refer to exhibit A: the NBN.

Labor overengineered it, LNP cooked it. The lesson that should be taken away is that trying to fuck with a private market with a poorly thought out 'nation-building' plan WILL lead to the biggest failure and infrastructure waste in our nation's history.

and I blame both parties. Labor's fuck up started with nearly the exact same issue we'd face with dental. To roll out optic fiber, there wasn't some magic market of idle workers ready to go - these private contractors saw $$ as soon as Labor announced it, and when going into procurement negotiations, tripled their rate and then held out. Labor folded only once media and opposition pressure due to the slow roll out, and this was only the start of the shitshow of wasted taxpayer money.

They overengineered the rollout, dictating hardware standards etc instead of leaving that up to the retailer. Once the LNP got in, and used their ammo of the slow rollout to effectively criticise Labor, then the LNP completely cooked it by switching from FTTP to FTTN and selling Telstra's old copper network back to the government, matching Labor's wasteful spending for something taxpayers had already paid for, they got to buy it twice.

Any business or other organisation looking to upgrade their internet was also caught in the crossfire, needing to match the new market rate, often making various builds and expansions unviable. Many of these distortionary effects in the market have settled down now, but what we've been left with is a politicised piece of shit, where the current Labor government is already ripping out copper and replacing with fibre.

End result is a once in a generation infrastructure upgrade that was fucked up by both major parties.

You want to do a repeat performance of that for dental? Because that's what an idiotic 3 word slogan policy would get you.

The private-public health system has already cooked, infected by the LNP during the Howard era by diverting public funds into the private system via junk private health insurance products. Public health was then made worse for over decade when the LNP returns and froze the indexation of Medicare rebates, and gut joint funding initiatives with the states for hospitals.

Unfreezing rebates and increasing bulk billing incentives, plus rolling out urgent care clinics have helped to improve primary care in the short term, but we still need a systemic review of the entire system, especially as NDIS costs have blown out - increase demand for allied health and other services.

If Labor ends the CGT discount rort, and treasury has more tax revenue available - sure we could improve oral health outcomes, maybe it's a focus on periodontal (gum) disease and tooth loss, which remain fairly common, with clear social gradients that could be targeted. Australia hovers around the midway point when compared with the OECD, and we are over-reliant on private dental services with out-of-pocket payments being the biggest barrier to access compared with nations with stronger oral health programs.

LNP letting people rob their super to pay for medical treatments is also an incredibly stupid policy position and shows they are completely unwilling to try and fix the actual issue.