Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me no joy to be here debating the Private Health Insurance Amendment (Lifetime Health Cover Loading and Other Measures) Bill 2012 and the cognate bill today. I really wish that these bills were not here before us. The bills really say three things. They say that we have a budget emergency in this country at the moment; they say that we have a government that does not understand the cost-of-living pressures on the Australian community; and they show that we have a government which has lost the confidence and the faith of the Australian people because it continually breaches the trust of the Australian community that it purported to have.

I will start on that trust issue first, because it goes back a long way. It goes back to 2005, when Mark Latham belled the cat on the current Prime Minister. Mark Latham wrote in his diaries that the current Prime Minister had no belief in private health insurance, did not think that it should exist and in reality would have been happy if everyone was forced onto the public system. The current Prime Minister said that that was not true. She said, in a letter:

The truth is that I never had a secret plan to scrap the private health insurance rebate, and contrary to Mr Latham's diaries, do not support such a claim … For all Australians who wanted to have private health insurance, the private health insurance rebate would have remained under a Labor government. I gave an iron-clad guarantee of that during the election. The difference between Tony "rock solid, iron-clad" Abbott and me is that when I make an "iron-clad commitment", I actually intend on keeping it.

There is some laughter in the chamber. Sadly, the best we can do is laugh, because the truth is that it is factual. As we have see on other issues, we cannot now take the word of this government. We cannot take the word of the current Prime Minister. It is a sad state of affairs when the trust between the government of the day and the Australian community has broken down to such a degree. It is not pleasing to have to stand up here and detail that lack of trust, that deceit. Really these bills should not be before us today, because we have heard from the former shadow health minister, now Prime Minister, that she believed in private health insurance; we have heard from the former health minister under the Rudd government that they believed in private health insurance; and we had from Kevin Rudd himself, when he was Prime Minister, an ironclad commitment in this regard. Yet here we are today and what we have in front of us is Labor government bills which want to erode private health insurance. The rebate, the loadings, the base premiums—you name it, they want to erode it because they want to get rid of it. What we have before us today is an ideological campaign against the private health sector in this country.

The worrying thing about it is that it goes to the cost-of-living pressures that this government keeps forcing upon the Australian people. The previous speaker, the member for Riverina, quoted the statistics, but I think they are worth repeating for the House: 5.6 million people with private health insurance have an annual household income of less than $50,000, and 3.4 million have an annual household income of less than $35,000. So what these changes are doing is increasing the cost-of-living pressures on 5.6 million people with a household income of less than $50,000 and 3.4 million people with a household income of less than $35,000. These are the people who are already struggling with higher electricity, gas and water costs, and higher rates. These are the people who were told by this government that those cost-of-living pressures were going to be addressed. Yet what do we see before us today? Once again, those cost-of-living pressures are not being addressed. As a matter of fact, they are being added to by these bills that we have before us.

The other aspect of these bills is that these are budget emergency bills. We have them here before us because this government cannot manage the nation's finances. It is sad that we have to be here today, because we were told by the Prime Minister and by the Treasurer that the nation's finances were in good shape, and we were told that repeatedly. When you combine the number of times that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer told us that we were heading for a surplus this year, it is over 500. Yet what was delivered in the budget a few weeks ago was, once again, the stark reality that this government has a spending problem, that this government cannot manage money, that this government cannot control the nation's finances. A budget deficit of some $18 billion to $19 billion; the five largest budget deficits in Australia's history; net debt ballooning beyond $150 billion; gross debt ballooning beyond $300 billion; the Treasurer not having the courage to say that he will be the one who comes back to this parliament asking for that debt ceiling to be raised on our gross debt limit—that is what we saw in the budget. Also, it was a budget that was meant to be for growth, yet we saw, when we looked at the figures, that growth actually declines. It was meant to be a budget which was about employment. Yet what did we see when we looked at the figures? Unemployment actually increases. That is why we have these bills here. It is the incompetence of this Gillard Labor government, headed by the Treasurer Wayne Swan, to manage the nation's finances.

