Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Private Health Insurance Bill 2006 and related bills. As speakers in this place and in the other place have already noted, this package of bills signifies big changes to private health insurance. As my colleague Senator McLucas also said earlier, Labor supports the package, but with some serious reservations and concerns.

My main concern is based on the fact that the government’s private health insurance policies have been a monumental failure in addressing the fundamental issues of access, cost efficiency, quality and equity that are increasingly besetting Australia’s health and hospital services. My worry—shared by my colleagues—is that these bills are, in some respects, sending us further down that track.

The background to these changes is this. Many people living in the outer metropolitan areas of Australia’s major cities cannot get access to a local GP when they need one. The health status of Australia’s Indigenous population remains nothing short of a disgrace. Australians are experiencing a serious increase in the prevalence of debilitating chronic and lifestyle diseases. Rural and remote health and hospital services continue to decline and decay, while rural communities struggle to recruit and retain medical practitioners. It has become indisputable that Howard government neglect over the past 10 years has resulted in Australia having a critical shortage of locally trained general medical practitioners and medical specialists that will take years and years to overcome—if it is ever overcome. All this while the federal coalition government continues to blame the states and territories for anything that goes wrong in the health system, even though it controls the major health funding and policy levers. Do not tell me and other Australians that pressure on the public hospital system has not increased since the introduction of the Howard government’s private health insurance changes and since the Howard government started diverting its health dollars away from Medicare to the private sector.

Over the 11 long years that the Howard government has been in office, there has been a serious and unrelenting assault on the original philosophy and principles of the Medicare scheme, and it is my concern that elements in these bills carry on that assault. I should not need to remind members of the government that, under existing laws passed by the federal Parliament of Australia, all Australians have the right, without qualification, to free hospital treatment for needed medical care.

Despite this legal right, this government now applies a tax penalty on Australian families who earn an average annual wage of approximately $50,000 if the family does not contribute to private health insurance. If that is not an attack on Medicare and average Australian families, I do not know what is. In effect, this government has passed laws requiring average Australian families to subsidise its private health insurance policies. When the government introduced this penalty it said it was specifically targeted at high-income earners. What a sick joke! So far as this government is concerned, a family on $50,000 is a high-income family.

The Howard government’s massive subsidisation of private health insurance was supposed to reduce cost and demand pressures on the public hospital system. It was supposed to provide a private sector example to public hospitals of how to improve the efficiency of hospital service delivery. It was supposed to improve access to public hospital services for people who wished to continue to exercise their right to free hospital treatment under the Medicare scheme. The government’s rhetoric, repeated by Senator Scullion, that federal government subsidisation of private health insurance premiums would take the pressure off the public hospital system has been shown to be a total and utter sham.

The Australian people have had a gutful of the deception of this government in respect of health and hospital services. The Howard government’s response to any problem with Australia’s health system is to blame the states and territories and to play the fear card. The implication constantly made by government members of parliament is that, if you do not have private health insurance, there is a high risk you will not be able to get into hospital when you need to or will not be able to choose your doctor. You can see what this government is about. They are into the fear game. Because their private health insurance policies are so shonky, they have now taken to putting the frighteners on vulnerable Australians. What they are saying to these people is: ‘Forget Medicare—we are going to trash that. Get into private health insurance if you want to ensure you can find a doctor or a hospital when you get seriously ill.’ Yet every time this government sinks the knife into the Medicare scheme and the equity principles underpinning Medicare, it comes out with its holier than thou rhetoric about how it loves Medicare. If this government had any real commitment to Medicare, had any decency towards the less well off in the community, why in God’s name would it be scaring vulnerable, low-income members of the community into taking out private health insurance in order to contribute to the profits and incomes of health funds, private hospital operators and private medical specialists?