Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Private Health Insurance Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2014.

Access to good health and to good health care is a sign of a great community and a great health service. Australia has a proud record of quality health care, with our universal access to primary health and a balance between public and private provision. But from time to time things do go wrong, and having a robust and effective complaints system is an important feature of society. Consumer protections are an important element of any system; this bill transfers the functions of the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman to the office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman, and is therefore worth careful consideration.

Labor wants a strong health system, unlike what we see currently from the government. It seems not to have a clear health policy. As this bill makes changes to the existing system without careful considerations of the implications and the practical outcomes, this reflects many of the things that we have seen from this government in 18 months in the health space. Of course, we have had changes to the GP tax—too many to count—and still it seems unresolved. We had a $7 GP tax, a $20 proposal, a $5 proposal and now—it seems by stealth—an $8 increase to patients at the GP. We have had PBS price hikes planned but still not delivered. We have Medicare Locals still unsure of the future arrangements—those things are still unresolved. And we have hundreds of healthcare groups' community health programs not knowing if they will exist after June.

These programs were particularly targeted to areas in our community with high risks of diabetes and heart disease. It was preventative health funding, and part of the budget cuts from this government—which seems to have not as yet come to grips with the notion that prevention is cheaper than cure. In Wyndham, we have the Healthy Together Wyndham program. This program in Wyndham has reached over 54,000 people—that is 28 per cent of our population that has had a positive relationship or interaction with that Healthy Together program. It is still in doubt beyond June this year, having been topped up for the last 12 months by the state government.

It is in that space that we are looking at this further bill today. We have had short-term extensions to things like the specialised training program, a program designed to train more specialists—particularly in rural areas. So, we find ourselves in this health space, with uncertainty in the community about how we are going to go forward. Again, we have a bill in front of us where it appears that the implications of the bill have not been thought through thoroughly.

This government has also approved the two biggest increases to private health insurance premiums in a decade—three times the rate of inflation and bigger than any ever announced by the previous Labor government. A moment's thought would give pause about an unseemly price hike in the current chaos that is being overseen by this government. It leaves us thinking that the Abbott government has no deep commitment to health and no clear direction set in the health space.

The Private Health Insurance Ombudsman exists currently to protect the interests of Australian private health insurance consumers—that is, patients in the context of health. It plays a vital role, it is in demand and it is very effective. It assists in settling disputes, it identifies underlying repeat problems across companies and it has a monitoring role. It provides data for problem-solving. That data should be used to assist in the design of preventative actions. As William Edwards Deming said, 'In God we trust, all others bring data.' But in this instance, this piece of legislation could prove to minimise the government's access to useful data in plans for future health provision.

In a lean operation, the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman provides advice to industry and government about issues, about the sector's performance and about common complaints. It is delivering in a growing complaints regime. It produces the annual State of the health funds report, and has done so for more than 10 years, comparing the performance of health funds. It has overseen an increase in complaints but also an increase in traffic to the website, where patients—customers and consumers—can look at the comparative performance of those health funds. And it has seen increased customer satisfaction. It is, therefore a good-quality service. One wonders why this government would see fit to move the provision from the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman to the Commonwealth Ombudsman at this time.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman also oversees an effective operation, but will it be well supported to take on this extra task? None of this is clear in this piece of legislation. Will the specialised staff be lost? Will the corporate knowledge be lost? Will the parameters of the work be maintained? Will the service levels go down?

Specialised staff and corporate knowledge are vital in ongoing decision making in the health sector.

This is in contrast to Labor's attitude towards health care. We are on the record as supporting private health insurance in this country. Despite the scare campaign by the current government whilst in opposition, the membership of private health insurance continues to grow, which means for the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman the workload continues to grow. This bill would see that workload shifted across to the Commonwealth Ombudsman.

We all know that the Commonwealth Ombudsman already has a huge workload in defence, immigration, law enforcement, the postal industry, overseas students and potentially other areas. It begs the question: what is the government's motivation for this change? Is it cost cutting? Yet the legislation indicates it is cost neutral.

On this side of the House, we demonstrated in government how to balance business imperatives with consumer protection. We protected consumers from rising costs, and the private health industry provision grew. We are left to wonder: is it to avoid scrutiny? Is this government avoiding the data that would assist in making decisions regarding provision into the future?

