Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased that, in the last few minutes of her time, the member opposite returned to the subject of this matter of public importance, and that is the question of the government’s decision to postpone the sale of Medibank Private until after the next election. In the rest of her contribution, she seemed to start by telling us that we should not have any private health insurance—that it is a bad thing—and then reconsidered that and said there were people who thought it was a good thing because they could afford to have things that they otherwise could not afford. So it was a fairly confused contribution which did not really add very much.

The member for Lalor, who introduced the matter of public importance, was at pains to say that government owned institutions perform better than privately owned institutions, which is patently untrue. If there is one thing that I think we all should have learned from seeing the privatisation of various entities such as Qantas, the Commonwealth Bank and the variety of government owned institutions that the former Labor Party government privatised, it is that the principle of good commercial practice gives good outcomes.

From my point of view and the government’s point of view, the principles of free enterprise tell you what the business of government is, and the business of government is to do those things which the private sector either cannot or will not do and to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves. That is the business of government. The member opposite tried to say that the business of government is to make social policy and that is it. If we did that and we did not have an economic framework within which to operate, we could not afford to do those things. I was interested when the member for Chisholm said that she had an economics degree and that made her competent to make that observation. Perhaps she studied an economics degree in one of those quaint social contexts rather than in one where it is called hard economics.

I think it is important to look at the statement that the minister made in answering the speech of the member for Lalor. He very clearly said that the sale of Telstra, which is an $8 billion sale, is a priority for the government in terms of getting a satisfactory outcome. In addition, the advice that has been given to government, which it was quite prudent of government to seek, is that it would not be a sensible measure to sell Medibank Private at the same time—that is, competing for the funds of would-be shareholders. So the decision was made that the sale should be postponed until the Telstra T3 sale is complete. The simple time frame of an election due in 2007 makes the best timetable for the sale of Medibank Private to be 2008. That is a perfectly logical and sensible decision to have taken.

In the course of some of the contributions from the other side, we had a diatribe against any private ownership and the wickedness of selling a publicly owned institution, despite the fact that, as has been pointed out almost ad nauseam, there was no compunction when Mr Beazley was Minister for Finance about privatising a large number of publicly held firms, including Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank. They were, in their terms, quite iconic; yet both those firms have gained magnificently from that privatisation in terms of how they are run and in terms of profitability.

There also seems to be this quaint notion that, if something is owned by the government or is a so-called not-for-profit entity, it must necessarily be interested in making losses. I find that a very quaint observation. The fact of the matter is, whether an entity is privately owned, commercially owned or non-commercially owned—being charitable, religious or community owned—it is interested in making surpluses. It is just that, when it is a commercial entity, those surpluses are called profits.

In our current competitive private health insurance industry, we have 38 competing funds, of which five are commercial or for-profit funds. Is the member opposite seriously arguing that all the rises in private health insurance, which occur from time to time, have occurred or have in part occurred because five of those funds are commercially run firms that make profits? Of course not. The fact of the matter is that health is a very expensive entity to deliver. The cost comes very much from the fact that more and more expensive procedures are being delivered more and more widely. That is the business of government: to make sure that we can run an economy in this country and run it in such a way that people who need those expensive procedures can have access to them.

This government is interested in improving the delivery of health services all the time. The press release of 26 April this year that announced that the government would sell Medibank Private also said that the government was looking at further developments in the delivery of new products through private health insurance that would enable people to have better management of certain types of chronic disease, better manage people at risk of getting chronic disease, or better manage people who would benefit from preventative procedures which could be covered by private health insurance and who, if the procedures were not done, would end up in hospital, where they would be covered under their private health insurance for that stay. In other words, the government is looking to sell Medibank Private because that institution does not need to be government run and can be better run in the private sector—or at least have good commercial practice—so that it can change those things that are covered by private health insurance to enable people to have better management of chronic disease or it can better manage people who are at risk of chronic disease.

Rather than this debate being about an ideological stance of the Labor members opposite—that public ownership is always better than private ownership and therefore nationalisation, presumably, as the minister argued earlier, is the natural extension of that argument—what we are looking at here from the government’s point of view is allowing the general public, because it would be a float and not a trade sale, to purchase shares in a floated Medibank Private, and that would put it in line with the five already existing commercially run health funds. Incidentally, I might add, there is absolutely no evidence at all that the five commercially run for-profit health funds charge premiums that are higher than those of the other health funds. There is no evidence of that at all, and there is no evidence at all that a privately owned Medibank Private would behave any differently from the already operating five for-profit firms.

In announcing that the sale will take place, the government is putting its mind to looking at what is the best method of delivering healthcare for individuals. Specifically, it mentioned a disease management program where clinically diagnosed chronic disease could be managed in order to prevent hospitalisation. That item could be covered by private health insurance. I have already mentioned programs for chronic disease, together with people who are at risk of developing such disease. Diabetes and asthma come readily to mind as in that category of disease.

In concluding this debate I simply say that the evidence is that, where privatisation has taken place in a competitive market—not privatising a monopoly—the outcome is always seen to be beneficial for the economy as a whole. A well-managed economy enables us to make good policy for the delivery of such things as expensive health procedures that are needed by individuals to give them a better quality and longevity of life. I believe that is the duty of government to the people of Australia. (Time expired)

See this speech in context