WHY DO WE CHOOSE TO FUND LAWYERS, NOT DRUGS FOR SICK KIDS?

IMAGINE if you had the power to save a child from suffering, but you chose not to.

Imagine you were the parent who saw a treatment that could ease your child’s pain, but a bureaucrat says it was too expensive for them to give you.

That’s the heartbreaking situation facing parents of children with spinal muscular atrophy, a debilitating condition where life expectancy could be just nine months after diagnosis.

This week the people who run the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme knocked back a drug that would ease the suffering of these kids. The reason: cost. The drug costs about a million dollars a year per child. While that’s a lot of money, why should children suffer when governments magically find ways to waste millions more on themselves?

Taxpayers spent $11.5 million to defend those Senators and MPs in the High Court accused of having dual citizenship. No drama finding the money for them, but none for the kids who need this drug.

We learnt the PM’s office spend $2,130,000 on travel for its staff, but no money for the kids who need this drug.

We are spending $50,000,000,000 on new submarines for goodness sake, but no money for these kids.

Our government takes so much tax from us every year. Surely the trade-off is doing any and everything we can for kids like these. If you agree, please take some time to write to the PM, Health Minister and anyone else who can help us reverse this heartless decision.

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The Queensland LNP is on a dangerous course in that state.

Fresh from being outpaced and out played on every level by Labor HQ, the LNP isn’t purging head office. It’s cleaning out its internal critics.

They sent former Premier Campbell Newman a letter this week threatening his membership of the party after he publicly criticised their new leader Deb Frecklington.

How can we respect any organisation that wants to boot out anyone who disagrees with them? I’d understand their actions if Newman raised money to tell people to vote for another party. But a party that’s too small-minded to hear their own failings is a party that’s going to be a long way from government for a very long time.

Today’s politics is ruined by people who do nothing but tow the party line. Now they don’t even want people who’ll tell them they are pulling themselves into irrelevance.

The LNP in Queensland needs to get serious about how it does business and that means reaching out to anyone who can help, not pushing friends away. They did that to enough voters at the election.

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I hope you have a great Christmas filled with the love of family and the fun of friends. I hope you make the most of the days off, if you get any. And send love to the many who hurt every year at this time, we are thinking of you too.

Paul Murray LIVE returns Monday January 22 at 9pm AEDT on Sky News Live.