Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Ageing. Will the minister explain the benefits of the government’s decision to raise the Medicare levy surcharge thresholds?

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Longman for his question. He takes a particular interest in our government’s health policies, having recently secured $7 million for 12 new dialysis chairs in his electorate. But he asks particularly about the Medicare levy surcharge. Members might recall yesterday that I enlightened the House as to the reasons behind the setting of the surcharge, introduced by then health minister Michael Wooldridge, who told us that this threshold was devised over a bottle of Jameson’s whiskey late one night. I thought it might be a good idea to let the House know about a few other comments that Dr Wooldridge has made about this surcharge.

When the surcharge was first introduced, he said:

High income earners will be asked to pay a Medicare levy surcharge if they do not have private health insurance. These are people who can afford to purchase health insurance.

Now we have the current-day Liberal Party with the firm opinion that someone who earns over $51,000 is a high-income earner. Never mind that somebody earning that rate is now earning less than the average wage; in the Liberal Party’s eyes, if you earn more than $51,000 a year, you are a high-income earner. You are rich if you are over Michael Wooldridge’s Jameson’s whiskey threshold—hardly something to be proud of. But I am informed that this morning in the House, a Liberal senator for Queensland—in fact, I think the same—

Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the House? It must have been in the Senate!

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. It is good to know that the education spokesperson can help us out on occasion. I thank the member for that. In the Senate this morning, a Liberal senator from Queensland—and I believe it was the same senator who feels so passionately about the luxury car tax that she forgot to turn up—suggested that the Liberal Party’s position on the Medicare levy surcharge was all about choice. There is nothing wrong with choice; the Labor Party think choice is a good idea. However, the choice that the Liberal Party are offering working families is this choice: they can choose to pay for private health insurance or they can choose to pay a tax. That is the choice that they are offering.

I do understand that working families start to get nervous when the Liberal Party talk about choice. We know that the last time they talked about choice it was Work Choices. We know where that led; it was absolutely nothing to do with choices. Under the Labor Party’s policy, we are offering a real choice to these people. We know that family budgets are under pressure, and our measure would actually allow families to choose whether they want to spend their money on their home loan, whether they want to spend their money on groceries, whether they want to spend it on private health insurance or whether they want to spend it on child care. We believe in giving them a real choice by giving them the money in their pockets so that they can choose how to spend it. It is about time, if the Liberal Party were really about choice, that they supported our measure in the Senate.