Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you. It is good to know that the education spokesperson can help us out on occasion. I thank the member for that. In the Senate this morning, a Liberal senator from Queensland—and I believe it was the same senator who feels so passionately about the luxury car tax that she forgot to turn up—suggested that the Liberal Party’s position on the Medicare levy surcharge was all about choice. There is nothing wrong with choice; the Labor Party think choice is a good idea. However, the choice that the Liberal Party are offering working families is this choice: they can choose to pay for private health insurance or they can choose to pay a tax. That is the choice that they are offering.

I do understand that working families start to get nervous when the Liberal Party talk about choice. We know that the last time they talked about choice it was Work Choices. We know where that led; it was absolutely nothing to do with choices. Under the Labor Party’s policy, we are offering a real choice to these people. We know that family budgets are under pressure, and our measure would actually allow families to choose whether they want to spend their money on their home loan, whether they want to spend their money on groceries, whether they want to spend it on private health insurance or whether they want to spend it on child care. We believe in giving them a real choice by giving them the money in their pockets so that they can choose how to spend it. It is about time, if the Liberal Party were really about choice, that they supported our measure in the Senate.

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