Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am very proud to be the health spokesperson for the Australian Greens. One of the things that makes me most proud of the responsibility that I carry out is the way in which the Greens inject social and economic justice—one of our four founding principles—into this area. This issue—almost unlike any other in the health arena—about whether the public should spend its funds on subsidising insurance companies or whether it should spend them on delivering public health services, addresses that very question. Right now the social justice that needs to be injected into the system is just not there. Right now the system takes funds from Australians across the board and delivers them to those people who have been scared by the government into taking out private health insurance.

That is why we have seen people take out private health insurance. It is not because of the rebate, and Senator Minchin knows that. The reason why so many Australians have been scared by this government into taking it out is that this government, as I indicated before, has used its taxation system to financially penalise people who have not taken out the services of this particular private industry. This is a subsidy that the private health insurance industry enjoys—like no other industry.

On top of the other subsidies, this government uses its taxation system to penalise people who do not take out the services of this industry. That is why Australians have signed up—not because of this rebate or the $3 billion that the government pours down the drain in this way each year that could be spent on public health services. No! Time and time again we look at this issue. Many Australians have been scared by this government, which chooses to invest its money not in ensuring there is a quality public health care system for all Australians to access but in subsidising its own constituents in wealthy electorates who choose to take out private health insurance.

The Greens have done the analysis on this work and we understand. The figures are there and the research has been done time and time again. Health economists around this country tell us that, when you analyse private health insurance membership, you find that Australians in less affluent, predominantly Labor-held electorates—and, indeed, National Party-held electorates—subsidise the private health insurance of the wealthier Australians that we find in Liberal-held electorates like, for example, the health minister’s electorate. The highest rate of private health insurance ownership is in the health minister’s electorate. I think around 86 per cent of people in his electorate of Warringah have private health insurance. They all get access to this over $3 billion of public funding, but—