Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

What we know about in 18 months of this government already is that it is a government of many faces. There is certainly a case that has been made out today that this is a Prime Minister of many faces and we know that the Minister for Health and Ageing, sitting today at the table, is a minister of many faces. This government has been built on a fraud. It went to the Australian people last year saying one thing and it has delivered something very, very different. There is no better example of that than in the area of health. This is a government which predicated its election on saying to the Australian people that not only would it fix the public hospitals but also it would fix them by mid-2009. There is only a matter of a few short weeks to go before we reach that deadline and there is absolutely no prospect of this government fixing public hospitals by mid-2009.

In fact, over the last 18 months there has been no doubt in the minds of all Australians that public hospitals around the country, and in particular in regional and rural areas, have deteriorated in the services that they have provided to patients in those hospitals. Not only did this government mislead the Australian people at the last election about patient outcomes but also they misled those hardworking people who are working in the health sector, be it in the public or private system. This is a government which promised so much. It promised to end the blame game. It promised to fix these hospitals and, over the course of the last 18 months, it has gone from one bungle to the next. The minister in the area of health has gone from one bungle to the next, which has made the situation in health not just in the private sector but also in the public sector in this country much worse.

Let me take the House through a little time line of this minister’s contribution to the private health insurance debate. On 26 September 2007, the health minister issued a press release headed ‘Roxon promises to retain all existing PHI rebates’. This is what the press release said:

On many occasions for many months, Federal Labor has made it crystal clear that we are committed to retaining all of the existing Private Health Insurance rebates, including the 30 per cent general rebate and the 35 and 40 per cent rebates for older Australians … The Liberals continue to try to scare people into thinking Labor will take away the rebates. This is absolutely untrue.

This was a scare campaign, the minister claimed at the time. Only a couple of months later, on 20 November 2007, there was a letter from the now Prime Minister, then Leader of the Opposition, to the Australian Health Insurance Association. He said:

both my Shadow Minister for health, Nicola Roxon—

‘the illustrious Nicola Roxon’; no, he did not say that—

and I have made clear on many occasions this year that Federal Labor is committed to retaining the existing private health insurance rebates, including the 30 per cent general rebate and the 35 and 40 per cent rebates for older Australians.

Federal Labor will also maintain Lifetime Health Cover and the Medicare Levy Surcharge.

They were the words of the Prime Minister only a short time ago. On 25 February 2008, Mr Rudd said that rebates will remain unchanged. He was quoted in the Australian as saying:

The private health insurance rebate remains unchanged and will remain unchanged.

In May 2008, the health minister stated on Macquarie Radio:

We continue to support the 30 per cent, 35 per cent and 40 per cent for those Australians who choose to take out private health insurance.

Towards the end of 2008 we found out something very different. In Senate estimates we discovered that at the end of 2008 this minister decided to seek advice from the Department of Health and Ageing, not about how they would maintain support for the 30, 35 and 40 per cent rebates, as was continually espoused not just by her but also by the Prime Minister, but about how to change the rebates. Out of one side of her mouth, the minister says that they are continuing their support for existing rebates for people in private health insurance and yet, out of the other side of her mouth, behind closed doors, she asks her department to go off to see how they can tear down the rebates. This is a duplicitous government and a duplicitous minister. We learnt in Senate estimates that on 8 September 2008 the minister told the Health Insurance Association conference: ‘Consumers will still be able to claim the 30 and 40 per cent rebates.’ This is despite the fact that this minister has been organising with her department to devise a scheme which will pull away the government’s support for the private health insurance rebates.

We know that on 12 January 2009 the minister got departmental advice on the changes—she actually physically received it. On 20 February the Treasury advice on the rebate changes arrived for the government. On 22 February this year, the health minister got Department of Finance and Deregulation advice on rebate changes. On 23 February the advice of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet arrived for the minister’s consideration.

Let me repeat it to the House: this was not advice about how they could live up to the promises that were made to the Australian people that they would further enhance private health insurance coverage in this country; this was advice about how they could go about tearing private health insurance down. This was about how, because of their ideological stand against private health, they could undermine and tear down the private health insurance system in this country—despite the fact that during the campaign they made solemn promises on a number of occasions to the Australian people that they would maintain the rebates and therefore the incentive for people to stay in private health.

