Shorten’s swipe at doctors union far cry from praise for AMA

Reporters follow up The Australian’s page one story with Bill Shorten in Armadale, WA, yesterday:

Reporter: The AMA (Australian Medical Association) has said today that you should support a rise in the Medicare Levy across all income-tax brackets to properly fund the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme). Will you do that?

Shorten: No, I don’t agree (with) the AMA at all.

Trouble in paradise, Bill? Shorten speaks to the AMA national conference in Melbourne, May 26 last year:

For three years the AMA has been at the forefront of opposing some of the attacks on Medicare.

Love is dead. Shorten yesterday:

I think the AMA is being used as a pawn there by the government.

They’ll always have Melbourne? Shorten at the AMA Conference, May 26 last year:

Your authenticity, your conviction, your influence was felt in every corner of the country.

And Canberra. Shorten at the AMA Alcohol Summit, October 29, 2014:

I congratulate the AMA and everyone who was worked to make this summit take place ... the leadership displayed by the AMA ...

But is there hope for a reunion by the next election? Shorten, May 26 last year:

So, the AMA ... you had a tremendous significance and healthcare had a centre stage role in the last election.

Shorten’s Labor ally Joel Fitzgibbon told a funny joke on Sky News yesterday:

Kieran Gilbert: But Labor still has got some internal divisions on this particular matter, doesn’t it, in terms of members of the left who aren’t comfortable with offshore processing?

Fitzgibbon: No, not really.

We think it was a joke? New Labor MP Ged Kearney speaking at the International Labour Conference in Geneva, June 6, 2014:

Australian unions … explicitly reject the policy of offshore processing of asylum-seekers ...

Surely Fitzgibbon is joking? The Courier-Mail, May 16, 2016:

(Labor MP) Cathy O’Toole ... became the latest Labor voice to criticise ALP policy on boat turn-backs and offshore processing when a Facebook photo surfaced of her holding a “LET THEM STAY!” sign at a protest ...

You’re pulling our leg, aren’t you, mate? Fitzgibbon on Sky, yesterday:

Gilbert: You don’t think it will come back up in the conference in July?

Fitzgibbon: I think it will be discussed in the caucus ...

The left wants it scrapped. Senator Lisa Singh in The Age, April 26, 2016:

I think Tasmania could play a really active role in the resettlement of these refugees and asylum-seekers who are likely to be displaced from Manus ...

Then again, maybe Labor isn’t as divided on the boats as we thought. Bill Shorten in Canberra, March 27:

We don’t believe that mandatory detention has to be the necessary result of stopping the boats.

Malcolm Turnbull could be making hay of these Labor divisions on the boats. Instead he’s horsing around ... Triple M Melbourne, yesterday:

Wil Anderson: Let’s put it on Winx. Let’s get the five billion (for the Melbourne Airport rail link), we put it on Winx ... What do you reckon, PM ...?

Turnbull: Ah, not my five billion dollars. If you’ve got a lazy five of your own, that’s a matter for you.