Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Minchin, the Leader of the Government in the Senate and Minister representing the Prime Minister. Will the minister inform the Senate what the government is doing to give all Australians the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of private health insurance? Is the minister aware of any alternative policies? 

Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Barnett for his question. We do believe very strongly in giving Australians choice and one of the areas where we have done that I think quite comprehensively is private health insurance. We do want Australian families and older Australians to have a choice in relation to their health insurance arrangements. That is why we brought in the private health insurance rebate and we have since increased its rate for older Australians. Community rating is a very important part of private health insurance. It protects the sick and the elderly and it means that everyone pays the same premium for health insurance regardless of their health status or age.

Earlier this year when we announced our decision that Medibank Private should not remain in government hands, we announced a series of reforms to private health insurance, spanning hospital cover to cover for outpatient and out-of-hospital services, disease prevention measures, services to prevent future hospitalisation et cetera. There are some important consumer information initiatives in that package. Insurers will be required to provide standard product information to help people compare policies and that will help people not only when they shop around for cover but when they actually need to access private health insurance cover. So it is a comprehensive package to improve private health insurance as a product—together with our view that the whole industry will be better off when Medibank Private is not in government hands.

Of course, we have heard the usual opposition from the opposition. It seems that whenever we announce an initiative the knee-jerk reaction from the Labor Party is to simply oppose it. Ms Gillard, the health spokesperson for the opposition, does a doorstep every day crying crocodile tears about how the proposed sale of Medibank Private will affect Medibank Private’s customers. Well, it is our assertion that Ms Gillard—and, we assert, the Labor Party as a whole—really does not care much about Medibank Private customers. Indeed, she cares little for the whole industry of private health insurance. She has said in the last few years that it is Labor’s policy to support the rebate but it is very interesting to go back and read the diaries of the immediate past leader of the Australian Labor Party. We have all found them very instructive because they give you an insight into the inner workings of what could only be described as the cesspit of the Australian Labor Party. On 13 February 2004 the then leader of the Labor Party said:

A good meeting this morning with Gillard’s health experts, Stephen Duckett and Hal Swerissen. We have worked out a way of dealing with the despised private health insurance rebate. We need to kill it slowly ... dismantling it slice by slice.

This was a mere 2½ years ago, just before the last election campaign. Then during the campaign he wrote:

Medicare gold. Combine my plan for killing the private health insurance rebate with Duckett and Swerissen’s vision for extending federal responsibilities on health care. It required a lot of work to model the private health insurance implications and to secure the cooperation of the states, all handled by Gillard.

She’s up to her neck in this, of course. And it was not only Ms Gillard who was exposed in the Latham Diaries. In the year 2000, Mr Latham wrote of the private health insurance rebate:

At different times Beazley has boasted to Caucus that it—

the private health insurance rebate—

will go.

So enough of the crocodile tears from the Labor Party about the customers of Medibank Private. We know what is really going on inside the Labor Party. The Labor Party have been totally opposed to the private health insurance rebate. They have covered that up with a gloss of saying, ‘Trust us; we’ll keep it.’ Mr Latham is properly criticised now by those opposite despite the fact that they spent millions trying to get him elected as Prime Minister. The real proof lies in Mr Latham’s diaries. He has exposed the Labor Party on this issue. (Time expired)