Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak against the Medibank Private Sale Bill 2006. We on this side of the House are totally opposed to the sale of Medibank Private because it is the wrong decision. Medibank Private should remain in public hands and should not be sold off. But let’s make no mistake about it: this sale is totally ideologically driven, and the very weak justifications for the privatisation offered up by this government are indeed baseless. This is highlighted in the Parliamentary Library briefing, which I will discuss later on.

The public are very concerned about the effect of this sale—I know many people locally have approached me about their concerns—because the reality is that premiums will rise for all private health customers as a result of this sale. There is no doubt about that, and no consideration at all has been given to the three million members of Medibank Private, or indeed to all holders of private health insurance, for the negative impact of the inevitable premium rises. Families are already under huge amounts of pressure at the moment with cost of living increases and interest rate increases. They know, that when this sale goes through, their private health insurance premiums will go through the roof, and it is going to cause great pressure for so many families.

Medibank Private has around 30 per cent of the health insurance market, and in New South Wales around 23.8 per cent of the private health insurance clients are insured with Medibank Private. In my electorate of Richmond around 30 per cent of residents have private health insurance, and that means that when these premiums rise, as they will, there will be tens of thousands of people locally who will indeed be worse off. But this government does not care about these thousands of people in Richmond who will be adversely affected, just as it does not care about the three million members of Medibank Private who will be adversely affected nationally.

Further, none of these figures can take into account the impact on future health insurance clients. We have seen premiums rise by almost 40 per cent in five years under this government, so how much more are they going to rise when there is no regulation? How will our children or grandchildren be able to afford private health cover once Medibank Private is sold and the premiums go through the roof?

In the current situation the not-for-profit nature of Medibank Private means that any surpluses are returned to members via premiums. But, when Medibank Private changes from not-for-profit to for-profit, undoubtedly we will see premiums rise. The board of a publicly listed Medibank Private will be required by law to maximise the profits and returns to its shareholders. It is only common sense, therefore, that a privatised Medibank Private will have to return to shareholders the profit that is currently going to premiums.

The Australian public are very aware of this. They know that premiums will rise and they are very rightly concerned about the negative impact this sale will have upon them. The government says that premiums will not rise as a result of the sale. In 2001 this same government said the introduction of the 30 per cent rebate on private health insurance would put downward pressure on private health insurance premiums. Since then we have seen a 40 per cent rise in private health insurance premiums. Let’s hope, when the premiums supposedly do not rise after the sale, that they do not rise by 40 per cent, just like they did not rise after the introduction of the rebate.

We have a situation now where the Minister for Health and Ageing approves every application from the private health insurance sector for increases in their premiums. The government can come out and say this time that premiums will not rise, but we have heard it all before. We know that it is rubbish. We know that premiums are going to rise. We know that that is the absolute end result of the sale of Medibank Private. I think everyone is aware of this, and we are hearing this right across the board from a whole range of people. Everyone is admitting it except the government. The fact is that they will rise, and rise quite dramatically. There is no doubt about it. And not only will premiums rise but services are likely to fall.

Apart from the management efficiency the government is talking about—by which of course they mean sacking workers—we will see offices closed and access limited. That is going to be the reality of this sale—have no doubt about it. In Richmond we saw as a precursor to the sale of Medibank Private the closure of the Medibank Private office at the Centro Tweed shopping centre in Tweed Heads. That closed just before Christmas, but this office was relocated to Elanora on the Gold Coast, which is in Queensland. It caused a huge outcry from locals when suddenly the Tweed Heads office was closed. It was particularly distressing for the many elderly residents who used the local Medibank Private office. In Tweed Heads there are many elderly residents and, as I say, there was this huge outcry because so many of them had been able to access that office there. It was clearly a precursor to the sale of Medibank Private when they started closing offices right around the place.

Many locals approached me about their concerns that this office was closing down, and what is particularly annoying is that there is no Medibank Private office now between the Gold Coast and Lismore. There were three on the Gold Coast and now there is this other one at Elanora, so there are four on the Gold Coast and one in Lismore. Yet in Tweed Heads we have this huge proportion of elderly people who cannot access a Medibank Private office at all, causing them great distress. So many of them have approached me about their concerns. They were not even informed that it was happening. Particularly for those who are pensioners and on fixed incomes, the distress that it caused them was quite overwhelming but very much indicative of the sort of attitude this government has when it comes to elderly people.

They are still very distressed about it, and added to the distress now, of course, is the fact that Medibank Private is going to be sold, which is concerning them even more because those on fixed incomes—again, particularly those pensioners who are already doing it so tough—just will not be able to find that extra money to afford those health insurance increases that we are undoubtedly going to see with the sale of Medibank Private.

Debate interrupted.

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