This bill demonstrates clearly that this government and this health minister have very different priorities to the previous government. They are not, it seems, interested in an effective, efficient and informed health sector. This is clearly evident from the Medicare Local shambles where there is still no certainty and could be seen through the lens of another attack on collecting data to make informed, strategic decisions about the health sector.

Labor has a proud record on health. We want private health insurance members to have access to quality information and the best resources so they can find the best provider at the best price. We want access to the best health system in the world. We want a healthy, productive community: investment in preventative health and keeping people out of expensive hospital beds. This piece of legislation appears to put at risk some of the data, information, monitoring and intervention that makes all that possible.

This government, it appears, does not value health provision. It talks about competition but fails to back this up with actions. It has a scattergun approach to health policy. There is a lack of consultation with the sector and consumers. There is a lack of clear vision. Minister Ley has been sent in to clean up the mess that she inherited from Minister Dutton when he was in the role. My fear is that this is just another example of poorly-thought-out policy.

For the people in my electorate, where 62 per cent have private health insurance, this is a critical piece of legislation. It may in fact change the provision currently where consumers can be quite confident in that they can make a complaint to the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman and have it seen to seriously. They can currently go to the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman with confidence that they are dealing with a system that knows the sector well and has expertise in the sector, and they can talk to specialist staff who understand their concerns and the way the system works. I am reluctant to say that I can support this piece of legislation, given that it changes the shape of the current system.

The substantive elements of this bill merge the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman and the Commonwealth Ombudsman, but we are left wondering if there will be the capacity for the Ombudsman to fulfil this important role. We are concerned that the current provision of allowing someone with a complaint to request additional time to report to the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman is not part of the changes proposed by the government.

There is also currently provision for the minister to intervene where the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman decides not to investigate a complaint, and this is omitted in the current bill. The provision for the minister to request the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman to undertake investigations is also omitted in this bill. Like my colleagues, while not opposing the bill outright, I want to flag the opposition's concerns about these omissions—and I do that on behalf of the 62 per cent of the people in Lalor who have private health insurance and need assurance that their complaints and consumer rights will be protected in this system.

I find myself once again speaking in this chamber on health, because I am concerned about this government's lack of direction in the health portfolio. We are still in a space where we are unsure about the provision of bulk-billing into the future. For the people of my electorate of Lalor, where 92 per cent have access to bulk-billing GP services, this is a concern. In my electorate, health funding for hospitals was cut in last year's budget. In another example, the McAuley centre has 12 months continual funding that will finish in June, and Medicare Locals are still unsure about the future. We have general practitioners in the electorate who tell me that they found the Medicare Local absolutely essential and absolutely informative around the data and the needs of the community they serve, and that they had been working collaboratively across the electorate on preventative health measures and being innovative about how health provision would be conducted across the electorate.

I call on this government to start thinking clearly about healthcare provision and to put preventative health measures at the front of their thinking in this area. I ask them to honour bulk-billing into the future and to desist from trying to dismantle our universality of health care. I ask them to fund the hospitals and to commit to ensuring that our public hospitals have the funds that they need. I ask them to fund preventative health measures. I ask them to give consideration to all of these things so that we can work in the health sector with the data that we need to ensure that we get provision right into the future; so that we can keep people out of expensive hospital beds; and so that we can work with our general practitioners and with the experts in the health sector to ensure that health provision in my electorate and across the country is the best it can be, as it has been in the past.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I speak on the Private Health Insurance Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2014, because private health insurance is a matter of deep concern to the nation at large and to the, roughly, over 50 per cent of residents of my electorate who hold a private health insurance policy. That is slightly below the national average but important nonetheless.

The bill is about the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman and the oversight role that the ombudsman's office plays in the private health insurance industry. The PHI Ombudsman has an important role in protecting the interests of people covered by private health insurance. Unlike the current government, which has presided over record levels of private health insurance premium increases, the ombudsman has its eye on the industry. The government clearly does not. The PHIO also manages the very important consumer information website and deals with a prodigious amount of work.

I just ask you to consider this: there are 12 staff currently working in the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman's office. In 2013-14, in that year alone, they dealt with nearly 3½ thousand complaints. You can do the maths yourself; when you do, you will work out that this is a busy office dealing in a very professional way with the complaints and concerns of the more than half of my constituents who have private health insurance and those throughout the population at large. They have not been sitting around doing nothing. They have been very, very busy.

