Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I have said it before and I say it again: the Rudd Labor government has been an absolute failure in the health portfolio. The Rudd Labor government has been a complete and utter failure in the health portfolio. The Minister for Health and Ageing, Nicola Roxon, is a very lucky lady. There is so much incompetence in the Rudd Labor government right now with Minister Garrett and Minister Conroy and all the incompetence around that she is able to hide under this carpet of incompetence. If it were not for Minister Garrett and Minister Conroy and if it were not for some of the others who are performing disastrously in the administration of public policy, surely Minister Roxon would be under some very serious pressure.

Before the last election, the Rudd Labor government promised the world in health. They promised the world and they have delivered next to nothing. They overpromised; they have underdelivered; it was all talk and no action. Before the last election, we were told that only Labor had a plan to fix public hospitals, yet after the election did we see the implementation of any semblance of a plan? No, we did not. We got a 20-month review and even after that review made recommendations, we now have a review into the review and a series of photo opportunities around Australia for the Minister for Health and Ageing and the Prime Minister. There has been not one decision, just bureaucratic reviews into the never-never. No doubt, just as we now have the promise to take Japan to court in November over whaling, we will get an announcement in the next little while as to what Labor would do should the Australian people be unfortunate enough for Labor to be re-elected to government at the next election.

Mr Acting Deputy President, I put you on notice. You should take a very careful look at what comes out of the Rudd Labor government in the next few months. I would not be surprised if we get another promise and the Australian people are asked to take the government on trust moving forward. Our message to the Australian people is that you cannot trust a single thing that is being said on health by the Rudd Labor government. With federalism on health we were promised that the buck would stop with the Prime Minister, but what have we seen? The states and territories have been giving the Rudd Labor government the run-around. Kevin Rudd is now using the states and territories as an excuse as to why they are not able to follow through on some of the premises they made before the last election.

We had the most emphatic promise from the Rudd Labor government that it would maintain the existing private health insurance policy framework. The Rudd Labor government told us and the Australian people that it would retain the existing private health insurance rebates, including the 30 per cent general rebate and the 35 and 45 per cent rebates for older Australians. Kevin Rudd must have thought this was a pretty important promise to make in order to win the election in 2007 because, four days before that election, on 20 November 2007, as the then Leader of the Opposition, he wrote a letter to the Australian Health Insurance Association and gave an absolutely ironclad commitment. He must have thought he needed to do that in order to win some votes. Why else would the Leader of the Opposition bother to write a letter to a gentleman called Dr Michael Armitage, the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Health Insurance Association? If Kevin Rudd did not think it was important to win some votes and if he did not think the people of Australia thought it was important, why would he have bothered to write the letter four days before the last election? Of course he thought it was going to help him win votes and to conduct what we now know to be an absolute deception.

Nicola Roxon, the shadow minister for health and ageing, not to be outdone, confirmed the opposition’s commitment to the private health insurance rebate and then went a step further. She accused those of us who were questioning the sincerity of Labor’s commitment to the private health insurance rebate of running a scare campaign. She put out a press release in the lead-up to the election, on 26 September 2007, which stated:

... Federal Labor has made it crystal clear that we are committed to retaining all of the existing private health insurance rebates, including the 30 per cent general rebate and the 35 and 40 per cent rebates for older Australians.

                        …                   …                   …

The Liberals continue to try to scare people into thinking Labor will take away the rebates. This is absolutely untrue.’

Then came the clincher:

The Howard government will do anything and say anything to get elected.

We know that it was the Rudd Labor opposition, now the Rudd Labor government, that was prepared to say and do anything in order to get elected. There has very clearly been a fraud committed on the Australian people, the voting public, across Australia.

The deception of Labor has continued in government. After the election of the Rudd Labor government, we thought we had better check that what it said before the election was indeed what was happening after the election. The officials sitting in the advisers’ box would well remember that at estimates after estimates we asked questions of the government, trying to find out whether it was committed to retaining the existing private health insurance rebates. As late as 24 February 2009, the Minister for Health and Ageing, Nicola Roxon, said that the government was ‘firmly committed’ to retaining existing private health insurance rebates. We found out that, while the minister was making that statement on the public record, officers of her department, at her instruction, were working up the proposal that we are debating in this chamber today. This is deception at its worst. The government is taking the Australian people for mugs. This is bad public policy—and I will get to the argument about why it is bad public policy. However, what is really offensive about this legislation is the absolute brazenness of the Rudd Labor government in setting out in a premeditated way to deceive the Australian people.

