Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I respect Senator Adams’s genuine concerns about the operation of the Australian health system, but I think it is important to point out the circumstances in which the government has found itself in dealing with these issues. As Senator Carol Brown noted, we face the worst financial crisis in this country since the Great Depression. As much as the government would like to do all things for all people, the practical reality of the circumstances in which we find ourselves is that it is simply not going to be possible. The Treasurer pointed out that we have had something like a $20 billion drop in our receipts in the framing of this budget. We know where that is coming from. It is coming from Senator Adams’s home state, it is coming from the mining industry, and businesses generally are finding it far more difficult to operate. That is affecting the amount of money that the government has available to spend on health. As a result of that, we need to rebalance the way in which we provide support for the private health system. In particular, we have to ensure that any changes we make to the system provide for a fairer distribution of benefits. That is really the underpinning basis upon which this government has approached the issue and, in particular, how it looks at the way in which lower income earners are treated through the system.

Senator Adams raised a number of issues about the possibility of people leaving the system as a result of the changes that are being proposed by the government. But we heard all of that last year, when the opposition was opposing the changes the government was then making—