Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Human Services (Senator Ludwig) to a question without notice asked by Senator Colbeck today relating to hospital admissions and waiting times.

Senator Ludwig’s answers today effectively bell the cat on promises to the Australian people made by the Rudd government prior to the election where they said they would actually reduce hospital waiting lists. The revelations in the Tasmanian budget papers effectively expose the impact of the ill-considered measure of the Rudd government in changing the Medicare levy thresholds, particularly given the lack of work they did on this measure as part of the overall budget consideration. Mr Rudd has made a big deal about keeping his promises and the people of Tasmania will be very disappointed to find that, rather than a reduction of hospital waiting lists that he promised them, they will in fact see an increase of 627 over 2007-08 levels in the 2008-09 year. That is a seven per cent increase, not the decrease that was promised by the Rudd government. Now the Tasmanian government were well aware of all the measures, the $600 million, that Senator Ludwig told us about when he responded to the questions that we asked during question time. They are aware of all those programs. In fact, they already have some of the money that was allocated under the first $150 million, so the program would have started. But despite that, their budget papers say that they expect to see a seven per cent increase in hospital waiting lists in Tasmania.

We know that other states also have concerns about this measure and the impact that that is going to have on their hospital waiting lists. And we know from our questions at estimates that, when calculations were made about the impact on private health insurance companies, there was no calculation with respect to children; children were not included in the numbers, so the estimates that were provided to us by the government fell short. We know that if you include children that puts the numbers at over 700,000 people. Therefore, the estimates that were ridiculed by the government from the industry and from the medical fraternity are in fact much closer to being about right. Estimates of 700,000 to one million people moving out of private health insurance are obviously going to have an ongoing impact on people who still have private health insurance. Therefore, people will be moving into the public health system and, as the Tasmanian government has admitted, will be placing additional pressure on waiting lists around the country.

We know that the government did not take all of the effects of this into account. We found that out through the estimates process. They are about to embark on new five-year Commonwealth-state funding agreements and yet they did not consult the body that they put together to advise them on health—the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission—at all on this measure, despite the significant impact that that was going to have on health, going forward. They did ask the Health and Hospitals Reform Commission to advise them on the five-year health funding agreement between the Commonwealth and the states, but they did not mention the fact that they were going to attack a significant chunk of the health system in this country and they have not even costed the potential second-round impacts that might occur. So they have no idea, going into the five-year health funding agreements with the states, what the costs are going to be. They have no way of knowing what claims are going to be made against them by the states to compensate for this or whether those claims are genuine or not. They are just effectively going to have to take the state government’s word for it.

At this point in time, despite the first reports on the reduction of waiting lists being due on 6 May, we still do not know what is happening with those. At estimates a couple of weeks ago we were told that the first quarterly report that was supposed to be provided by the states would be available in the next few weeks, yet we still do not have that information. (Time expired)