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

Look at this; it's packed over here. Normally the member for Mitchell would give us an ideological spray; he would normally give us his ideological contribution and tell us all about how the private market was going to benefit us and how public systems let us down, but even he is not biting today. The fish are not biting. The drones from the coalition back bench are not biting. And I can tell you why. Last election they made a whole lot of commitments about private health, and this is one of the things they said in their Policy to Support Australia's health system on 22 August:

Importantly, a Coalition government will alleviate the burden on our public hospitals by reinvesting in private health insurance rebates as soon as fiscal circumstances allow.

And this is what the Prime Minister said on 25 August 2013:

Within a decade, the budget surplus will be one per cent of GDP, Defence spending will be two per cent of GDP, the private health insurance rebate will be fully restored, and each year, government will be a smaller percentage of our economy.

Well, we know what has actually happened. Interestingly enough, ABC Fact Check shows how this promise has been tracking—and the promise has stalled. Doesn't that tell you so much about this government!

The shadow minister, the member for Ballarat, spoke about what has in fact happened. On private health insurance costs—that is, what you pay—there has been no stalling in that department. It has been accelerated—fourth gear, flat out. We have a newly minted minister, Minister Dutton. There has never been a more reluctant health minister in the history of the Federation. He wanted to wreck the portfolio, to gut the portfolio and get out. He wanted to be finance minister or something like that. One of the first things he did, just before Christmas, was oversee an average premium rise of 6.2 per cent. That is the largest increase since 2005, when the Prime Minister, 'Mr Broken Promise', was health minister; and he had some very high health insurance premium rises—7.6 and eight per cent.

The current health minister, who is apparently an improvement on the member for Dickson, has agreed to a rise of 6.18 per cent. So we have got very, very rapid increases in the premiums consumers pay—there has been no stalling in that department—but the commitments the government have made about private health insurance rebates and the subsidies therein have not been met. And they will never be met, because they were not made in good faith. Everybody knows that to restore the private health insurance rebate would be a very, very costly exercise indeed; it would cost the Commonwealth and make a budget surplus unviable. They furiously and disingenuously opposed the very important savings Labor made when in government. They made irresponsible promises when they were in opposition, and they have now seen those promises stalled. Those promises have been broken. What consumers have got instead is not relief from private health insurance premiums but an increase in premiums—additional pressure, higher costs. People have two choices—either pay or get out. If they get out, there are very serious consequences such as losing some of the privileges that you get under lifetime health cover.

This is a government that has got nothing at all to crow about in private health. That is why we see so few speakers on the government list, such little interest in what is normally one of their great ideological endeavours. Normally the member for Mitchell would get up to give a great speech about how the private market always benefits us and how the public system always lets us down. But even he has been struck dumb by this government's miserable record on private health and miserable record on public health. This is a government that is turning its back on the interests of health care consumers in this country, and it should stand condemned for it.

See this speech in context