Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Not even the member for Hume would really believe that. They have a written script on this thing. If you look through the contributions from the other side of the House, they have all been identical: this is about a right to be subsidised.

This is not the first occasion when we have had a debate such as this. Go back to 2008, when we increased the Medicare levy threshold. The member for Hume sat in the chamber at that time, as did many others. People remember the contribution of the member for North Sydney, when he pounded away and said it was Armageddon and that it was going to be what destroyed the health system of the country. The coalition waxed lyrical about millions of people who would abandon private health. They said that the public health systems of New South Wales and Victoria would be destroyed because they would be overstretched to breaking point by people wanting to vacate the private health system. What happened? Since 2008 there has been an increase in people taking out private health insurance.

Despite the politicians wanting to try to score points, the truth is that mums and dads out there do what is necessary to look after their families. Mums and dads in my electorate will work their two or three jobs to look after their families. I imagine that mums and dads in the seat of Hume or anywhere else are going to do similar things. After hearing the earlier contribution from the member for Bennelong, maybe they do not have to work their two or three jobs to do that. But parents take their responsibilities seriously. They do not get a set of rules. They do it to look after their families. They take that part seriously. No amount of discussion in this chamber is going to change that. Mums and dads are going to do what is necessary to look after their families. The member for Hume—and I know his electorate quite well—too, should be thinking seriously about this because I know the age distribution in his electorate and a significant proportion of them are going to be the ones whose rebate will increase by up to 35 per cent, and many of them will be up to 40 per cent.

In their approach to this debate, people should have a clear view as to not only what has been said in the back of the party room but to what we are going to say in this chamber. I have not seen one member on the other side come in here and say, 'If we get the power at the next election we will scrap this and bring the rebate back in.' The reason they have not said it is that they are never going to do it. They are looking for us to make the hard decisions. They are going to go out and score political points, but they are not going to come in here and change that system, because they know this is the right way to do it. We have had the courage to pursue it.

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