Yeah. And even if your taxes do go up, the personal cost to you overall will go down. That's what people don't look at. With such a vast pool of tax income funding the system, it reduces the costs to everyone since you aren't paying huge private premiums for services you MAY need but probably WON'T use. It's not run for profit, but for cost-recovery. I think it is nauseating that things such as healthcare and public transport are hocked off to the private sector and run for profit when they should be run as a service aimed at cost recovery.
Howard was Liberal, who are our right wing dumbfucks (though not nearly as extreme as your Republicans) who are socially conservative, focus solely on the economic short term, and basically don't like anybody who isn't upper class and white. Labour here, as in the UK, has tended towards the centre and our Prime Minister is the leader of the centrist faction. I can deal with it, as I know they're not going to fuck over the less fortunate too much, but it's still not as good as the social democrat faction leading like it used to.
Fuck the right wing. If we listened to them, society wouldn't have made it to the Enlightenment.