Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Rudd vs Abbott on health care - a non debate?

I only watched the second half of the just finished debate between the PM and opposition leader. At the end of the section I watched, the only new thing that I learned was that the Government would combine case mix funding with some system of block grants for smaller rural hospitals. That's important.

From the portion I watched, I felt the PM had the better of the debate. But I do wish that there had been more substance on both sides. Am I wrong? What did you think? 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Jim

I think your headline spelled it out - a non debate. I watched it on Sky News, sans worm, and agree that Mr Rudd seemed to 'win' - whatever that means.

The only other comment I would make is that the process was poorly managed by the moderator.

For instance Michelle Grattan asked different questions of each leader, but the Opposition leader ignored his completely - taking his allotted time to hack back at Rudd's answer to his particular question.

Anyway, it is probably indicative that I have completely forgotten what was actually asked...

kvd

Jim Belshaw said...

Hi David. It is depressing. I have just done a post that bears upon this - http://belshaw.blogspot.com/2010/03/subsidiarity-banks-and-australian.html I would argue that we need to deal more with underlying principles.