Beyond the Blame Game: Political Strategies for State Funding Reform

There is growing concern that intergovernmental financial relations in the Australian federation are becoming increasingly acrimonious and dysfunctional. This paper argues that it is necessary to analyse State funding as a whole, including the critical relationship between State‐level taxation and its reform and the broader Commonwealth Grants Commission regime, if we are to establish a system of State funding which is financially sustainable, promotes economic efficiency and is broadly congruent with established norms of Australian federalism. Above all, based on international experience, we argue Commonwealth leadership is required to achieve this goal. We conclude with a case study concerning resource taxation which demonstrates how the Commonwealth could provide leadership using a ‘bundled’ approach to policy reform. It is argued that such an approach has the potential to alleviate wider intergovernmental conflicts which currently afflict Australian federalism.     

The world bank,health policy reforms and the poor

Over the years, since the mid-1990s, World Bank-prescribed health policy reforms have successfully introduced market-based private-managed healthcare model in the developing world. This article presents a portrait of the private healthcare model, explores the factors that facilitated the introduction of this model in developing countries and examines the impact of the model on the health rights and health conditions of the poor. It argues that health reforms designed to promote private-managed care in developing countries affect the poor severely and violate their basic health rights, the rights to stay disease-free and lead a healthy life. A host of factors produced by the private-managed care model, most notably reduced social spending on public health, dismantling of public health systems and the ever expansionary grip of private sector health services have effectively diminished the health rights of the poor.