No charge for Pulse victims

[Sunday21]

5 hours ago, askandanswer said:

The idea that I should get a bill or have to directly pay for any treatment resulting from a trip to a hospital emergency department is completely ludicrous! The idea that the quality of care or the kind of procedure that I receive should in any way be influenced by considerations of cost is equally bizarre. Hospitals and many other health services in Australia are funded in full or in part by a 1.5% surcharge on everybody's income. 

Dear Ask, I have heard that your country has a unique way of finding university. It is true that each young person has some type of a fund that they can use for Uni or job training? If so, do you feel this procedure is useful? Efficient? Does your country have good technical training for trades.

[askandanswer]

Hi Sunday

The full details of university funding are very complex. The simple explanation is that when students sign up for a degree, they sign a contract with the government. The essence of the contract is that the government will pay for their degree and the student will pay the government back once their income reaches a certain level. If your income never reaches the level that triggers repayment then you never have to repay the government loan, but the loan will still exist. You will never see a debt collector and the debt is never sold or transferred to any other organisation or business - it is always held by the government. Once a year by having an amount taken out of their tax return at the end year you will get a letter from the tax office saying how much is currently outstanding on your loan, but that's it. Many people choose to repay their loan through the tax system, either by way of deduction from their salary, or by having an amount taken out of their tax return at the end of the financial year. No interest is charged on the loan, but the amount that needs to be repaid does increase in line with inflation. The amount that a university is allowed to charge for a course is currently determined by the government and the same degree will cost the same amount of money at whatever university you choose to study at. For the last two years the government has had draft legislation before the Senate aimed at giving universities the power to set their own prices. The Senate, which is not controlled by the government has refused to pass the law. There was some talk last year by the Treasurer and the Minister for Higher Education to start collecting loan repayments frohTm the estates of students who have died but this proposal met with strong opposition from our Members of Parliament so it was dropped, but it is believed that the Treasurer is still in favour of the idea and might push for it again. I believe the Australian model of university funding has been copied by other countries, including England. This system means that you can do a university degree and pretty much the only things you will have to pay for are text books, parking, photocopying and late fees to the library. 

Up until three or four years ago, Australia used to have a pretty good system of technical training, but it has been almost demolished, remarkably quickly. The damage began to occur when the government opened up the system to private providers. Huge amounts of money that the government had been paying to the public training sector was suddenly diverted to the private sector. The private sector were paid on the basis of the number of students they enrolled, so all of their focus was on enrolling new students, with only minimal effort put in to providing training and helping students complete their course. The publicly funded training sector lost a lot of money and the quality of their training significantly diminished and the private providers made a fortune, without producing well trained graduates. This only started to emerge early this year and now the state and federal governments are trying to figure out how to fix the mess.  

A few years ago there was renewed talk of establishing some sort of training fund for all students for them to use as they saw fit, but nothing ever came of it. The idea has emerged several times over the years but it hasn't gone anywhere.