Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will get to that, because you have given me an opportunity within the legislation. Let’s just talk about the fact that it was the opposition that prevented the government from knocking off another $8 million, $10 million, $20 million, $30 million—whatever—on a Fuelwatch scheme that by any measure is not working in Western Australia. It was implemented over there by a Liberal government, under Richard Court, but that does not stop me being even-handed. I do not always cast my vote on the basis of my loyalty to my party; I have a loyalty to my constituents. It is a silly scheme and, what is more, that was all the pensioners got from the Rudd promises in the election campaign—tokenism.

That, of course, can be added to the plethora of broken promises that are materialising from this government. Don’t you think veterans are concerned about the intentions of the government with regard to the health insurance rebate? Be they wealthy veterans or otherwise, they all went and fought for us. Some of them are on military pensions. Why should they be denied the rebate? That was a solemn promise made by the government and negated. I note that there are people in the Senate who have not been voted in as Liberals or Nationals who are taking a similar view, and they are entitled to. The Senate has a responsibility to see the government keeps its promises.

This legislation is belated but it is welcome. Above all, it recognises what the former Leader of the Opposition brought to this parliament by way of a private member’s bill to start this debate and eventually embarrass the government into doing something. Again, there are issues. It is a fact that I wrote the Howard government’s veterans affairs policy as the shadow minister leading up to the 1996 election. Whilst I did not serve in that role, the member for Maranoa, Bruce Scott, certainly implemented many of those measures dealing with issues which the previous government had failed to address and yet were of grave importance to people.

During that period the Keating government, to its credit, implemented Australia Remembers and I, as the shadow minister, gave it full endorsement. It was an appropriate recognition of our veterans and the contribution they have made. What is more, it refocused the Australian people’s attention on that contribution and on the issue of defence. Since then we have seen an ever-increasing number of people attending dawn services, parades et cetera.

In the present debate, it is interesting to note that up to that point the Commonwealth government actually ran some hospitals. They were called ‘repatriation hospitals’. There was one in every state. And they were run so badly that the response of the Keating government was to dispose of them. In absolute foolishness, I thought, New South Wales and Victoria—one under a Labor government and one under a Liberal government—took over those hospitals. The premiers of Queensland and Western Australia declined the offer; a private health firm called Ramsay Health Care took those hospitals over. I can tell you that there was grave disquiet and concern within the veterans community and the RSL that the hospitals were coming from under the umbrella of government ownership. The veterans really worried how their future would be managed by the private sector. About two months into its ownership, they came to me and said, ‘Wilson, this is the best thing since sliced bread. We don’t want you to make any criticism that this has gone to the private sector. For instance, we no longer, as veterans, get frozen TV dinners served up to us, because Ramsay has reopened the hospitals’ kitchens and are serving cooked, hot meals delivered within the premises.’

And then, of course, at that time there was a 10-month waiting list for elective surgery. That was eliminated over a three-month period. How did Ramsay do that? They opened the operating theatres on Saturdays and cleaned it up. Yet we have this government telling the states that it is going to run hospitals better than the states are. When it had the opportunity, it ran crummy hospitals. There is nothing in this legislation, I hope, that is going to alter that arrangement in Western Australia, where the veterans have got some of the best conditions—brand-new sections of the hospital built and invested in.

Fundamental to all this is that Ramsay gets paid by the Commonwealth for delivering the service. That is the only way you will fix the entire health system. When you give public hospitals budgets, you make a patient a liability. Ramsay had an incentive to get rid of waiting lists because every service it provided it got paid for. That is not the way we function in the public hospital sector. You wonder why, as health professionals will tell you, waiting lists are part of the management process. The pity of it is that, as one highly ranked hospital representative said at a conference I attended as shadow minister for health, whilst waiting lists are a necessary part, there are problems with the administration of the waiting lists. This lady, very high ranking, complained about the administration of the waiting lists. We saw that in Canberra when a former Treasurer’s wife had gallstones and needed an elective operation. It was done in a private hospital by the specialist of choice, notwithstanding that the then Treasurer boasted of not having private health insurance.

There are other issues in this legislation worthy of comment. I give considerable credit to the government on the issue of initiating a ‘pensioner CPI’, if you like. It was by coincidence that I raised that matter the other day in relation to some other veterans legislation. I have long had the view that the standard CPI does not represent the cost structures of retirees. The government can be commended for investigating that. I am surprised that it is going to cost $18 million, but I still think such an approach is worth it. And I endorse the decisions they have made in shifting the percentage of MTI to a pensioner couple rate—41.76 per cent of the MTAWE rate. I endorse the fact that the veterans community now has three options, virtually, and they will always be provided with a pension increase relevant to the highest of those three. Yet, at the same time, the government are increasing the taper clawback from 40c in the dollar to 50c, and I criticise that.

I welcome the initiative regarding personal exertion, which is my choice of words, where people remain in the workforce or continue in the workforce. They deliver an economic benefit, in my view. If they are fit and well, they will have a personal benefit over and above the extra remuneration. It is at least a reasonable proposal that, were they to earn in excess of $500 a week—or a fortnight, I think it might be—they will be credited with 50 per cent of it. If it is an amount less than $500 then they will be able to earn all of it without loss of benefit. That is a good move. I am sorry that the government, nevertheless, has in this legislation taken the Harmer criticism to heart and removed the bonus that people who chose to continue working past 65 could get if they took their working age to 70. Harmer said it was complex and not understood. That was true, but that was not an excuse to remove it. Pensioners and persons approaching that age were never properly informed. Some discovered it after the event. They had decided to retire and then found that they really should not have, but it was too late. Every person approaching 64 years of age should have been properly notified as to their options in that regard, particularly in the past few years, when there was a grave shortage of reliable labour.

But there are other measures within this bill. One of which I am highly critical is that the government is choosing to set the price increase that is going to arise in a veteran’s budget from the emissions trading scheme. To suggest that an increase of one per cent in 2011 and an increase of 1.8 per cent in 2012 will be the ceiling for assistance is a joke. Yesterday the major representative groups in the retail food industry said the price increase will be seven per cent. Furthermore, as I have asked in this House previously, what does that provision tell us? It tells us that, for instance, electricity generators are not going to lower their pollution. It makes a farce of the label ‘carbon pollution reduction scheme’ because the government admits openly—

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