Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister and refers to the confirmation that the government sale of Medibank has been put on hold. Will the Prime Minister finally confirm for the House, for Medibank’s more than three million members and for the 63 per cent of voters who oppose the sale, whether the government has cut and run until after the next election? If this is the case, why is the Prime Minister persisting with the introduction of the sale legislation in this session when Australians do not want him to?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It remains the policy of the government to privatise Medibank Private. Given that we are proceeding with T3—the sale of approximately some $8 billion of stock in Telstra to the public—and given that it is the strong desire of the government to have a public float of Medibank Private, our financial advisers have suggested that, clearly, the two should not be run together. That stands to reason. I would have thought that even those on the opposition front bench who do not study these matters very closely would immediately acknowledge that to try to run the two of them together would be unwise, and we are plainly not going to do that. We do intend to go ahead with the legislation because it is the policy of the government to privatise Medibank Private.