Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The claims that medical support and the health system in Australia are going to go to pot if this legislation is passed are clearly nonsense. The argument that private health insurance is the saviour of the health system is, again, clearly nonsense. Waiting lists at public hospitals are still long. Low-income earners are still struggling to get access to the health system. They have the poorest access to the health system. They have some of the poorest health indicators. The current system is not meeting the needs of the community.

As I said in my speech in the second reading debate, the decisions people make about private health insurance have to do with a whole range of other factors in any case. So to say that these people are going to be dropping out of private health insurance is not actually supported by a lot of the research, as was indicated by the committee inquiry. We had a number of submissions from academics who are studying this. They highlighted the problems with the current industry and why people make the decisions that they make on private health insurance.

One of the issues that came up at the hearing in my home state of Western Australia—and I know Senator Cormann was there—was that 14 per cent of people who seek admission to a public hospital already have private health insurance. They go to the public system because they cannot afford the gap. What the private health insurance industry cannot tell us, because they do not collect the data, is how many of their policyholders are low-income people. There is fairly firm anecdotal evidence that shows people are accessing public hospitals because they have low-quality private health packages and high gaps and cannot really afford to access the public hospital system.

The fact is that this country is channelling $3.2 billion into the private health insurance industry. The Greens want to see that money go straight into our public health system. We do not want to see it channelled through the private health insurance industry so that the industry can make big fat profits at the expense of the public health system. We need to dismantle this mantra that the private health insurance industry is going to be the saviour of the health system in this country, because the evidence shows it is clearly not doing that.

This legislation does not go as far as the Greens want it to go. We have made no secret of the fact that we want to get rid of the rebate and the surcharge and directly fund a strong public health system in Australia. That is what we should be doing to help those who need medical help. We should not channel further money through the private health insurance industry. It is no wonder that the private health insurance industry is squealing, because their privileges are being cut. They are getting a tiny bit less from the public teat. So of course they are squealing. And, shock horror, the modelling shows that this is supposedly going to have a massive impact on the public health system. I would not have expected them to say anything different.

When you look at the figures from the academics, who do not have a vested interest in this, they say there will be a small impact on health premiums and the public health system. It is the public health system in particular that the Greens are concerned about, which is why we have sought an assurance from the government that there will not be a negative impact on the public health system—and the government have said they will fix it if there is. This legislation goes a small way to addressing public health in Australia, but there is a long way to go. We need to keep confronting the mantra that the private health insurance industry is going to fix our health system. It is not. At this stage, with waiting lists growing longer, it makes it more inaccessible for low-income earners, who have the poorest health incomes. As I said, the Greens support this legislation. It does not go far enough, but we reluctantly agree to support a reduction in the threshold to $75,000.