Right up there with the great moral challenge of our time.

Having a single government funder of health services would help to prevent some of the bickering between Sate and federal governments, and reduce some of the cost of bureacratic oversight in health service delivery. So more money could be spent on actual medical care.

Well, maybe that’s wishful thinking. Reducing the size of a bureaucracy is a bit like trying to clean out the Augean stables. The crap just keeps flowing in. But Hercules managed it, so why not Julia Gillard?

Oh. Right.

Anyway, Julia seems to be thinking the same thing. Or something. Because the ‘important, historic Labor health reforms’ of 60% funding of state health services in return for a reduced portion of GST might be replaced by something else.

Something like the Liberal Party’s policy of direct funding to hospitals, bypassing state government coffers and management altogether.

This is a good idea, for the reasons outlined above. Fewer layers of government oversight mean more local autonomy, more responsiveness to community needs, less cost, more money for services.

But the delays and dithering make this yet another stuff up, run around, prevaricating around the bush episode by this utterly inept government.

Federal opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton says Prime Minister Julia Gillard makes her predecessor Kevin Rudd and former environment minister Peter Garrett look competent.

The Prime Minister is more incompetent than Kevin Rudd? Or the Minister for Plastic Bags and Pussy Cats?

Amazingly, this might be true. Has anything they have done worked? Has any policy when implemented had the results we were promised?