Political hypocrisy.

With an election just weeks away a prime example of political hypocrisy has been resolved.
The Federal government initially granted a license for the first Magnetic Resonance Imaging ( MRI ) machine to come to the Illawarra to a group of private medical practitioners.
The Wollongong hospital and Illawarra specialists argued that a public MRI machine was an essential need, but provision was denied by the Federal government as part of the ongoing battle between different political persuasions.

The state government bought and installed an MRI machine at Wollongong hospital, but were denied a Medicaire license - and this has been the situation for three long years.
As a result, the only people able to us the hospital MRI machine have been inpatients. The general public, out-patients and people referred by specialists have had to use the MRI machine owned by private doctors - and pay a fee of around $ 200 for each session.

With an election brewing the Federal government has finally dropped a crumb from it's table - and granted a Medicaire license for the hospital MRI machine. As a result, it will be available to the public on a bulk billing basis.
Commonsense should have prevailed and this license should have been granted three years ago, preventing untold misery and avoidable expense for the citizens of the Illawarra. The reason it wasn't is the ongoing battle for supremacy - and point scoring - between politicians of differing persuasions in two tiers of government.

What we have seen here is a classic example of what is wrong with politics. The original idea of a parliament goes back centuries to when each tribe gathered for a pow-wow around the campfire - and elected their wisest to be their representative at a gathering of all the tribes.
The requirement was that such a person would consider the issues evenly - and make decisions for the betterment of all of the tribes.
What a long way from that principle have we strayed !