Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing) Share this | Hansard source

It was most interesting to hear the concluding remarks of the member for Banks. He did not mention the budget, but I fear and feel that what he talked about was possibly even more important and I would also at some stage appreciate the opportunity to talk about such matters.

I appear here today on behalf of my constituents. In opposition it is very easy to point the finger of blame, to complain and whinge, after a budget. I have sat on the government side of the Main Committee and listened to opposition members talk about budgets that we brought down, and a certain level of tedium entered the room very early on in the piece. I really do not want to do that, but I do want to point out what I feel the effect of the budget will be on the constituents I represent.

There are 94,157 voters in the electorate of Farrer, and 47 per cent of them have private health insurance. To me, the fact that so many in an area that is not wealthy have decided to take out private health insurance and do whatever they can to protect themselves and their families from the touch-and-go nature of some of our public hospital systems is a credit to them. The one thing that I am most concerned about with this budget is the effect that the changes to the Medicare levy surcharge threshold will have on those people, because out of the total number of voters who have private health insurance there are almost as many singles as families. I know that not all those singles will be young and healthy—some of them will be older and less healthy—but a fair proportion of them will be young and healthy, and I was quite surprised when I saw the statistics showing that so many were singles.

What we are predicting, and what the modelling is predicting, is that when this measure comes into play a lot of young people—and often, of course, healthy people—will decide to chuck in their private health insurance because they are going to go on the public system. That means automatically that those who are left in the private system have to meet the costs for everyone. They are to some extent, of course, socialised across the system. The reason that the previous government made such an effort to bring people in early by effectively giving them benefits and encouragement to do that was in order that everyone could realise, if they could, a lifetime in private health insurance: you do not need it as much when you are younger and your contributions are relatively modest but, of course, as you get older, you do need it and you are more of a drain—and I do not like to use that word, because older people have a right to use our health systems, but you use up more of the resources that are available—so those two times of your life balance out. What we are going to see is that older people are going to struggle to meet increasing premiums at a time when they will not be able to afford them and that younger people are going to say, ‘Here I am in the casualty system of my local hospital, and I demand to be treated because I have a right to public health just the same as everybody else.’

I do not know whether state health ministers are happy with this decision by the federal government. All of the intelligence tells us that they are not—that they are most unhappy—and I am not surprised, because the thing that state governments come under fire for the most is health, and anything that goes wrong with the public health system is automatically a serious problem, as it should be, for state health ministers. We only have to look at the high jinks in New South Wales going from bad to worse to realise what, if we dumped what may be another 200,000 people into the public hospital system, that would do to its efficiency and effectiveness. I am sorry for those who will have to bear the brunt of such a failed policy.

I will move from health insurance to talk about the nature of funding in the electorate generally. As members would know, I have a very rural electorate, as does my colleague the member for Mallee, who neighbours me on the Victorian side of the river.

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