Beware budget traps.
The Labor government has dug a great big hole in the jungle, covered it over with bamboo and placed a $50 note in the middle of it to entice the unwary, it has emerged.
“We spent absolutely ages digging that hole,” Health Minister Mark Butler told The Medical Republic, “and because I’d just finished rewatching Rambo: First Blood I decided to put a load of sharpened sticks in the hole as well.”
Labor’s aim, according to a government insider, is to entice cold and tired GPs wandering haplessly though the forest with a paltry sum of money.
“If they fall for it,” continued Mr Butler “then we’ll catch those pesky doctors in a bulk-billing trap. All of a sudden they won’t just have $50 in their hand, they’ll have to register patients and satisfy QoF outcomes and meet contractual obligations and tick KPI boxes and be forced to do more and more for the same sum of money and will never be let out of the pit again.
“Sure, we’ll toss in a chicken bone once in a while so they don’t starve to death but they’ll never be able to scramble out of the hole.”
He then made a weird strangling noise which TMR believes was supposed to be some kind of laughter.
The hole will be closely watched by Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie, who will be wearing army face-paint, camouflage fatigues and a dangly red head-band.
Senator Lambie has said that she will be “coming for” GPs who no longer bulk bill their patients.
“Several GPs have already been captured,” she said gleefully. “But their cries of distress will never be heard, their sobs forever muffled by the dense copse of political pines where the sun never shines.”