We are debating this legislation the wrong way around. I understand why the government now wants to deal with the Orwellian named Fairer Private Health Insurance Incentives (Medicare Levy Surcharge) Bill 2009 [No. 2] and the Fairer Private Health Insurance Incentives (Medicare Levy Surcharge—Fringe Benefits) Bill 2009 [No. 2]. These bills are nothing more and nothing less than consequential bills to try to mitigate some of the impacts of what the government’s legislation is really about. What the government really wants to do is reduce or scrap the private health insurance rebate for millions of Australians. What the government really wants to do is run its ideological attack on private health insurance irrespective of the pressure this will put on public hospitals, irrespective of what it will do to our health system, irrespective of what it will mean in terms of fewer people having private health insurance and irrespective of what it will mean for private health insurance premiums moving forward. The objective that the government is pursuing is to reduce or scrap private health insurance rebates.

We are dealing here with an attempt by the government to stop those people who will see significant increases in the cost of their private health insurance as a direct result of this legislation from leaving private health insurance. When we were in government, we introduced a package of carrot-and-stick reforms to support Australians taking additional responsibility for their own healthcare needs by taking out private health insurance. The government wants to reduce the value of the carrot and to increase the cost of the stick. As Senator Fierravanti-Wells said, this legislation is nothing but an additional tax hike—something that the government never said before the last election that they would do.

This legislation comes on top of previous changes made by the government to private health insurance policy arrangements. Mr Acting Deputy President, you would remember that Labor made changes to the Medicare levy surcharge thresholds in its first budget, even though it said before the election and then confirmed after the election that it would not. In its first budget, it went ahead with changes to the Medicare levy surcharge thresholds. The Rudd Labor government’s initial proposals were for a reduction of about $960 million in expenditure on private health insurance rebates on the basis that it and Treasury had expected 644,000 fewer Australians to have private hospital insurance than would have been the case before those changes. I remind the chamber that, a year and a half ago, the government set out with those changes to take $3.2 billion out of the health system. The government aimed to save $960 million in private health insurance rebates because rebates would no longer have to be paid to people who walked out of private health insurance or who did not take it up. There was going to be $3.2 billion less in resources for our health system as a direct result of what the government was doing.

The opposition did not support the decision that was ultimately made by the Senate, but at least the Senate forced the government to water down those changes somewhat. Still, according to the government’s own figures, that initial change was going to result in a $740 million saving over the forward estimates in spending on the private health insurance rebates. So the government already has to spend significantly less on the private health insurance rebate compared to what it promised before the election and compared to what would have been the expected expenditure when it decided on making its commitment to retaining the existing rebates. Furthermore, by saving $740 million on not paying the rebate to those people who will leave private health insurance or those people who will not take it up, the government has already taken $2½ billion out of the health system as a result of about 500,000 fewer people having private health insurance.

We have got to remind ourselves at this point that, while this is going on, the government is doing nothing to fix public hospitals, other than having reviews that go for months and months and pursuing broken promises. The government is spending billions and billions of dollars recklessly, whether it is $2½ billion on pink batts or $14 billion on Julia Gillard memorial halls—you name it. Billions and billions of dollars of reckless spending and who is being asked to pay the price? It is people across Australia who need timely and affordable access to quality hospital care and people across Australia who are making a sacrifice every year by taking out private health insurance, by taking additional responsibility for their own healthcare needs. They are the people that this cold-hearted government wants to pay the price for its reckless spending on ill-fated and dangerous insulation across Australia, for waste and mismanagement as part of the Julia Gillard memorial halls program and for $900 cheques to people overseas, to dead people and to people in jail. That is what this government is all about.

As I have mentioned, the effect of this package of bills very clearly will be that fewer people will have private health insurance. There will be upward pressure on the cost of private health insurance, which again will see more people leave. All of this will put additional pressure on our public hospitals, and of course we go back into this old-fashioned, Labor Party induced vicious circle in our health system. I just remind the chamber, as I have reminded it before, that the Labor Party have got form on this. When the Labor Party get into government, they attack people with private health insurance. In so doing, they put our health system out of balance. The policy challenge for us is to ensure we have got a health policy framework and a health system in which all Australians can have timely and affordable access to quality hospital care, and the best way to achieve it is through a well-balanced, mixed health system with both a strong and well-funded public system and a strong and well-supported private system. When Labor were last in government, they did exactly this sort of stuff. They pulled these sorts of stunts and the proportion of Australians with private health insurance went down from about 63 per cent to about 30 per cent before we were able to turn it around.

