Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed, Senator Cormann, nobody can trust a word they have to say on this issue because their record, their form, is very clear: broken words and broken promises, time and time again. We indeed have the letter from the Prime Minister to the private health insurance industry association, but he was backed up by the words of the then shadow health minister and now minister, Nicola Roxon. The minister, then shadow minister, at the Australian Health Insurance Association conference on 10 October 2007, made it very clear:

This is why we have committed to the current system of private health insurance incentives—including the package of rebates, the Lifetime Health Cover and the surcharge.

Labor understands that people with private health insurance – now around 9 million Australians—have factored the rebate into their budgets and we won’t take this support away

That is what the now minister had to say before the election: ‘We won’t take this support away.’ Well, so much for her word. So much for what she stood up there and told the health insurance industry and ordinary Australians, because ‘take this support away’ is what they are doing. So much for those Australians, many of those nine million Australians who will be affected by this measure if it passes, who, to use the now minister’s words, factored the rebate into their budgets.

This government likes to talk about helping working families. It likes to talk about helping households along the way. It likes to talk about how it is helping people with the pressures in their lives. Well, there is no evidence of that—no evidence of that at all. The government is certainly not helping people with their budgets, because, if people have factored this rebate into their budgets, they are about to get one hell of a shock when this rebate is taken away from them and they find they are going to be paying more.

Everybody involved in private health insurance will be paying more because of this. It is not just those who might lose the rebate; it is every person who takes out private health insurance who, over time, will face the cost pressure of rising premiums.