Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Brandis says it was silly, but it was not. It had a lot of factual content—something he might learn from—and it put very clearly the argument that the public health system in Australia is getting a raw deal from this government when compared to the huge amount being poured into the private health system. The figures he gave, which came out of Senate committee work and so on, are a telling testimony to that fact.

Basic to those figures are that 43 per cent of Australians have private health insurance and therefore access not only to the benefits already available but also to those which are inherent in the pieces of legislation now before the Senate: the Private Health Insurance Bill 2006 and related bills. But that means that 57 per cent, or 12 million Australians, have had that door shut to them. It is a two-tier system with the gap between the two tiers growing greater all the time—a country divided on the basis of the fundamental right of all citizens to a high-quality, effective healthcare system and the health professionals divided on their right to have the support of government in delivering the healthcare system to the public. The increased pressure on the public healthcare system and its professionals is testimony to the neglect of this government—that is, the pressure on doctors, nurses and other health professionals right across the country, where the public system has had such a raw deal.

One thing that is not canvassed in the legislation but which is a telling testimony to that neglect is the dental health system. Just today I read in the Sydney Morning Herald that the private health insurance system gives, I think, $483 million to high-income earners who are accessing the dental health system. Compare that with the 600,000 Australians who are on waiting lists and with the lack of choice which comes to those 600,000 Australians when they actually get to the end of that waiting list in the quality and type of dental health care that is available to them. There is nothing more disgraceful in this area than the Howard government’s very early impulse to carry through the dismantling of the concession card dental health system for Australians on low incomes, including pensioners and poorer people generally. That has meant a general deterioration in the dental health care of Australians who are on lower incomes. It is a matter I will be taking up more in the future in this place.

The government says that the package of bills before us will create new opportunities for the private health sector, allowing greater innovation and even greater choice in private health care. When implemented, the legislation will be a win for consumers, a win for private health insurers and a win for service providers. But it will effectively be a loss for the 12 million Australians who do not have access to that system, and that is the problem with this legislation and many of the components of the bills that come through. They are good in themselves, but they are only good if you are wealthy. They are good in themselves, but they are particularly good for those in the skewed system in which supporters of the government get benefits but the rest of the population, by and large, are left without the benefits. The minister said:

Currently insurers are subject under the National Health Act to no fewer than 48 conditions of registration, and could be deregistered for breaching any of them.

One could say, ‘Fair enough’—but not the government. The minister went on to say, ‘This is as clumsy as it is onerous,’ and that this system will be replaced by a transparent set of product standards. The minister said that at the heart of these standards will be the notion of complying health insurance products and that insurers will have clear obligations relating to community rating premiums, benefits, waiting periods, portability and the provision of standard information. The minister went on to say:

By regulating products not providers—

we are opening—

the door more widely to—

potential—

new entrants into the private health insurance industry and the possibility of existing health insurers adapting their businesses to current market conditions and consumer demands.

It is a standard of regulating products, not providers, that the government has moved to, saying, ‘Let’s not regulate the providers; let’s look at the products.’ In doing so, the minister said that the bill also includes offence provisions for breaching the new product standards, including penalties for insurers that fail to comply with essential information requirements under the act. Then—listen to this—the minister said:

Chief executive officers and directors can be held personally liable only if they do not exercise due diligence in putting in place systems to ensure that insurers comply with the product standards.

I ask: where in all of this is due diligence by the government? Where is the increasing requirement, when there is more public money going out, to ensure that those who handle that money exercise due diligence and prevent fraud? It is not here in the legislation, and it ought to be.

I think the government will live to regret the fact that it is not making sure that, with two or three billion dollars a year going across to the private health system, there is not greater due diligence. There is less due diligence coming from the government itself. These are serious considerations, and the Greens will be pursuing the matter of that requirement if we are going have a pumped-up private health system which advantages all of us in here—we are all on over $100,000 a year—but leaves so many Australians vulnerable. It is our responsibility to ensure that there is greater due diligence, not less, and that the persons who are handling the money—not the products, but the persons who are handling the money—come under greater scrutiny.

I heard Senator Sterle say that 10 per cent of the money goes off to those persons but that there is not an obvious reason for that massive amount of money to be diverted into administrative costs when so little is ostensibly done by the private health insurance sector. That is a matter that requires, I think, a change of policy by the government, and it is something that the Greens will be pursuing. We Greens have consistently opposed the huge amount of public money being diverted into the private health insurance system and away from the public system because, as everybody in this place knows, the public system badly needs those funds. A fairer Australia would insist that the funds were directed to the public system and that the private system be there to compete without the government largesse that the Howard administration has poured into it. With that in mind, I foreshadow that I will move that these words be added at the end of the motion:

“but the Senate is of the view that the private health insurance rebate should be abolished and that the funds should be redirected to the public health system”.