Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No wonder politicians are held in such low regard in Australia today. Every day the cause of democracy is being weakened. There is a complete lack of trust. We have seen 5½ years of betrayal of trust. Mr Deputy Speaker, you could—anyone could—go into the street and ask people what they think of the Prime Minister today and what they think of the government's solemn promises. I will list a few of them. The government promised: 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead'—we know what has happened to that one. They promised a return to surplus—it was a cast-iron guarantee—500 times. They promised no new taxes—remember that one? That was way back before the alcopops tax, which, incidentally, we now learn has raised $4½ billion but has not reduced alcohol consumption one bit—not one jot, not one tittle. That reminds me of another promise, Kevin Rudd's promise before the 2007 election to not change superannuation—'not one jot, not one tittle'. The government promised Australia a tax cut only last budget. That commitment has already gone. We had a promise to build 2,650 trade training centres, and at this stage only 241 are built. And the government promised not to touch the private health insurance rebates. In fact, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in 2007, before the election:

… Federal Labor is committed to retaining the existing private health insurance rebates, including the 30 per cent general rebate and the 35 and 40 per cent rebates for older Australians.

I know, Mr Deputy Speaker, you only just heard this quote from the member for Wannon, but it is such a good one that I think we should revisit it. It is from the current Prime Minister in 2005:

The truth is that I never had a secret plan to scrap the private health insurance rebate, and contrary to Mr Latham's diaries, do not support such a claim … For all Australians who wanted to have private health insurance, the private health insurance rebate would have remained under a Labor government. I gave an iron-clad guarantee of that during the election. The difference between Tony "rock solid, iron-clad" Abbott and me is that when I make an "iron-clad commitment", I actually intend on keeping it.

I want to repeat that last bit:

… when I make an "iron-clad commitment", I actually intend on keeping it.

Surely nothing could be further from the truth.

Not once, not twice, but three times, this government has adjusted private health cover. First the means-testing; then the bill on lifetime cover rebate, which is actually being debated in cognate today; and the axing of genuine indexation of the rebate. It will take years to rebuild the trust. Australia needs a government that does what it says it will do, and asks the electorate for approval when it wants to completely contradict its previous policy.

The government is very fond of quoting John Maynard Keynes, when he said, 'When the facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?' That is quite right. When the facts change we should change our minds. But if the government is going to do a 180-degree about-face—as is the case with this bill; it is a major change in government policy—surely the government should ask for a mandate.

The government is also very fond of turning to John Howard and saying that he changed his mind on the GST. We know that John Howard did change his mind on the GST but he went back to the people and said, 'What do you think?' and the people agreed with him. That is what this government should do. And that is what a coalition government will do. It will be a return to predictable, consultative and stable government.

But predictable, consultative and stable government is not the Labor Party's agenda—certainly not on this issue. Sadly, they are implacably opposed to incentives that encourage individuals to pick up some of the strain, if they can, to contribute to their own health requirements. Sadly, the Labor Party are opposed to many things in the private sector. They are opposed to the private school sector. They do not much like the private aged-care providers, and they certainly do not support private health or private health cover.

There was a long-term lift, Australia-wide, in people electing to take a responsible path and take out health cover—to the point where more than 12 million people have cover: about half—following the reforms of the Howard government, which drew people back into private cover. One of those reforms—a very important reform—was the introduction of Lifetime Health Cover, which provided a loading of two per cent for every year that an individual is over the age of 30 when they take out their cover. A cap of 70 per cent is applied. That has been a policy for the future. It is not the kind of initiative that reaps great changes overnight but it changes long-term behaviour. The rise in the rate of health insurance cover around Australia is a demonstration of that.

