Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I find it quite interesting that someone legally trained like the member for Gellibrand needs to take advice on the proposed government amendments in the Health Legislation Amendment Bill 2007. I am not legally trained and it seems to me that they deal with disclosure of interest in a very proper way. It may have been an omission in the original legislation, but they simply say that, if you have a pecuniary interest and you are a member of the commission involved in making a decision, you have to go out of the room. This is a longstanding issue that arose in local government over years—whether the declaration of a pecuniary interest was sufficient and you could stay there and keep a beady eye on those who voted one way or another or whether you had to leave the room. It appears that that legislation is primarily for that purpose, and it would seem rather strange that that could not be deduced from the very simple words of the government amendment.

As the member for Gellibrand has advised the House, I do not think it is necessary for me to repeat those matters. We are looking primarily at amendments to some very worthwhile legislation that needed some finetuning. It is all right for the member for Gellibrand to blame the minister and further imply that he spends most of his time servicing the parliament in terms of the political interests of this party and the people of Australia, but the people who put this documentation together on our behalf are the parliamentary draftsmen and I think it is bit unfair to criticise them for overlooking a matter that, once an act goes into service, is identified by certain interest groups. Governments and parliaments typically respond to that. This is a piece of legislation that is correcting a too tight definition—just sticking with pharmacies for a minute—of pharmacists’ right to provide alternative drugs of the same manufacture, competency or efficacy. That seems to me to be very sensible.

Secondly, the other proposal is to provide effective and well-regulated private health insurance to visitors to this country. Around the world Australians are always told: ‘Don’t leave the shores of Australia without private health insurance because of the problems you can experience in other countries,’ and we don’t. But what does a nation like Australia do if a backpacker or an elderly tourist comes here and finds themselves needing medical or hospital assistance? Do we tell them: ‘Sorry mate. You’d better die on the doorstep.’ No. Because of the type of people we are, we will take them in. They may not have the financial capacity to pay but the nature and compassion of Australians is such that it becomes a burden on the taxpayer, which could be removed if we encouraged people who have not made arrangements in their home country to take out private health insurance on arrival. It is protection for taxpayers—and I made some points about that earlier today. When people talk about the blame game and say that the Australian parliament should pay for the mistakes of state governments, it means that people pay for a service twice because provisions have not previously been made. So this is very sensible legislation: it makes sure that the services that private insurers can provide are extended more practically to visitors.

As has already been said, the alterations to the pharmacy legislation are to make more opportunities. I am not surprised that Medicines Australia are not entirely enamoured of this legislation, because they are dependent on their brand names and defend them very rigorously. I do not necessarily criticise them for that; they spend a lot of money in building up a brand name. They might be the original investors, but eventually their products go out of patent and as such they no longer have any protection other than their brand. If legislation is such that pharmacists are restricted to one brand, it is an extra cost to the taxpayer and/or the person seeking those drugs. All this makes a lot of sense. As I said, I see nothing of great complexity in the government’s amendments, and maybe the minister who is present will be able to enlighten the shadow minister if she is listening on the television set—she is not here, of course—on that matter.

In closing, there is one aspect of this debate that this legislation gives me an opportunity to speak to—the great benefit that private health insurance and the private hospital system bring to the people of Australia. I have to say to the minister that we still have some silly provisions like community rating, which says a good risk pays the same premium as a bad risk. That is just a silly concept in the field, but it is there and it has some iconic status. It is a message to the young and the healthy not to privately insure, but we have other sorts of sticks and carrots to try and bring those people into the private insurance arena.

In the dying days of the Keating government, there was a clear conspiracy to destroy the private hospital system, and that was done because private hospitals survived on private health insurance. Private health insurance, because it had to assume all the bad risks, had a rapidly escalating premium structure and, for every massive increase, there was a corresponding departure of those who thought they were unlikely to use the services—the good risks, which are fundamental to all insurance policies. So there was a massive escalation in premiums and the participation of Australians crashed, and there were private cheers in the backdoor ranks of the then Labor government because this was their intention.

It is interesting to note that—although I think they might stop using the word—in his early remarks the Leader of the Opposition, in giving some suggestions as to how they might overcome the disastrous management of public hospitals by state government agencies and Labor governments, said, ‘If they won’t do this, I’ll just nationalise it.’ That is a pretty interesting comment because I was around when Australia was deeply concerned by the intentions of a particular Labor Prime Minister who wanted to nationalise the banks.

Nationalisation has all sorts of implications. There is a service available in the world called the British National Health Service, and I have had some inside information on that from a relative of mine who served within that system, building up her experience to become a specialist. She was only able to give five-minute interviews to the patients who came before her. In her first day she was attacked by one of her patients who said, ‘I’ve been waiting two hours.’ When she went out to the receptionist she said, ‘How could this happen?’ The receptionist said, ‘Well, we book one in every five minutes.’ Yet in the particular specialty involved there was a requirement to disrobe. That is British national health.

Of course, the first rule of running a public hospital is not to have too many patients, because you have got a block budget and a patient is a liability. So if you are an administrator you have to be careful about them. How do you address that? You address it with waiting lists. Con Sciacca, a man whom I admired in this place because he did so much for veterans, decided during his time as a minister to sell the veterans hospitals that were the property and the responsibility of the federal government. It is of great interest to me that whilst New South Wales and Victoria decided to take on the responsibility for those hospitals under their public hospital systems, the governments of Queensland and Western Australia said, ‘No, thanks,’ and a company called Ramsay Health Care took over.

I do not know how it worked out in Queensland but, as the then shadow minister for veterans’ affairs, I know very well how it turned out in Western Australia. The representatives of the RSL were deeply concerned about losing the umbrella of government in terms of the management of that hospital in Western Australia. Yet they told me, weeks after the takeover by Ramsay, that they were delighted. Suddenly, those of their membership who were in the hospital were actually having meals that were cooked within the hospital, instead of frozen TV dinners. And the waiting list of 10 months for elective surgery was wiped out in three months by a rather simple measure: the Ramsay people opened the operating theatres on Saturdays. I do not know what sort of AWA they used, or anything else, but they gave a service on Saturdays and because this very expensive technology—which should clearly operate seven days a week—was able to be utilised for an extra day they were able to wipe out the waiting list at that hospital. Why? Because they had a contract with the government that said, ‘We pay you for the people you look after.’ That is the same contract the private hospitals have with private health insurers. In other words, there is an incentive under private health insurance to give people prompt and timely service. The public hospital system works on exactly the opposite arrangement, that you cannot afford to have too many people in your hospital.

I just wanted to make those points, and this particular legislation has given me the opportunity to do so. I do not want to hold up the House too much more. I am sure the minister can satisfy the member for Gellibrand on the areas of her concern as to what is otherwise quite simple legislation. But we should never forget that had the Labor government of the period been elected for another term of office, I do not think we would be talking about private insurance today. Of course, measures have been taken, and one of the most important is that we now give a subsidy of between 30 and 40 per cent to older persons to ensure they can get prompt service out of the private health industry. Thank you very much.

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