Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

Deloitte is bought and paid for! She wants to say it again. The firm will have its chance to respond to a casual accusation of professional incompetency, professional negligence and professional malpractice from a cabinet minister of Australia. That is the position that we have reached with this government: where there is disagreement, not from the opposition but from the highest levels of the professional accounting sector not just in Australia but globally, there is not just disagreement but a gross and vile accusation of professional misconduct.

Let us go on, though, to what Deloitte has said:

That is the threat to the private health sector. That is the threat to the ability of low-income earners and middle-income earners to maintain their private health coverage. So this is framed as an assault on some unfair entitlement for higher income earners, but its consequence, its outcome and its inevitable conclusion—just as we warned, to dismissal and derision from the government, over the Home Insulation Program—will be damage to the sector on a grand scale: the waste of money, the loss of resources and a retrograde step in terms of public policy.

The second great area which will suffer as a consequence of these changes is the provision not just of private health services but of public health services. Let me turn now specifically to the third key finding of the Deloitte report:

The chain of events triggered by the proposed policy change is expected to place additional burden on the public health system

Deloitte estimates that:

That is an inevitable consequence. It is not the intended consequence, but it is the inevitable consequence. To continue:

Between 2012 and 2016, 845,000 additional separations will need to occur in public hospitals as a consequence of the means testing of the rebate

In other words, it is not just bad for the cost of living and for the private health sector; it is a disastrous result for the public health sector, which will inevitably have to pick up the pieces. That is something about which all Australians should be concerned. Whether you believe in private health or you do not believe that there should be any assistance for that, if the public health system deteriorates then it is bad policy masquerading as some form of phantom, phoney class war activism.

Let me go on a little bit further, because we have terrible public policy consequences in terms of both cost of living for lower income earners and the impact on the private and public hospital systems, but we also have a fundamental breach of faith. Let me go back to the statement of the then shadow health minister, Nicola Roxon, on 26 September 2007:

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.

Similarly, on 20 November 2007, on the eve of the election, the then candidate for Prime Minister—once again soon enough, no doubt—said:

… I have made clear on many occasions this year that Federal Labor is committed to retaining the existing private health insurance rebates.

Those statements, which were declared as an article of faith, an article of principle and a belief which could be trusted, were wrong, false and incorrect. As has always occurred, events are used as a pretext to revert to type and to revert to pathology. So these bills are an assault upon the cost of living, they are an assault upon the viability of the private and public health systems and they represent a grand breach of faith.

Debate interrupted.

House adjourned at 23:00

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