Against that backdrop, you can understand some concerns that we might have in the context of a government which is hell-bent on withdrawing resources from the public sector. This bill has savings attached to it, albeit modest savings; but we are concerned that, without sufficient resources, the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman and the staff who work in the wider ombudsman's office will not have the resources available to them to do their job.

Contrast that with what we did when we were in office. We put in place over $1.4 million to increase the resources available to the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman and to enable them to do their job. We have, through this bill and other budget measures, attempts by the government to withdraw resources from the PHI Ombudsman's office.

When you look at the amount of complaints, I ask you to consider this: there is a stubborn correlation between the volume of complaints that the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman receives and the level of increase in private health insurance premiums. We can predict a very steady increase in premiums under this government. I would like to say that the last two health ministers have got the record for overseeing the highest levels of private health insurance premium increases, but, of course, as the member for Ballarat said in her contribution to this debate, that medal belongs to the Prime Minister, because when he was the minister for private health insurance and the minister for health, we saw record premium increases of in excess of seven per cent.

So I would make this point: we are seeing a steady trajectory of increases in private health insurance premiums, we are seeing a government which wants to rip money out of the oversight body and we are seeing customers increasingly wanting to get information and to make complaints where they see that the industry has not done the right thing. Our concern, and it goes to the heart of our concern about this bill, is that the body charged with oversight will not have the resources available to it to meet customer demand. That is a reservation, and that is a concern that Labor members of parliament who have spoken on this bill have expressed.

I want to add a voice for people in regional Australia—and I will have some comments about the coverage of private health insurance in regional Australia in a moment. I know that the member for Wakefield is equally concerned about this, and I see him in the chamber here today. People in regional Australia need access to a complaint service, and they want to be assured that these changes are not going to adversely impact their ability to get both information and access to a complaint service in relation to private health insurance.

The government seeks to transfer the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman functions to the office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman. Like the staff of the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman, the staff of the Commonwealth Ombudsman are very busy indeed. If you have a look at the oversight role that they already have, it goes to the Defence Force, immigration, law enforcement, taxation, the postal industry, ACT and overseas students.

Ms Ryan interjecting—

They are about to get functions, as the member for Lalor reminds me, in relation to data retention. This is a very busy office. We are expecting, in less than a month and a half, another shock budget with further cuts to services. We have real questions about the capacity of the Ombudsman, already struggling under a high workload, diminished resources and the impact of an efficiency dividend and other cuts, to deal with this new and increased workload.

I do admit some of the functions are not going to be transferred. This is one of these 'falling between chairs' issues. The PHI Ombudsman may currently permit additional time to respond to the subject of a complaint. That is not going to be a feature of the new system. The minister himself or herself will no longer be able to intervene, should the ombudsman refuse to investigate a matter. We think that this is an important safeguard—the capacity of the minister to direct the ombudsman to proceed with an investigation. Similarly, the minister will no longer be able to request that the ombudsman investigate a matter.

Compulsory mediation will be abolished in the new system, and we think that is a backward step. In all disputes and in all forums that deal with litigation, it is now the norm that a compulsory mediation step occur ahead of a more litigious approach.

There are going to be some changes to the penalties, and the ombudsman will no longer require permission from a complainant to investigate their dealings on the subject matter of the complaint. I do not want to accent that last matter, but it is not purely a matter of picking up all of the functions and transferring them to the general Ombudsman.

I have expressed these concerns. In the time remaining, I would like to make a few observations about the private health insurance industry and particularly the reach of the industry into regional Australia. Private health insurance has a long history in Australia, reaching back to the friendly societies and the lodges that predated universal health cover. But it became clear to those on our side of politics by the mid-1970s that the system was broken. There were significant problems. There was an ineffective structure within the industry itself. It was very fragmented, with lots of very small societies eating up lots of the premium in administration. They were inefficient. In fact, over 17 per cent of Australians living outside the state of Queensland had no cover whatsoever. Many of those who did have cover did not have the right sort of cover.

There was this inequity within the system—the fact that, as Gough Whitlam famously remarked, the taxpayer provided him more money to subsidise his private health insurance cover than it did the person who drove him to and from his office in Parliament House. He thought that was wrong and quite rightly put in place the Medibank system with a private health insurance arm sitting alongside it. Of course, when the coalition vowed to destroy Medibank—and they did, after five goes at it—it fell to the Hawke government to reinstate universal health cover through the Medicare system. Medicare remains the cornerstone of universal health coverage in Australia. It is very strongly our view that the role of private health insurance is to complement Medicare, not to replace it.

