Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was just about to say that; you are one step ahead of me. There are about 484 dependent spouses and young people. So the figure will be somewhat higher than 700,000 or 800,000, if and when it happens. Regarding the impact on my electorate, I have just under 91,000 people in my electorate, and nearly 37,000 of them have private health insurance—that is 41 per cent. When you add in the dependants and, as the member for Herbert said, the children, it is 49,000. That is over half of my electorate that will be dependent on private health insurance. If you encourage them to go out of that, the impact on our public hospitals is going to be horrendous. I think this will be one of the decisions the government will rue. It is very important for older people—they like private health insurance—and I take some pride in being the one that talked the former Prime Minister into the higher rebate for older people. It is 35 per cent at 65 years, and 40 per cent at 70 years. That has allowed pensioners and people on modest incomes, especially retirees, to stay in the system. It is a very important system for Australia.

What is the government going to replace this with? We are going to have a $5 million superclinic. Why would we want that in Bundaberg? We have got four clinics now, and three of them are eight- or nine-man practices that have only got four or five doctors. We are short of doctors before we even put a Commonwealth facility there. Even the Commonwealth is equivocating now, saying ‘up to $5 million’ and ‘we will renovate a building if a suitable building is available’. There has been so much equivocation that I do not think there will be $5 million superclinics; there will be some compromise. I would urge the government, as part of its budget process, to go back and have a look at the facilities in country towns and take them as the base before they get involved in putting needless superclinics into the process. (Time expired)

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