Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is great to be up here in support of this bill, the Private Health Insurance Amendment Bill (No.1) 2014, and obviously to second the amendment. Of course, this bill utilises some $599 million worth of savings and that is why it is receiving our support. It is qualified support, of course, but it is receiving our support. This follows on from some $3 billion in savings that the previous government achieved by means testing the private health insurance rebate. That was a sensible thing to do and it contained the highest-growing area of costs in our health budget. That was a sensible saving, one that was bitterly opposed by those opposite—constantly and bitterly opposed—but one that, in this bill, they seem to be embracing. They seem to be embracing, finally, a sensible saving which is ploughed back into the health budget, ploughed back into the sorts of services that Australians expect.

Of course, it has had absolutely no effect on private health insurance numbers, notwithstanding what those opposite said—the doomsayers and the people who were out there scaring everybody and telling everybody that it was going to be the end of the health system as we know it. Quite to the contrary, what we found was that savings were sensibly reinvested into health. In my electorate we saw a number of important cancer centres opened at the Lyell McEwin Hospital, the Gawler Hospital and the Clare hospital. People up in Clare, up in the country—and people further north in the seat of Grey—do not have to drive hours and hours and hours to get to the centre of Adelaide to receive chemotherapy services. It is a very, very important thing. I met people at the opening of those centres who proved to me just what a big difference it has had in their lives.

Mr Ewen Jones interjecting—

It is a sensible approach. I heard about what the member for Hume said, and I am sure the member for Herbert will get up, full of bravado, and talk about all of the government's programs: the GP tax and their cuts to hospitals. I just wish they had talked about them prior to the election.

Of course, in their Our planReal solutions for all Australiansin section 16, 'Delivering Better Health Services', this is what the member for Herbert stood on last election, and it does not mention any of these things. It does not mention any of their broken promises—$50 billion plus in cuts to hospitals. You had better believe that will show up in Townsville. The GP tax: there was no mention of that in Real solutions at all. Of course, that is because those opposite do not want to own up to before an election, do not have the courage or the decency, to actually tell the Australian people their real plan, which is to destroy Medicare. That is always what they have been about.

If we go way back to 14 February 1986 John Howard said that if the Hawke government:

… had not been elected to office the Commonwealth Budget would not contain the absurd and bloated expenditures on Medicare that honourable members opposite have added.

That is what John Howard said about Medicare. He was plain with people. On 21 August 1986 he said if elected he would:

… put choice back into Medicare by a number of steps. Firstly, we will allow individual Australians to opt out of Medicare; that is, not pay the levy provided they take out private insurance. Secondly, bulk billing will be abolished except for such people as pensioners who really need it.

That is what John Howard said. Say what you like about the former member for Bennelong, at least he had the courage and the decency to let people know what his true intentions were. When he finally did change his mind on Medicare, well, at least he had the gumption and the good sense to stick to his word. The member for Herbert and the Leader of the Opposition wanted to lie to people before the election—absolutely mislead people at the last election in order to get their votes. And then after the election we get this budget, cutting $50 billion out of health and the $7 GP tax.

Of course, we do not have to go all the way back to John Howard. We can go back to Fightback! This is the document that led me to join the Labor Party. It politicised me no end. It is often forgotten by those opposite. They remember the GST—that is hard-wired into their brain—but they do not often remember that one of the reasons that John Hewson and the Liberal Party were defeated in 1993 was their all-out assault on Medicare. Remember page 7 of that document:

Bulk-billing will be retained for over four million pensioners, health care providers and the disabled, but will no longer be available to other Australians.

That is what they said in Fightback!This is the other point:

A government monopoly on medical insurance will be abolished and there will be a provision for gap insurance in medical bills.

On and on it goes. Later on in the document it explains their plans in some detail about how they intended to destroy Medicare. That was their intention. Their long-term aim is to commercialise health, to privatise health and to shift costs on to working families. That is not just going to be felt in Labor seats; it is going to be felt particularly in seats in the bush. They will feel it most of all. What we will have in this country is a system of health haves and health have-nots, and that will be determined by your income and by where you live.

If those opposite were paying attention to this, if I was a backbencher on the government side and I was from the bush, I would be terrified about the impact of this. I would be hoping that it would be blocked in the Senate. I would not be putting my name to it if I was a government backbencher from the bush. We had the member for Hume in here proudly telling us about how charging people $7 to see the doctor is somehow going to help the plague of diabetes in this country. It is just extraordinary. There are $80 billion in cuts to health and education, and over $50 billion in cuts to hospitals. That will affect people in the outer suburbs. That will affect people in regional centres. That will affect people in the bush—you better believe it will. And there is the GP tax—$7 every time you wander in and out of the waiting room at your local GP, $7 every time you get a blood test.

We now know the true effect that this will have on diagnostic scans. The Australian Diagnostic Imaging Association has told us exactly the effect of this. People will have to start paying up-front costs: for an ultrasound, $106 to $189, and the real cost that people will face after the Medicare rebate will be somewhere between $16 and $99; for CT scans, the up-front costs will be from $280 to $383 and the out-of-pocket costs $35 to $136; for X-rays, $45 to $92 up-front and the out-of-pocket costs $10 to $56; for an MRI, the up-front costs will be from $403 to $500 and the out-of-pocket costs $65 to $163.

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