Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to follow my colleague, Senator Polley, in this debate on the Private Health Insurance Bill 2006 and related bills. A number of Labor senators have contributed to the debate on this legislation, but only one coalition senator has made a contribution; that is, Senator Gary Humphreys. He challenged us to say what the bill was about. Mr Acting Deputy President, in my contribution, I will tell you what the bill is about. Labor will support this bill because we recognise that it has the potential to deliver benefits to a significant number of Australians—some 44 per cent of the population who have private health insurance. However, in offering our support, we on this side are urging a closer examination of the consequences of this bill down the track for those 56 per cent of Australians who do not have private health insurance—some of whom will never be able to afford that level of cover.

I think it is worth beginning my contribution by highlighting the fact that this is a government that has an ideological bent when it comes to universal health care. It simply does not believe that it should exist. The Prime Minister has a track record of bitter opposition to Medicare and would dismantle it if he had the opportunity to do so. In fact, in 2001, he told Sydney Morning Herald journalist Jennifer Hewett that Medicare—or Medibank as it was known at its inception—was a cardinal mistake.

The Prime Minister is all for a have and have-not Australia. If some Australians are falling through the cracks, as far as this government is concerned that is perfectly acceptable. We have seen it time and again—after a very long 11 years of coalition government. Work Choices is happy to deliver so-called choice to workers, but in reality this only works for those with the power to bargain; the rest must cop their AWAs sweet or be shown the door. Electoral legislation reforms introduced by this government make it easier to donate big money to political parties anonymously but disenfranchise the illiterate, Indigenous or simply time poor. Promises were made by this government on interest rates that paid lip-service to voters at the last election but, when it comes to the crunch, those same voters who put faith in the government’s empty promises are now pinching pennies or defaulting on their mortgages.

To a majority of Australians who benefit from universal health care, I think the idea that it is somehow a cardinal mistake is offensive. I think that every time the Minister for Health and Ageing gets up in the other place and proclaims that this government is Medicare’s best friend, even members and senators on the other side of the chambers cringe at the obvious doublespeak, because they all know the ideology of their Prime Minister, and that is one of opposition to universal health care.

On this side we are not opposed to the concept of private health insurance; indeed, we embrace it for its supportive role of the health system. The fact that 44 per cent of Australians have private health insurance is indicative, too, that the electorate is supportive of the system as well. This take-up rate is of course closely linked to the government’s Lifetime cover policy, which penalises people for delaying their private health cover beyond the age of 30 by levying an additional two per cent on their premiums for every year over 30 they were not covered. So, buoyed by that decision, the private health coverage of Australians is at the level it is at now.

With that level of people with private coverage, it is reasonable for them to be expecting value for money—and Labor supports this premise, particularly in the face of a rise in premiums of some 40 per cent since 2000-2001. That significant rise in premiums in fact corresponds to another empty coalition promise: that its Lifetime cover and 30 per cent rebate would put downward pressure on premiums. Forty per cent increases do not indicate a great deal of downward pressure on anything—apart from perhaps the disposable income levels of families who have been slugged with the rise in premiums. The Broader Health Cover component—