George Campbell (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move the following amendment to Senator Ellison’s proposed amendment:

Omit “Finance and Public Administration Committee”, substitute “Community Affairs Committee”.

The reason for moving my amendment is fairly obvious. Whilst it is argued by the minister that this is purely an asset sale, it is obvious that the sale of Medibank Private will have significant and substantial policy implications for health policy in this area. There is a range of issues that the opposition would try to cover in a committee inquiry on the sale of Medibank Private. Those issues are: geographical coverage of insurance services and the impact that it might have on contracting arrangements between insurers and hospitals; the level of coverage that is supplied; whether premiums will be affected by consolidation in the sector or whether gaps will be affected or increased; whether competition in the sector will be enhanced or reduced—Medibank currently has a 30 per cent market share Australia-wide and dominates market share in most states; the rights and entitlements of members, including the impact of the sale on their current standing and policies; and why the Minister for Finance and Administration has asserted that the sale would put downward pressure on premiums. The government has failed to provide any evidence or modelling to support this assertion, despite the Department of Health and Ageing, which is responsible for health insurance policy, being asked at estimates on a number of occasions for such information. When the sale of Telstra bill was referred to a committee it was referred to the relevant policy committee rather than to the finance and public administration committee. It is difficult for the opposition to understand why a similar course of action would not be followed in these circumstances.

The Selection of Bills Committee has in the past operated on the basis of consensus when dealing with the reference of bills to committees. The way in which the committee is now operating is reaching high farce. We have meetings that last less than five minutes. We are told that bills are being referred; many bills that have been referred have not even been tabled or introduced in the parliament and are being pre-empted by the government already seeking to refer them through the Selection of Bills Committee to committees for inquiry. On a number of occasions recently, bills that at the end of the day did not require an inquiry have been referred to committees.

The operation of this committee needs to be seriously looked at. If the government is going to use this place to simply rubber-stamp the way in which it functions, just do it. Do not bother having the meetings; do not bother going through the farce. Just come in here and tell the chamber what you want to do, what you are going to do and what the time line for doing it is going to be. Do not try to engage us in a process that appears to be democratic when in fact, when we express a view about how some of these issues ought to be dealt with, it is simply ignored. It is not the Selection of Bills Committee that is determining where a bill is to be referred; it is the ministers. The advice is coming directly from ministers’ offices. They are determining where bills are to be referred and they are determining the reporting dates, some of which for some inquiries are absolutely absurd.

We have a similar situation with this inquiry into the sale of Medibank Private. The proposal has major implications for health policy. It is not just about the sale of an asset. It has major implications for the way in which Australians will be covered by health insurance in the future and whether that coverage will be of such a character that they can be confident they are insured at a reasonable cost.

But we are not even going to get an opportunity to look at the range of links that might exist in that area of health policy. This bill will be rammed through a committee that has no people on it who have any understanding of the implications for the health area. This is simply being put before a committee to be used in such a way as to get the government the cover to introduce the bill and to move on with the sale of Medibank Private, without any serious scrutiny or consideration of the range of issues and implications that will arise from such a sale for health care in the future in this country. (Time expired)