We reject the proposition that those advising the government put in the Commission of Audit, that private health insurance should subsume Medicare for all but the very poorest in society. We think that there is something uniquely Australian about having a universal system of healthcare cover. It is not free. If you like, to use the insurance analogy, the premium comes from your pay packet, your pay-as-you-go taxes, through the Medicare levy. The more you earn, the more you pay, and we think that this is a much fairer and much more efficient system. There is a role for private health insurance, but it complements Medicare; it does not replace it.

In the period between 1996 and 2007, the private health insurance industry faced a lot of challenges. There was a significant slide in the number of Australians taking out private health insurance policies. It was the policy of the Howard government at that point in time to take steps to arrest this slide, and significant government intervention—subsidies and assistance—was put in place to support the private health insurance industry. Lifetime Health Cover together with a 30 per cent rebate on premiums were the two principal levers that were put in place to support and subsidise the private health insurance industry. They have remained the cornerstone of government policies since their inception to today.

It is true that we thought it was both a more efficient use of the public purse and a more equitable system if we put in place a means test on the rebates for private health insurance—a policy adopted by Labor, contested by those opposite. It remains to be seen in the budget that they will stand and deliver in a few weeks time whether they will make good on their promise to get rid of the means testing of the private health insurance rebate. We will see what happens on the front.

But Labor in government also took the view, in an attempt to put downward pressure on the increasing premiums—that we would only index that rebate to CPI increases and not the actual increases in private health insurance. There were two good reasons for that. The first was to ensure that the taxpayer was not effectively providing a blank cheque by a one-third subsidy for the increases in premiums. We think that had the effect of putting downward pressure on premium increases. It was also a means of ensuring that the exponential growth in the cost of the PHI rebate was not subsuming the healthcare budget. We supported those provisions in government. We continue to support them today. It remains to be seen whether those on the other side, when they introduce their budget in a few weeks time, will seek to review those measures.

I want to say a few things about private health insurance in regional Australia. The coverage of private health insurance in regional Australia, compared to metropolitan Australia, is very, very low. This is a factor of low incomes—the low socioeconomic status of people in regional Australia compared to those in the cities—and the lack of services available to people living in regional Australia. There is a challenge for both the government and the private health insurance sector to ensure we redress this. If we are going to close the gap in access to services between those living in the bush and regional Australia and those living in metropolitan Australia, this must be dealt with.

With those comments in mind, we have serious reservations about the bill but we welcome the opportunity to debate it in the House today.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Private Health Insurance Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2014. This bill transfers the function of the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman to the office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman. The Commonwealth Ombudsman will automatically hold the position of Private Health Insurance Ombudsman, with the office also being transferred as a 'path to smaller government' commitment. The Private Health Insurance Ombudsman will be transferred, as I have said. With this transfer, some of the powers will be changed or removed. To be honest, I do have some concerns. This government's record when it comes to accountability and transparency is very, very poor. At present, the subject of a complaint may request additional time to report to the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman. This ability will not be transferred—basically because it is not consistent with the role of the Commonwealth Ombudsman. The minister will no longer be able to intervene if the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman decides not to investigate a complaint. Once again, that has been omitted. The provision for the minister to request the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman to undertake an investigation is also omitted. These are all things that we on this side of the House are quite concerned about. Unfortunately, as I have already mentioned, this government has a very poor record when it comes to health and a very poor record when it comes to openness, transparency and accountability.

Second to the government's assault on Medicare and decision to increase the price of pharmaceuticals, the next biggest complaint that I receive in my office is in relation to private health insurance—be it gap payments or a complaint relating to a particular private insurance provider. I see this as a diminution of what is currently available. It shows that the government really does not care about accountability. The Private Health Insurance Ombudsman exists to protect the interests of private health insurance consumers. It is about offering protection to Australians. It assists health fund members to resolve disputes—and, as I said, quite a number of disputes occur. It identifies underlying problems in the practice of private health funds. It provides advice to the government about issues affecting Australian consumers in relation to private health insurance. It provides advice and recommendations to the government and industry. This will all be a lot more difficult under the changes.

One thing members on this side of the House and the Australian people know is that you cannot trust the Abbott government when it comes to health. It is not only the opposition that knows this; it is the Australian people. I put on record that my office is constantly contacted by constituents complaining about the Abbott government's approach to health—be it private health insurance or Medicare. Before the last election the Abbott government said that there would be no cuts to health. Basically, this is a cost saving measure; it is all about saving money. Since the election the government has waged war on Australians and on our health system with one cut after another.

