It’s better than America but not as good as the democratic socialist countries in Europe. Years of systematic underfunding haven’t helped either. Same issue with a lot of our public services. There’s a cooked faction of conservative politicians who have never supported universal healthcare and would jump at the opportunity to replace it with a private free market system. The Australian public arguably doesn’t have much of an appetite for this though and any direct attempts to destroy our healthcare system will likely not be well supported. Instead they’ve opted for covert attempts to destroy it.

What concerns me though is the ongoing impact of covid. We have always historically had quite a robust public health approach in Australia. For example, it’s illegal not to wear a helmet when riding a bike / scooter, we were the first country to implement plain packaging cigarette products, and our initial response to the covid pandemic was relatively strong despite having an absolute fuckwit of a leader at that time. However, in my opinion, the way covid has been politicised has not only put us in a worse position to manage the ongoing pandemic, but also future pandemics and public health problems. Since covid I see more people riding bikes / scooters without a helmet, fewer people make an effort to reduce the spread of diseases, and are generally less considerate of how their behaviour impacts other people. These are just my observations but it feels like there’s been an unnecessary backlash against public health in general.