Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

Well, Senator Forshaw, that is all very well. The Prime Minister said and did whatever he had to do to get into power. Now he does not give a damn because he is out there changing his position on just about everything. Health is the most spectacular. At last week’s estimates we were waiting for this grand plan from the Prime Minister, the famous K Rudd plan to fix our hospitals. What did the Secretary of the Department of Health and Ageing tell us? ‘There is no plan.’ They could not even find a back-of-an-envelope scribbling that said, ‘K Rudd’s grand plan for the hospitals.’ Why? Because there is no plan. There never was a plan and there is not one now. That is the truth, Senator Forshaw, and the sooner you get used to hearing that sort of stuff then the better off we will all be as we go towards the election.

We have this mythical $100 billion. When Ms Roxon initially introduced the bills in the earlier part of last year, she told the parliament that they would provide savings of $1.9 billion over four years. This is the figure that has been repeated by the minister and repeated to the parliament and to the media. But, later in the year, the Prime Minister—a serial offender, I must say, in the field of exaggeration—was putting another figure out there. On 10 September, when he was asked about Labor’s changes to private health insurance on the 7.30 Report, he said:

... in the case of that one measure, PHI, that you mentioned, that’s worth some $9 billion in the decade ahead.

We have got $100 billion that was not in the report and we have got the $9 billion that Minister Roxon and the Prime Minister mention. It is $100 billion now and it was $9 billion then. When you change so often you forget which one is the actual, true position.

The Prime Minister was saying that the savings from the rebate means test—this new tax—will be directed at additional investments in health. In August last year Minister Roxon, at a CEDA Health Reform Forum in Sydney, showed that she is on a different page because she told CEDA that the private health changes alone will save enough to fund the commission’s proposed e-health investments. She means the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission. Three months later, the minister was quoted in the Age as saying:

This measure is part of the government’s reform of the health system, will save about $1.9 billion over the next four years, and allow the government to invest more in better services, new medicines and improved technology ...

The same $1.9 billion over four years has suddenly become this magic pot for different uses. The Prime Minister says one thing and the health minister says another. The Treasurer, when he foreshadowed these bills at the last budget, made it very clear where the savings measures were to go. He said that they were to support the long-term sustainability of the pension system. If you believe the PM, it is health generally; the health minister is on a frolic of her own and saying it is going to be used for e-health; and the Treasurer says it is to be used to fund the pension system changes.

Quite frankly, given the untruths and deceptions, you cannot believe any of them. The Treasurer was questioned by Malcolm Farr at the National Press Club on this and the Treasurer gave this answer:

It is true that the private health insurance means testing that we put in there along with a number of other measures we had in the budget offset the cost of the pension increase right out past the forward estimates and well into the future.

The changes that this government wants to bring about, quite frankly, have absolutely nothing to do with investments in health but they have everything to do with an ideological agenda. The Prime Minister and the health minister have absolutely no hesitation in misleading the Australian public about this whole thing.

This is simply bad policy. Firstly, if these measures are passed, there is no doubt that there would be further pressure on our public hospitals, because, as I mentioned earlier in my speech, there is this grand plan to fix the hospitals. If these bills go through, there will be even more pressure on hospitals, particularly those in New South Wales. Can the hospitals in New South Wales get any worse than they are at the moment? The answer is yes, because if these measures are passed there will be absolutely extraordinary pressure on New South Wales hospitals and all other public hospitals around Australia. Secondly, if these measures are passed, they will increase the cost of private health insurance for millions of Australians, including those on lower incomes. It was very clear from answers given in estimates in June last year that there are 11 million people that have private health insurance, and 9.7 million of these are single people on less than $75,000 a year or couples on less than $150,000 a year. They are the people that do take out health insurance and that this Prime Minister and this health minister want to screw into the ground.

Labor just cannot get it into their heads that this is not about ideology. This is about people insuring themselves because they know how bad the hospitals are. That is why they take out private health insurance. If you force those people out of the private health insurance system, particularly the younger ones, and they leave that pool, of course it makes the insurance more expensive for those who remain. So, by driving people out of health insurance, particularly younger people, you are leaving the burden on older Australians, as well as the millions of people who have private health insurance who are on very low incomes of $26,000 or less, and driving up their premiums. Families who continue to have private health insurance will, under the proposed new tax on private health, face higher premiums. Families will face higher premiums as a result of these changes.

Let us just look at some of those families, because I think it is time for the government to look Australians, particularly Australian families, squarely in the eye and tell them what the repercussions of this new tax on private health insurance will be. For example, let us look at the federal seat of Bennelong. Perhaps Ms McKew might like to go out and tell her electors—