Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

Out of courtesy we agreed to work through a consideration-in-detail process which would actually have represented a consideration in detail. We are now embarked upon repetition and recitation. The opposition may choose to ignore the advice of the Productivity Commission and the advice of their own reviewers, including, I repeat, the eminent Allan Hawke and the advice of the department. They have history and form in having done so, in terms of the home insulation program, which sadly and tragically, as the royal commission found, had the most profound of human consequences.

By contrast we have laid out before the House the sources of advice—the Productivity Commission, the reviews commissioned by the Gillard government and the department. We will simply have to disagree as to whether the Productivity Commission, the reviewers, including Allan Hawke, and the department are credible and authoritative sources of advice. We stand by all three of those sources. It is up to the opposition to reject them.

The fundamental point here, which has been set out by the Productivity Commission and others—indeed, it is the latest advice that I have—is that scaling, whether it is the federal or state systems, will come through the insurance process itself. The more there are in one, the more it is scaled up. The fewer there are in others, the more it is scaled down. That is the simple answer. I repeat that the actuarial assessments commissioned by the Productivity Commission concluded that, the larger the employer, the closer the premium is to the true cost.

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