Labor today will tell you: ‘It has not happened. You said all these terrible things would happen last time.’ Never mind that it was Treasury estimates which predicted that 644,000 fewer people would be in private health insurance as a result of these changes. Never mind that these changes do not happen within 24 hours of legislation having being passed through this chamber, as much as Labor might like it to be otherwise. When we got into government in 1996, it took two or three years before our changes started to take effect too. What I am concerned about is that, if this Senate were to allow the Rudd Labor government to continue with these sorts of terrible broken promises, which will make it harder for Australians to afford private health insurance, then we will see very, very bad consequences for our health system moving forward—maybe not immediately, within 24 hours of passing the change, but over time, because that is what happens with social policy changes.

Of course, we did propose a better alternative to this. We proposed to increase the excise on tobacco by 12½ per cent, which would have raised about $2.2 billion over the forward estimates, according to Treasury evidence at estimates, which is about $300 million more than the $1.9 billion the government is trying to save through this measure over the forward estimates. This happens to be consistent with one of the recommendations from the National Preventative Health Taskforce—another one of those reviews that the government has left in a cupboard somewhere, which it received at the end of June last year and which nothing has happened with since. It is one of those many reviews that the Rudd government is so good at instigating but without taking any action as a consequence. Has the government taken on board that very constructive suggestion that we have made? Of course not—silence.

This is not about saving $1.9 billion. If it were about saving money, the government would not have been out there wasting billions and billions of dollars on dangerous home insulation programs; they would not have wasted billions and billions of dollars on Julia Gillard memorial halls to replace school buildings that were perfectly functioning and perfectly okay. This is about an ideological war which the Labor Party has been pursuing for decades against people with private health insurance. It is about an ideological war against those Australians who take additional responsibility for their own healthcare needs. It is about wanting to put the health system out of balance. It is about destroying private health insurance; that is what this is all about. That is why the Rudd Labor government never even entertained the alternative that we put forward.

Here we are, with the first piece of legislation to come back after the House of Representatives passed legislation relating to the greatest moral challenge of our time, the flawed ETS, and we are dealing with this broken promise instead of dealing with the emissions trading scheme. Where is the emissions trading scheme on the list? It is way down, and I suspect that the Labor Party, in its caucus, is getting increasing uncomfortable about the lack of popularity and the fact that people across Australia are starting to understand what a dog of a scheme the ETS is, that great big new tax which Labor wants to impose on everyone.

Why are we dealing with this now, even though the government already knows that it does not have the support of the Senate for it? The reason we are dealing with it is politics as the government just wants to collect another double dissolution trigger. This is not about health, this is not about doing the right thing by our health system and this is not about making sure the people across Australia can have timely and affordable access to quality hospital care. This is about the Rudd Labor government’s political strategy. It is about covering up that it is all talk and no action; it is about running away because it wants to try to get away from the impact of the emissions trading scheme. I am sure that right now behind the scenes in the Prime Minister’s office there are people—the hollowmen of the Prime Minister’s office—plotting and scheming how they can get their heads out of the noose as far as the emissions trading scheme is concerned.

We are dealing with a blatant broken promise. We are dealing with a bad, bad, bad public policy measure which will be bad for our health system. We are dealing with something that the Rudd Labor government promised emphatically before the last election it would not do. At the same time, the government has done absolutely nothing to deal with the many challenges of our health system. I say it again—and I conclude on this point: before the last election the government promised the world in health. Only Labor, according to the Prime Minister, had a plan to fix public hospitals. Prime Minister, where is your plan? When are you going to start implementing it? When are you going to start making decisions that will actually improve things in our public hospitals rather than pursuing this blatant, offensive, broken promise which will make things worse in our health system, not better? We are all waiting to see it. When you finally get around to making a decision about the review you had better make sure that there is some tangible action—some real decisions—rather than yet another bureaucratic process on the never-never. The people of Australia were promised that there would be some tangible improvements to our health system. So far, all they have had will make things worse. It is time that we got some real action rather than talk in the health portfolio.