Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, the Service Economy and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

We did a lot of things. We took policy initiatives to make sure that we did improve it. We did that by making sure there was incentive for those who could afford to pay to go into private medical insurance, and the proof is in the pudding, more importantly. When the former government took over in 1996 about 32 per cent of the population had private medical insurance. When the former government left office the figure was about 50 per cent of the population. So our policies had a real impact. What is more, under the Australian healthcare agreements that the former government negotiated with the state Labor governments, we saw record funding flying from the Commonwealth government to the state governments.

Under the coalition there was record health funding, a massively significant increase in the number of Australians who had private medical cover and increased incentive for those who were on the margin of whether they could afford private medical cover, by giving them a 30 per cent rebate. Now we have the new Rudd Labor government, and one of its first acts is to rip the carpet out from underneath all of those incentives and, in a perverse way, to proudly stand up and say, ‘Oh, yes, we know that the bill before the House, this policy initiative, is going to put even more strain back on the public system.’

It is extraordinary that such a short-sighted and ideologically driven policy would be implemented by a government at a time when our public health system is in crisis. And it is extraordinary that even in this debate I have had the minister for health and the parliamentary secretary at the table challenge assertions that are based on fact. They are not based on ideology and not based on a mistaken belief but based on fact: the fact that our public health system cannot cope at the moment—and they want to inject a million more people into it—and the fact that under the coalition private health insurance went from the low 30s to nearly 50 per cent of the population.

This Labor policy is now going to reverse that. The fact is that, at every state level, the state Labor governments, which have been in power for over a decade, have seen a revolving door of employment as doctors leave the private sector, come into the public system, work there for about six months, have enough of it and then leave it again. The state Labor governments say, ‘We don’t understand what’s wrong.’ Let me explain to the Labor Party what is wrong with their policies. Having massive numbers of patients, so that people wait six, seven or eight hours in public hospitals, is not great for doctors’ motivation. Having doctors, along with the auxiliary staff of nurses and others, work in a public system under so much pressure, faced with people who are angry—because not only are they sick but they have been forced to wait for seven hours—is not good for morale. That is the reason it is a revolving door of employment not only in Queensland but also in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania. Each of these state health systems is a reflection of a decade of state Labor administration. Now, because we have a pull-a-string Prime Minister—when you pull the string, he says, ‘I want to end the blame game,’ and that is the extent of it—we are faced with a situation where it is going to get even worse.

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