Ideology, change and conflict

Abstract

Background ? or product disclaimer It is a long time since my very brief tenure as editor of Australian Health Review came to an end. Not, though, as long ago as I had thought! Swift recourse to an old c.v. shows it was in 1993 that I left the University of New South Wales to become a Visiting Fellow in Hong Kong and teach more or less the same sorts of health and management subjects which I had taught in Sydney, and compile, with Peter Yuen, a ground-breaking source book on the Hong Kong health care system that looks uncannily like the sort of data book that I was prone to write with the inestimable Helen Lapsley about our Australian system. Perhaps in making a charm-laden invitation to contribute something to AHR, Allan Hughes might have thought I would produce some dazzling synthesis of contrasts and comparisons between the two systems. But I doubt that he would have been even momentarily so unrealistic. My move to Hong Kong gave me the chance to extricate myself from following the tortuous development of our system. In turn my departure from that maddening, bustling and exciting city a couple of weeks after the Hand-over (Glorious Re-unification or Great Take-Away) left me rapidly out of touch with their health care system too.