Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Conroy has attempted on many occasions, Senator Cormann, to model himself on Senator Richardson. But can I just use these infamous words: he is no Senator Richardson. Senator Richardson spent most of his political career just playing politics, playing the numbers game. He wrote a book about it, if anyone cares to read it. It is called Whatever it Takes. I am sure you have read it, Mr Acting Deputy President Ellison. The point is that he was not a man who took to good management of a ministry very well. But on one occasion, to give him absolute credit, he decided to knuckle down and focus on his portfolio. I would say that the public servants burst through his door and said, ‘You’ve got to do something now about the health system. It’s starting to collapse.’ Then, as was properly mentioned by Senator Cormann, he did. He created a discussion paper on health called Reform of private health insurance.

Such was the seriousness of the situation, the degree to which the health system had run down. When Labor first came into government, membership of the private health system was around the 70 per cent mark and was collapsing by the year. It was down towards 32 per cent when we gained office. Senator Richardson tried to alarm his government by saying that this could not possibly go on, that the system had to be addressed and that there were many people such as pensioners and people on low incomes who took up private health insurance. He said that there needed to be a mixture of public and private health—not solely private health but a mixture. A collapsing private health system quite obviously puts pressure on public hospitals and state and federal budgets and increases premiums for the disadvantaged, the pensioners.

That was Senator Richardson’s cry. It was a cry in the wilderness because, from the Prime Minister down, ideology set in. Also, no less than the ACTU stepped in to stop the plan by Senator Richardson to save private health. Ideology set in. Mr Keating, the then Prime Minister, called private health insurance a system for the rich. He believed, as did most of those from the left wing of the Labor Party at the time, in universal health care—one system, a public system.

Anyone who has any practical experience in the real world outside politics and outside public life knows that governments are not very good at running things, let alone the health system. Why would you rely solely on a public health system? Why would you rely solely on state government whims, state government budgets and federal government budgets and management? It is impractical. It is dangerous, quite frankly. We on this side of the house also say that we would not rely solely on a private health system. It has its flaws too, quite obviously. A private health system driven by returns will end up with many gaps in it, where companies will not take up certain procedures and where they probably will out-price many of those who cannot afford private health. So what you need is the mix.

But if anyone is driven by ideology it is those on the other side. When they were last in government they utterly collapsed the private health system. When they were in opposition they resisted, on each occasion, our attempts to reform the health system to get a better balance between private and public health and to lift the number of people who would go into private health insurance. They resisted when we introduced the surcharge, lifetime health insurance and the 30 per cent rebate. They held the dismantling of the 30 per cent rebate—as successful as it was shown to be—as a policy right up until 2007. They were against it for one reason when they were in opposition: ideological grounds. Now that they are in government they are attacking the private health system with all the ideological zest they can find.

Do not dress this up as some sort of tax relief when it is not tax relief. It is bad legislation. More people will be hurt by this than will ever get tax relief. It is a dangerous charade you are carrying on. I think you must have run up the white flag, since you put Senator Carol Brown up as your last speaker on this issue. She barely made her 20 minutes; she petered out towards the end and just used a whole lot of cliches. So I accept now that you have probably run up the white flag on this issue. Not that you have seen sense—we have had to knock it into you, in regard to the numbers. But the truth is that this attempt to dismantle and damage the private health insurance system is dangerous. It is dangerous to the many pensioners who take out private health insurance—hundreds of thousands of them. A figure was quoted that in 2006 there were some one million people on low-incomes of around the $20,000 mark who had some mix of private health insurance. People such as those are even below the surcharge threshold, so it is no advantage to them and they will suffer higher premiums. You have not looked into this. You have allowed some ideological bent to take hold. But, thanks to the numbers here in the Senate, this will be defeated.

One thing Australia can be proud of is its health system. There is only one reason: we have got the mix. It is not ‘out of whack’, as you would say, Senator Carol Brown. It is not ‘out of whack’ at all, whatever that is supposed to mean. Here is another one of your great cliches: you are not ‘putting money into the back pockets of families’—you are ripping it out! Does it make any sense? I see you shaking your head, Senator Carol Brown. What sense can we make of this? I know it is impossible to get through to you, even when all the facts and figures are there in the dissenting report. That report is an absolute credit to the senators who sat on that committee—