I will give the House a flavour of some of the cuts. More than $57 billion has been cut from Australia's public hospitals. There has been a cut of $197 million from flexible funds. This includes the Chronic Disease Prevention and Service Improvement Fund; the Communicable Diseases Prevention and Service Improvement Grants Fund; the Substance Misuse Prevention and Service Improvement Grants Fund; the Substance Misuse Service Delivery Grants Fund; the Health Social Surveys Fund; the Single Point of Contact for Health Information, Advice and Counselling Fund; the Practice Incentives for General Practices Fund and the Rural Health Outreach Fund. On rural health, as the shadow minister mentioned, very few people in rural and regional areas have private health insurance. It also includes the Health System Capacity Development Fund, the Health Surveillance Fund and the Health Protection Fund. These are all part of the $197 million in cuts to flexible funding. They have also cut $368 million from preventative health programs, which the states rely on to tackle obesity, smoking and alcohol abuse. Why isn't Mike Baird calling out for these funds to the reintroduced in New South Wales?

They have cut $264 million from priority health initiatives. That includes cuts to hospitals, to the Westmead Millennium Institute for Medical Research, to hospitals in Sydney and to Queensland cancer packages—and the list goes on and on. They have cut $50 million from the stroke package and $5.1 million from cancer care coordination, and of course we have had the increase in prices to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Unfortunately, the minister has not been prepared to stand up when it comes to the increase in private health insurance that took place. There has been a record increase to private health insurance premiums. The last increase was the second highest in private health insurance premiums in a decade. The 6.18 per cent rise approved by the new health minister, Minister Ley, is almost three times the inflation rate and will add about $200 to the cost of annual premiums for families' hospital cover and over $250 for those not eligible for the tax rebate—hardly a government committed to seeing private health insurance grow in Australia, hardly a government that is committed to making sure that private health insurance remains affordable and hardly a government that has the interests of Australians at heart.

Last year, the decision by the Abbott government was the highest increase to private health insurance, and that was a 6.2 per cent increase to private health insurance premiums. So on the one hand, we have a government that is moving away from the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman, where people can lodge a complaint—and quite often those complaints relate to price or increased insurance premiums—and, on the other hand, we have a government that is flagging through massive increases to private health insurance without blinking an eye. It may surprise you to learn that since the Abbott government came to power, it has exceeded any of the six annual increases approved under Labor when we were in government. That is very disturbing and does not show a commitment to making health care in Australia affordable.

Labor put in place a $1.4 million increase to the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman's capacity. We recognised that it was important that Australians could lodge a complaint and that those complaints would be dealt with. Now that is going to be a lot harder under what this government and this minister are doing to private health insurance in this country.

To be quite honest, the Abbott government is devoid of any health policy other than the destruction of Medicare and the introduction of its GP tax. The health minister confirmed that she was still committed to value signals in the health system—in other words, some sort of a co-payment tax on Australians. To be quite honest, Tony Abbott does not care how healthy Medicare is; he only cares about shoring up his position as Prime Minister and leader of the government. Initially, he announced a $7 GP tax, then a $20 cut, then a $5 GP tax and four years worth of cuts to the Medicare rebate. It is really hard to see how this is any sort of commitment to Medicare.

On at least 53 occasions, the Prime Minister supported the GP tax. He saw it as good and decent policy. He was committed to it on 2 September last year and said, 'It's good policy'; on 9 October, 'It's good policy'; and on 1 October, 'It's right and proper that we have more price signals in our health system.' Do not be under any misconception: Tony Abbott is the greatest threat Medicare has faced in 30 years. To be honest, the people of Australia know that. They value Medicare. The people whom I represent in this parliament, the voters of Shortland, have spoken very clearly about this government's attack on Medicare.

The Shortland electorate has the ninth highest number of pensioners, and they are literally frightened by the assault on Medicare. I have had pensioners come to see me since the increase in the price of pharmaceutical benefits saying that they now ration their medications. Instead of taking one tablet every day, they will take one tablet every second day. This is counterproductive to ensuring the good health of our nation. What it will lead to is a situation where we have poorer health outcomes. This is what the government do not understand. In their ideological hatred of universal health care and their pursuit to undermine Medicare, they have lost sight of the fact that it is not good health policy to go down that track.