So what have they had to do to try and get the budget back in order? They have had to add to the cost-of-living pressures on the Australian people. That is what these bills do. There is a little bit of joy in being here in the House this afternoon, and that is because, when it comes to Lifetime Health Cover loading, the coalition are going to oppose the changes and we will restore the system if the Australian people put their faith in us on 14 September. That gives me some joy. I also wish that we were doing the same with the other bills, but the sad reality is that at this very moment, given this budget emergency, we cannot.

But I would like to add that what we have seen from the Leader of the Opposition and from the shadow minister for health is a very firm commitment that we will do what we can, if the Australian people vote us in on 14 September, to restore the private health insurance system to where it was—to where we were seeing growth in people taking it up and to where we were seeing it help to alleviate the pressures on the public system. We will make sure that those people who do want to take up private health insurance and who do want to carry some of the burden for the health expenditure of this nation get assistance in doing so, and that they are not just dealt extra pressures on their family budget, time and again, by the government. So that is one of the extremely pleasing things about being here in the House today.

The first is that we are going to oppose the Lifetime Health Cover loading aspect. Sadly, on the second aspect—the base premium—we cannot, given the budget emergency. But there is a commitment for us to restore it and revoke the other changes which have been made with regard to the private health insurance rebate, and we will implement those changes when we can. And we will need to, because as we have seen from the reports—and there is a Port Jackson Partners report that I would recommend those in the House read—on what is going to occur as a result of these measures, sadly, the impact of these changes on our private health insurance system will grow and grow, especially after a couple of years. Hopefully, if we get the chance, we will be able to get the budget back in shape in two years time and then we will be able to look, once again, at addressing some of these issues, because addressing them is what we need to do.

One of the issues which I have had the most feedback on in my electorate has been the government's changes to the private health insurance system. It is worth noting—and the member for Riverina did this—that it is not coalition voters who are worked up about this issue; it is Labor voters. They understand what is happening here. They understand the cost-shifting which is going on from Wayne Swan and his incompetent budget management back to them. They are the ones who are bearing the brunt of that incompetence. They are being asked to pay for the Treasurer's waste and spending in these bills, and they are angry about it. As the member for Riverina noted, they are so angry that they are going to change their votes at the next election. That is the feedback we are getting in our electorate offices.

I would like to congratulate the private health insurance sector for the mature way they have dealt with these changes. The government has really just been foisting changes upon them without properly consulting with them and without properly entering into negotiations with them. As a matter of fact, I have heard that, in some of the representations at some of the consultations which have taken place, the government has been almost downright rude in the way that it has dealt with the sector. Yet the sector has continued to deal with the facts on this issue and to present the facts and show the damage that will be done to our health system as a whole if we keep impacting on the private health insurance aspects.

I applaud the way that they have gone on with it and I make this commitment from the coalition side: we will, if we are elected on 14 September, make sure that the door is always open to talk, discuss and have proper consultations with you on this issues. The shadow health minister, Peter Dutton, has had very good relations with the sector and he is committed to those relationships continuing—as is, I am sure, the Leader of the Opposition, who demonstrated his commitment on these issues when he was health minister.

This is not a great debate for me to be involved in. I would prefer that I were not here. The two bills before us are bills which I wish were not before the House. I am pleased to be able to say, when it comes to the Lifetime Health Cover loading aspect of the bill, that we will be opposing that. It does not please me to say that, due the budget emergency, we are going to have to let the Private Health Insurance Legislation Amendment (Base Premium) Bill through. But it is pleasing that there is a commitment from this side of the House to make sure that, when we can, we will restore the private health sector to where it was under a coalition government and ensure that the sector continues to grow. That is a commitment I hope that the electors in my community and across Australia have heard and will trust us on.

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