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

We are specifically debating Senator Xenophon’s amendment, which is about the CPI and the $69,000 surcharge threshold. I come back to the issue that the $69,000 surcharge limit is based on the CPI. As I explained earlier, the CPI is not used, for example, as the sole indicator for determining the base rate of the pension because it is recognised that it does not accurately reflect the cost of living and increases in wages. We need to look for a fairer mechanism that truly reflects where the surcharge would have been if the previous government had thought to index it. It was a complete failure on the part of the previous government not to index this measure, and it has been allowed to sit there for 11 years. Increasingly it has caught low-income workers, whose salaries have not gone up, and people who, as I understand it, were never intended to be caught by this measure.

As I said, the Greens do not support the surcharge but, even if we took on board and agreed with the concept of a surcharge, our perspective is that it is not fair that an increasing number of people have been caught up under this and are no longer able to choose whether or not they want private health insurance. I should correct that: their sole choice really is whether they get a lower end product from a private health insurance company or pay the surcharge; it is one or the other. That is not truly a choice. You either pick a product that you are not able to access or use properly or pay a surcharge. That product is usually the lowest quality product, the basic health insurance that people very rarely access. We know they very rarely access it because a lot of the people with that basic level of health insurance access the public system. I do not think that is fair. They are not able to exercise their choice of picking either the public system or the private system; in fact, they end up in the public system despite the fact that they are paying for private health insurance.

I have had emails and letters about this matter. Those people would prefer not to have to pay the surcharge. And I am very sure that the people who have been sending us letters would prefer that the government pay the money that goes to the private health insurance industry into the public system so that those people can access a quality public health system. The No. 1 issue in feedback that politicians get from the community is the health system.

For those of you who do not know, I have recently taken over the health portfolio for the Greens. I sent out a letter to constituents and have been overwhelmed with people’s responses about the health system and the need for a stronger public health system. Do you know what? I have not had one response saying, ‘I want you to protect the private health insurance industry.’ The responses are always about wanting a stronger public health system; they never say, ‘We want you to go and fight for the private health insurance industry.’ They do not say that, because the private health insurance industry does not deliver for people on low incomes. It delivers for people who can pay a lot of money; it does not deliver for people on low incomes, who, as I said, have the poorest access to the health system.

As Senator Sterle is from my home state of Western Australia, he will know this. Where can you find a private hospital outside the Perth or greater Bunbury areas? Can you think of one?