The government does not seem to get the idea that if an individual pays for their own health needs that is something the government—the taxpayer—does not have to pay for. It frees up resources to spend on other kinds of government programs, like the National Disability Insurance Scheme, for instance. And the system is creaking, despite the government's guarantee to fix the health system and to fix the 'blame game'—another oldie but a goodie; remember that claim. In fact, very little has changed. I do not say these are easy things to fix. In fact, like many things in politics if they were easy to fix they would have been fixed years ago. But perhaps we will never fix—for the purpose of this sentence I would put the 'fix' in italics—the health system. Perhaps we will never have a permanent solution to all the problems in the health system, but what we need is a steady, methodical approach to addressing the long-term funding and technical challenges of health. What we should not do, though, is claim that we are able to fix the problem, as if there was one, simple, silver bullet that would take away all problems for ever. Certainly, this government has not done so.

Even a cursory perusal of the latest intergeneration review will tell even the most intellectually challenged person in Australia that we have a serious issue in front of us. Health costs are going to keep rising. We will, on average, live longer. We will require more care. New technologies will keep us alive for longer, and almost certainly as a result of that we will require further medical assistance on another day. The health system will continue to make greater and greater demands on the budget.

Surely, whenever a person takes personal responsibility by making a financial commitment, the load is lightened on the rest. Simply, if there was no private health insurance the public health system would collapse, virtually overnight. The bills that we are debating today will not kill off private health or the private health insurance system, but they will almost certainly decrease membership. The axing of the lifetime cover levies will certainly cut the number of fit, healthy, young people signing up. Why would they sign up to a system that is costing them so much when, at that stage of their lives, they are so unlikely to access it?

I would like to come to my electorate of Grey. You would think that it would have quite a low level of private health insurance. After all, according to the ABS 2011 census, the median age of the electorate of Grey is four years above the national average, at 41. The median weekly household income is $870, or $364 below the national median. However, the best figures I can find in this matter suggest that the private health cover in the electorate of Grey is at 52 per cent, or about four or five per cent above the state figure. I think that is quite remarkable. It is doubly interesting because, in fact, there are just two not-for-profit community hospitals in the whole electorate. So, for all but about 3,000 residents there is no local alternative to the local state hospital, and, in many of the smaller towns at least, there is no choice of doctor. One could well ask, given these circumstances: 'Why are these people so loyal to private health cover?'

Certainly, the lifetime cover levies are part of the reason that people join in the first place and stay with private cover. They fear they may not be able to afford to rejoin at a later time in their life when they are more likely to need specialist care, perhaps hospitalisation in the city.

The Lifetime Health Cover is a great encouragement for people to join up young when they are healthy and to stay in the system, and eventually the system will repay that faith. Lifetime cover has been a very good move and removing it is a great risk to our long-term health planning and covering our national needs. In fact, the biggest increase in private health cover over the last 10 years came about at the time of the implementation of the lifetime cover levies.

Changing the rebate formula must lead to premiums rising faster than they would have otherwise. We cannot say whether this will lead to an alarming dropout rate. We do not really know until it is implemented, but it will be very surprising if it does not. Australia is paying a very real price for Labor's chronic mismanagement of the economy. We are in a crisis—$370 billion debt will be accumulated some time in the next four years according to the budget papers. There is no doubt that some serious decisions have to be made with the budget. That is why, reluctantly, the coalition is supporting the change to the mechanisms that set the rebates.

We are in the dying days of this parliament. We are down to the last 13 days that the parliament will sit, as far as we can tell, even though nothing is cast in stone, and the parliament is trying to deal with the Gonski bills, the Australian Education Bill, and the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and even the rushed actions for the aged-care industry. Once again, there is an unseemly rush to shove legislation through the legislative process in what is effectively the last couple of weeks of parliament. Many of the bills are ill-considered. One even wonders if the government has its heart in many of these measures and is not trying to leave a damaged economic platform for an incoming government to deal with. If the government had any plan, if it had any idea, if it knew what it was doing and if it had consulted with industries, it should have sensibly made these changes before this time instead of rushing these bills through. The Labor Party have been in government over 5½ years, yet we have this rush of legislation in the last 13 days of parliament.

Debate adjourned.

Ordered that the second reading be made an order of the day for a later hour this day.

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