You see, "somewhere in the world today, it's highly probable that a child is being born that is going to live to 150," he explained to 3AW's Neil Mitchell. "That's a long time." And Joe's correct: 150 years is a long time. Unfortunately the rest of his claim isn't really supported by credible evidence - yet Joe's adamant that we all need to tighten our healthcare belts before Little Jimmy Longlife bankrupts us all with his deathless medical demands. "The question is how we live with dignity and ensure we have a good quality of life the whole way through. This is the conversation we are going to have with Australia over the next few months." So, to recap: we need to make GP services less accessible to people at the bottom of the pile because they will live forever. Unless we thin their ranks with some preventable diseases, presumably.

Health care: why do we even? Speaking of Australian public health, here's a fun fact: today is the 115th anniversary of the outbreak of Bubonic Plague in Australia, when patient zero - 33-year-old Arthur Payne - collapsed in The Rocks. Happy Black Deathsniversary, Sydney! The subsequent exciting epidemic was to be the impetus behind the not-yet-quite-a-nation's first large-scale public health campaign in order to bring the disease to heel, but not before almost 2000 people lost their lives in the most horrendously pus-intense manner imaginable. It's worth remembering the reasons why we have things like "health care" in Australia. It's not just for funsies, you know. It's because prevention is a hell of a lot cheaper and easier than cure, not to mention involving a hell of a lot less human misery. Keep it in mind when people start talking about health care like it's a luxury that we just can't gosh-darn afford.

Dutton your lip Our new Immigration Minister Peter Dutton is already living up to the exceptional standard he set having been declared the nation's worst ever health minister. He's apparently attempting to make it two for two with his less-than-terrific handling of the current hunger strike on Manus Island, where an estimated 700 detainees are protesting their treatment. Things have escalated dramatically since Dutton addressed the detainees over the weekend to explain that they would "never arrive in Australia" - a message that he presumably thought would perk everyone up and make them merrily acquiesce to whatever tender mercies the PNG police had in mind for them. Oddly, however, it appears that Big Pete's words instead has hardened their collective resolve, with fourteen having reportedly sewn their lips together.

And let's just pause for a second to consider how desperate you'd have to feel about your situation before you'd start shoving a needle in the most sensitive bit of your face. You'd need to be pretty damn motivated, wouldn't you say? It's reported that medical centre at Manus Island isn't exactly set up to deal with 700 slowly dying people either, since it's the centre's kitchen and has neither beds nor mattresses, what with being a kitchen and all. Furthermore, "They have very little in the way of intravenous fluids," according to Doctors for Refugees convenor Dr Barri Phatarfod. "They have very little in the way of staff that are on all the time and they also don't have a lot in the way of pathology to test people's electrolytes to see whether they have kidney failure." Despite initially denying that there was any hunger strike going on at all, Dutton has now pledged to immediately address this escalating crisis by… um, doing nothing. Which, to be fair, was also his strategy as health minister. "Whilst there has been a change of minister the absolute resolve of me as the new minister and of the government is to make sure that for those transferees they will never arrive in Australia," he declared in a celebration of ministerial strength and weirdly garbled syntax.

Say, remember how the government claimed the whole asylum seeker detention thing was all about saving lives at sea? Kinda seems weird they'd be cool with letting people starve to death in their care then, huh? Almost like that justification was maybe a teensy-weensy fib or something. A Matter of Truss The Queensland election is just around the corner - January 31, to be precise - and the Federal frontbench are throwing their support behind the beleaguered government of Campbell Newman by… um, not turning up to the party's campaign launch. The Prime Minister Tony Abbott failed to show at the event, as did Foreign Minister Julie Bishop or anyone else of note - but the event did attract our enigmatic Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss and Senate leader Eric Abetz, which is sort of like Superman and Wonder Woman blowing out a Justice League event and instead sending along Aquaman and that space monkey thing that hangs around with the Wonder Twins. Lest anyone think that maybe this sent some sort of a message about the PM's confidence in the Queensland Coalition, Truss made clear that Abbott was still on leave until Monday and that he "will come to Queensland when there's an appropriate time for him to come." Which, going by the current opinion polls, would appear to be sometime in March.