to what is happening around them in general social life.

Our inflation is relatively contained, our unemployment is low relative to Europe and the US and we have among the lowest public debt ratios to gross domestic product (GDP) of any industrialised country in the world. Our public debt is 30% of GDP. It is three times that in France and the UK, two and a half ties in the US and seven times in Japan. So we as a nation have a very strong balancesheet and our public debt is already under control. Because of our favourable balance sheet especially compared to others, we have capacity to borrow and to use some of the funds to invest to promote further growth.

Therefore, what I would like to ask is this: why does the federal Coalition Government undermine much needed social policy? What does it think it will gain from this cut? Is there anything to gain from the loss of advocacy for disabled people?