Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Deputy Speaker and I will do my level best to apply proper protocol. As recently as 2009, Roxon said the government was committed to retaining the existing rebates. A few months after that the wheels fell off and now some 2.4 million people are facing immediate increases in their premiums of 14 per cent, 29 per cent or 43 per cent, depending on how much money they make.

Before I go on, I would like to debunk this ridiculous, ludicrous theory the government is running that private health insurance is somehow the exclusive playground of the well-to-do. The Labor Party wants you to believe that private health insurance, which covers half the population, is a rich man's luxury. What a load of rubbish. Over 5½ million people who have private health insurance have an annual household income of less than $50,000, and 3½ million of them earn less than $35,000. We are not talking about the Packers or the Murdochs here. We are talking about older Australians who may be sick and do not wish to put themselves through the stress or the uncertainty of treatment through the public health system. We are talking about young parents with kids, trying to make sure their families are covered if the worst should happen. These are people who have made sacrifices in order to look after their own future and their own wellbeing. We should be applauding them, not slugging them with higher premiums. For Labor to argue that these people are living so high on the hog that they can afford to cop a bit more financial pain shows just how out of touch they really are.

The Treasurer came into the House today and talked about the strength of the economy. I met last week with a business owner who employs 80 people. He said to me, 'Scotty, it is tough out there—I have never seen it so tough.' There are increased energy costs; the list goes on. With reference to this legislation, cost-of-living pressures are biting and this is another tax that my people in the electorate of Wright could do without.

If this legislation passes, the results will be swift and potentially catastrophic. As you would expect, the first thing that will happen will be upward pressure on premiums, which will see a mass exodus from the private system to a public system that is already groaning at the seams. Those who elect to remain in the private system will be forced to pay higher premiums to retain current levels of cover or to take up cheaper policies with more procedures excluded. A report from Deloitte shows that around 175,000 people could be expected to abandon their private hospital cover and that more than half a million will downgrade. That is probably the more likely option, because there is that exit clause. The Labor government have got you there as well. On the way out, if you do not take the insurance coverage you are in for 1.25 per cent of your gross income. So they are going to tax you if you are not in it anyway. I suggest that you will see people wind back their insurance coverage and possibly stay in. Over five years you are looking at 1.6 million members leaving and 4.3 million downgrading.

These changes will also impose an enormous compliance burden on industry and individuals completing their tax returns. Private insurers will have to make significant changes to their systems to be able to adjust premiums according to incomes. It is not clear how the rebate will be administered under these arrangements, especially where a person is not able to accurately predict their income for the current financial year.

So why would anyone in their right mind try to do this? I will tell you. This government has inevitably succumbed to the same malady that eventually afflicts all left wingers: they have run out of other people's money. That they have managed to do it in just four years, after starting from a position of almost unprecedented national wealth, is an indictment of them and of the whole Labor philosophy. To support those comments I have Labor's debt figures for the last four years. I think it is interesting to reflect on those. Under Labor, in the 2008-09 year there was a deficit of $27 billion, in 2009-10 it was $54 billion, in 2010-11 it was $47 billion and in 2011-12—the reporting period—it is $37 billion, making a total of $165 billion.

The legislation before the House is an opportunity cost forgone as a result of the government trying to bring the books back into some type of order and return some type of economic credibility to its argument for pursuing a surplus. And this is one of the ways it is going to do it. It is going to put its hands into the pockets of mums and dads right across this country and force them to kick the tin a little bit more.

The reason the Labor Party is not bothered by the likely consequences of this policy is that in its heart of hearts it loves the idea of everyone being in the public health system. I am reminded of the famous quote by Winston Churchill about the inherent virtue of socialism being the equal distribution of misery. It seems particularly relevant here. Sure, our emergency departments are overflowing and the waiting lists in our hospitals stretch from here to eternity—we have now even created in our public hospital system a process that is a waiting list to go onto the waiting list; it sounds like a caricature out of something like Fawlty Towers or Yes Ministerbut none of that matters. The important thing is to make sure that nobody is better off than anybody else. Let me assure members that you cannot legislate a nation into prosperity.

These bills speak to fairness—the titles include the word fairer. I see nothing fair in them. One would like to think we have evolved beyond such bloody minded nonsense, but apparently not. I suppose we should not be surprised. Over the past four and a bit years the crowning achievement of the Labor Party on health policy has been to increase massively the number of public servants it employs. But that is what the so-called historic health reforms are: the states get more federal money to carry on doing pretty much as they always have done, as long as they employ another tier of bureaucracy to manage the whole thing. That is the Labor way. It is always a case of measuring inputs instead of outcomes. It is always about funding the expansion of the public service by slugging the private sector. The one thing it is not about is improving the lot of patients. Is it easier to get into a public hospital? Will I have to spend 12 hours at the ER before my kid gets some treatment? Is it easier for my Dad or Mum to get a hip replacement? Can I find a bulk-billing GP any easier than I could four years ago? As far as Labor is concerned the answer to those questions is: 'Who cares? Look at how much money we've spent. How impressive is that?' It is not impressive, it is a disgrace. Why? Because it is that attitude that has caused them to end up here, so short of cash that they are seriously proposing to save a few bucks by driving people back into a system that already cannot cope with demand. It is not right, it is certainly not fair and it deserves to be voted down. I encourage members of the House to support the amendment moved by the Leader of the Opposition.

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