Tonight is Budget Night.

I had this mate Ray who described himself as Australia's only remaining Trotskyite.
I'm not sure what that is but, if Ray was anything to go by, it must involve a lot of drinking and the occasional misuse of ice picks.
He'd have been a chardonnay socialist if he drank wine, which he didn't.
Though his wife does.
For a fair few years, because he was very clever, he earned a lot of money but refused to join a private health fund on Trotskyite grounds.
Not that there are any health funds I know of that are on Trotskyite grounds.
So he had to pay the extra Medicare levy: an unpleasant surprise at the end of every tax year.
It was that bastard John Howard's way of trying to destroy the public health system.
Basically, if you earned enough, you paid extra tax roughly equivalent to a health fund membership.
Ray never got into hospital when he needed it.
Paying the fee didn't help at all.
His widow just got a note from the Fremantle Hospital Outpatients Reconstruction Department (Reply-Paid envelope included) asking if he would still need a consultation or whether his GP was handling the situation.
"This", it added, "is not a letter offering an actual appointment".
(Another one of the 101 things I hate about Fremantle?)

Sledge