I have serious concerns about the legislation we have before us. It is really quite disturbing that we have a Prime Minister that stands up and makes comments about the GP tax, saying that it is fair. Why isn't it fair enough to have a modest co-payment for Medicare? I do not have a problem with a co-payment on Medicare. All I can say is that under this government Medicare is under constant threat and this legislation will reduce the access to complaints that people have in Australia. This government is waging its assault on Medicare, undermining universal health care, and I will conclude by saying: you cannot trust the Abbott government when it comes to health. There is always an ulterior motive for every action it takes in relation to health, and we on this side of the House— (Time expired)

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In summing up this Private Health Insurance Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2014, I would like to thank all of the members for their contributions to the debate.

The purpose of the private health insurance amendment bill is twofold. The bill will transfer the functions of the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman to the office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman by amending both the Private Health Insurance Act 2007 and the Ombudsman Act 1976, as of 1 July 2015. The bill will also amend the Private Health Insurance Act 2007 to repeal provisions that were left over from the base premium indexation arrangements. The consolidation of these functions will reduce duplication, improve coordination and increase efficiency in the delivery of the Ombudsman's services to the community. Importantly, there is expected to be no impact upon the services provided to policy holders. The Private Health Insurance Ombudsman will continue to provide education and advice to consumers as well as assist in resolving private health insurance complaints.

I would like to take this opportunity to provide further clarification on some matters raised during debate in this chamber, specifically those raised by the member for Ballarat. The member for Ballarat has raised concerns that the capacity for the subject of a complaint, in most cases an insurer or private hospital, to request additional time to report back to the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman about a complaint will not be transferred to the Commonwealth Ombudsman. This provision has been removed to ensure consistency with the Ombudsman Act 1976 and to provide efficiencies by streamlining the administrative processes of the Commonwealth Ombudsman. It should be noted that, in doing so, these changes should benefit consumers by potentially providing faster resolutions to complaints, as those organisations that have been complained about will now be required to report within the set time frames, without the ability for delays or extension.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman is an independent statutory office holder and is not subject to direction by anyone on how complaints are to be managed. This is consistent with the approach taken for other industry ombudsmen created under the Ombudsman Act 1976, and ensures that complaints are free from political interference. For this reason, the power enabling me, the Minister for Health, to intervene where the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman decides not to investigate a complaint has not been transferred to the Commonwealth Ombudsman in the interests of maintaining this important independence. Further, I note that this power to intervene has never been used by me or any of my predecessors. Additionally, the provision enabling me to request that the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman undertake an investigation has not been transferred to the Commonwealth Ombudsman for the same reasons of independence. However, it must be made clear that this does not preclude any person, including myself or any parliamentarian, from raising concerns with the Commonwealth Ombudsman for their consideration.

With regard to the questions raised by those opposite about sufficient resourcing after the transfer, I am pleased to inform those opposite that, as part of the transfer of the functions of the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman to the office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman, more than 90 per cent of the staff—11 of the 12 current staff—of the office of the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman are expected to transfer to the office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman. The transfer of existing Private Health Insurance Ombudsman staff to the office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman will ensure retention of specialised industry knowledge and provide a continued high level of service to consumers and industry alike. Additionally, the private health insurance complaints levy will continue to be collected to support the investigation of private health insurance complaints by the Commonwealth Ombudsman, and I can confirm that the website, privatehealth.gov.au, will also continue to operate exactly as it does now.

Finally, with regard to the concerns raised by the member for Ballarat about the revised penalties for mediation, it is important to note that the current Ombudsman Act does not provide for mediation powers for any of its ombudsmen. However, this bill seeks to retain a mediation power specifically for the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman, noting the importance of this function. While the corresponding penalty offence has never been applied, this was viewed as being an important power to retain. In order to better align with the penalty rates contained within the Ombudsman Act, the penalty rate for the failure to participate in mediation has been revised accordingly, but, importantly, it still exists.

The Australian government is unable to support the amendment moved by the opposition; however, I trust that my clarifications today have resolved those questions raised by the member for Ballarat, to which that amendment refers.

This government is, and will remain, committed to the important role that private health insurance plays in Australia's health landscape and is committed to supporting the private health sector into the future. Once again, I commend the bill to the House.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was this bill be now read a second time. To this, the honourable member for Ballarat has moved an amendment meant that all words after 'that' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the amendment be agreed to.

Amendment negatived.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.