Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

For those who are barking over on the other side, the great frustration is that none of them have any economic training. When you don't have an understanding of health economics, home-spun wisdoms like capping insurance premiums seem like an awfully good idea. When you're sitting around a table at a Chinese restaurant table, capping insurance premiums at two per cent would be a fabulous idea—except that no-one has ever done it because they know it doesn't work. Of course, there's only one person over there with any economic training, but the Labor Party doesn't listen to the member for Fenner. They don't even listen to the one individual over there with some health experience. They don't listen to the member for Macarthur, who has had a genuine career in health. Actually walking down a hospital corridor is some basic prerequisite for knowing something about the health system—but you don't listen to him. His extension in the building is 2311. Just phone the guy and ask him: 'Is this a great idea?'

Maybe we should cap home insurance. Maybe we should cap car insurance. There is a very good reason that we don't do it—it has unintended second-round affects and it leads to insurers doing really bad things like not properly covering their customer base, cutting back on what they cover and ultimately damaging the people seeking insurance. When you live in the Labor world of insurance, where insurers are enemies, private health providers are enemies and we've got to slice into the premium and do it by capping, that's precisely what happens. What happens is what we have seen before when you allow the market to not be able to set that rate rise and you just pluck two per cent out of the air. Insurers game the system in a desperate way to survive and the poorest and most vulnerable miss out. On the other hand, health inflation—something those on the other side of the chamber do not understand—runs at 7.5 per cent. If you can get your increases down under that, that is in fact a victory. This government has done that—for the first time getting it well under that mark. When you get it down to 3.95 per cent, covering half of Australia's population, that's a victory.

Where does two per cent come from? It's not derived from the market; it's plucked out of thin air. When every insurer in the country tells you that that would be damn stupid, there must be something in it. They actually live in the health sector. They actually walk the corridors. They know how hospitals work. Ladies and gentlemen in the gallery, the most the collective over there know about the health system is when the visiting hours are at the local public hospital. None of these guys over there have ever walked the corridors of a hospital or popped a stethoscope around their neck. They just invented a two per cent PHI increase and wonder why—

Ms Catherine King interjecting—

When you see that big fat attractive button and you're advised to maybe not do it, the Labor Party will just press that button and see what happens—because there's no understanding of community rating and no understanding of lifetime health cover. This is a party that simply doesn't understand exclusions. When they see an exclusion of a primary healthcare product, they go, 'This patient's not getting any value for money'. That's fine, put the cover back on the patients that don't want the cover, push up their premiums and see how they feel. Exclusions are there for a good reason, but those opposite don't understand choice and don't understand why exclusions are there. If you want to exclude an extra, every Australian deserves the right to do that.

The Labor Party is a party that doesn't understand insurance economics at all. You've got the member for Fenner who could explain it and you don't even promote the guy or pay him for his Harvard-level expertise. You have one person with health experience over there, and the phone doesn't ring at 2311. That could have saved you this mortal embarrassment, shadow spokesperson, between now and the next election. The people the Labor Party are trying to lure and seduce, the people they are trying to pick up with their ridiculous health non-economics and language of cuts—when in fact health funding is increasing—do not trust the Labor Party. If it comes to whipping up a union rally, trust those people; they are great at that. Those opposite have zero expertise in health, but they're great with a scare campaign. The very people that the Labor Party are trying to seduce and induce to follow them will not fall for it, because they understand that this is a party with no understanding of private health insurance.

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