Why is this debate so important to the Australian people? For a number of reasons—firstly, we have to maintain public confidence in our health system in this country, and this minister has over the last 18 months only gone about undermining the support of that system. People have taken up private health insurance for a number of reasons over the last few years. Principal among those reasons is the fact that many people are disturbed by what they see in our public hospital system and what has happened under the control of the state governments, who own and operate these public hospitals, over the last 10 years. Australians were provided with support by the previous, coalition government to maintain their private health insurance because, if we did not—if we had a situation in this country where we drove the 10 million or 11 million people out of private health into the public system, which is the want of the Rudd government—then our public system would collapse under the pressure. There is no question about that. People read stories in the newspapers on a daily basis about failures in public hospitals around the country, and yet they expected this Prime Minister to deliver on his promise that he would fix public hospitals by 30 June 2009—only a matter of a few weeks away.

This is an amazing revelation about the government. They believe that Australians are wrong, that public hospitals have been fixed and that there is no reason for the Prime Minister to live up to his promise that he would further improve public hospitals and that he would maintain support of private health insurance. That is something this minister and this Prime Minister should be condemned for.

If we look at the record not just of this government but, importantly, of the previous government and the government before that, we see that this ideological attack on private health by the Labor Party started a long time ago. We know that Labor’s record in relation to health over 13 years when it was in government was a disgrace. It was a disgrace because we know that private health insurance membership when Labor was last in power fell from 64 per cent to less than 34 per cent. Health insurance premiums rose on average by 12 per cent year on year and there was no commitment to quality and safety in hospitals or community care.

Contrast that for a moment, just in terms of private health, with what the coalition did over a period of 11 years. Whilst Labor dropped private health coverage from 64 per cent to 34 per cent, we increased it from 34 per cent to 44 per cent. That was a remarkable achievement in the face of the fact that this Labor Party when in opposition—not just when they were in government previously but when they were in opposition—completely opposed every move that we put in place to support, underpin and strengthen private health insurance in this country. We know that under the coalition total investment in health went from $19.5 billion in 1995-96 to $51.8 billion in 2007-08 and that support under the PBS went from $2.2 billion in 1996-97 to $6.4 billion in 2006-07.

Why do we find ourselves in a position where we have a government having promised to support private health now attacking it? As I said before it is an ideological bent that this government has had against private health from day 1. But there are other reasons of course. We know in relation to the advice that we have received through Senate estimates that over two million Australians will be impacted on by these changes. The government proposes, in their rip-apart of support for private health insurance in the current changes—leave aside the changes they made to the MLS in last year’s budget—that people will face increased premiums, because this government predicts that they will raise $1.9 billion in extra revenue over four years, and that money has to come from somewhere. This government goes around saying ‘Well, only 25,000 Australians out of the 11 million will drop their private health cover and only those people will be impacted.’ These are the ones referred to as the so-called rich as part of this debate. But there are over one million Australians who have private health insurance and who earn $26,000 a year or less. Those people are going to be impacted and hit hardest by the cruel cuts that this government is putting in place in relation to private health, because there will be a roll-on impact to those people who maintain their private health coverage. Many part pensioners who have private health insurance will drop their private health insurance, or they will drop their ancillary cover or they will drop part of their hospital cover. They will drop it because there will be extra premium pressures because of this government’s cruel decision.

This government has made this decision not just because of ideological reasons but, clearly, because they are desperate for revenue. So at a time when they have ripped $1.9 billion out of the assistance for helping people to stay in private health they have also put in place some incredibly cruel cuts in relation to the health budget announced only a few weeks ago: they have cut money from cataract surgery, which was an incredible decision by this government, and they have cut money for providing support to families who need an IVF program to have a child. And from some of the correspondence, surely, not even this minister in her darkest day of incompetence could be blind to the fact that people are suffering because of this government’s economic incompetence.

In closing, I say in her defence that most of this clearly could not have been driven by this minister; it could only have been driven through a cost-cutting exercise by the Treasury and the finance department. Sure, they are ideologically opposed to private health insurance—they hate it; they hate the fact that people have private health insurance. They would prefer a nationalised system similar to that which operates in the UK, but the reality is that not even this incompetent health minister, in her darkest hour, could have contemplated cutting funds to cataract surgery or to the IVF program. If these are examples of the way in which this minister has administered her portfolio, then pity help health in this country over the next 10 years, because this style of management is an exact replication of what has gone wrong in the way in which Labor has managed health at a state level over the last 10 years. If this minister rolls up to cabinet each time and has put in front of her decisions from Treasury and Finance about these cost-cutting exercises, which are not going towards health outcomes at all, then she is not worth the huge amount of money she is paid.

The Australian public deserve more in relation to the health debate and they are not getting it; they have not got it over the last 10 years from Labor and they certainly have not got it over the last 18 months from this government, because this government is not about improving the health system; they are about tearing it down; they are about covering up the mistakes of their incompetence at a state level; and they are at their core about trying to rip apart private health in this country. And if they succeed in doing that—if people drop their health coverage or they make private health unviable for many low-income earners—it will be a sad day.

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