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

as shown in the Treasury modelling, that only a very small number of people will drop out of private health insurance. The estimate is 25,000. That will of course have some impact, but, with nearly 10 million people with private health insurance, it is a negligible number. We even have those in the industry, the chairman of Healthscope and others, saying that, because the surcharge is also changing, very few people will decide not to continue with their private health insurance.

So, yes, difficult times mean difficult decisions need to be made, and we have made one of those decisions. We now ask the parliament, the Senate and those opposite if they could look at this in a sensible way and actually assess the impact and who is targeted. If you are a single-income earner earning more than $120,000, we do not think the public needs to help you pay for your private health insurance. For couples or families, $240,000 is the cut-off point. We think that is reasonable, but we have not heard any debate about that in here. We have not heard why the member opposite or the Leader of the Opposition, if they have private health insurance—I do not know whether they do—think that other taxpayers and low-income earners should help fund that. There is no sustainable argument.

If the member came in here and said, ‘I think the cut-off is wrong,’ ‘I think these people are earning more,’ or, ‘Let’s have a serious debate about the impact on public hospitals,’ then we would take their concerns seriously. But we do not, because for the whole 15 minutes of the debate the member opposite pretended that the millions and millions of Australians who will get a sustainable, ongoing benefit because of the decisions we are making have been ignored. They are running a campaign that is pretending that we are abolishing the rebate altogether, and that is true to form—it is what they have said in the past. I have had, as I am sure other members have had, people, worried and concerned because of the comments of the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow minister, calling up to say: ‘What are the changes going to do to me?’ When you say, ‘Well, what’s your income,’ and explain how it works, they say, ‘Oh, I’m not affected at all; that seems very reasonable. Higher income earners are not going to get it: that’s fair enough.’ But we do not hear any of that sort of debate going on. It is really a pathetic effort from the shadow minister opposite.

One of the other things that I think does not serve us well, as I said, is talking down the system all the time when we are actually starting to see some changes. I would not for a moment stand here as the health minister and pretend that there are not serious problems and challenges in a number of public hospitals. Our job as elected representatives is to try to fix those problems. But you cannot expect everything that has been destroyed in 11 years of neglect, blame, pulling money out and not cooperating with the states and territories to be instantaneously fixed. That is just not a possibility. We need to have a proper debate about how to fix the problems. If we had even an idea from the member opposite about how we could fix something we could start to have a real debate.

The only contribution that he and his leader have made so far is that they would like to get private patients out of public hospitals. In their perfect world, everybody would have private health insurance. They are absolutely, deadset determined to talk down our public health system, to starve it of funds and to say that it is not improving at all, when it is. Maybe that is why they want everyone to have private health insurance—maybe the Liberal Party sees no space at all in the community for a public health system.

We have a very different view. We think there should be a strong public system and a strong private system. We think having a balanced approach actually enhances the services that both the public sector and the private sector can provide. That is why we have invested an extra $64 billion into our public hospital service. That is a 50 per cent increase on the previous government. That money will start delivering real improvements, real services, real extra doctors and real extra nurses every single day that the next five-year agreement runs for. But do we hear anything from them about that? Absolutely nothing.

The contribution from the member for Dickson and the Leader of the Opposition of getting everybody out of public hospitals and into private hospitals and of saying that if you have got private health insurance then you should not use the public hospital system is just a downright silly idea. We know it is silly because we know that, even if you are privately insured, you might still need to use a public hospital, particularly if you are in an emergency situation. I am sure that the member opposite is not so slack in his duties as the shadow minister for health that he is not aware—

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