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

I inform the House that we have two more minutes before we will be having a division on this matter. In those two minutes, I want to inform the House that the shadow minister cannot continue to use absolutely false arguments to oppose this bill. He cannot say that thresholds changing will put premiums up when premiums went up every year under the previous government when the threshold was the same. That cannot be sustained. It is not logical. It is also not logical for the shadow minister to say that 500,000 people will stop taking out private health insurance and immediately go on to a waiting list for a public hospital. That is not how people’s illnesses occur. He knows it. What he is doing is using that to hide the fact that the Liberals are blocking a tax cut for 250,000 people. The Labor Party want to deliver that tax cut, and we intend to do so. I commend the bill to the House.

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