Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

He was made to withdraw. It made me sound like Billy Hughes. These bills, as I said, have been rejected by the Senate and by Senate committees—and they have been before every committee system—but most of all they have been rejected in the public arena. These bills have been pretty much universally rejected, this suite of bills with their aim of reducing the number of participants in private health. That is the intent; that is the aim; it is a budget saving. The government tell us that it is a budget saving of $300 million. They want to save $300 million from health but they do not mind wasting billions on pink batts. But that is the intent and the aim, and naturally only the Labor Party, and card-carrying Labor Party doctors perhaps, support these bills.

This is just plain bad public policy and we reject it on those grounds. It is estimated by the government alone that about 550,000 people will drop out of private health. Access Economics gives a truer picture, saying it is more likely that 700,000 to one million people will drop out of private health. And we know that, rule of thumb, every one per cent drop in public health forces the states to spend an extra $100 million on public hospitals. So do the figures yourselves. Access Economics says that 700,000 people will drop out—and that is the most conservative of figures—and with about 10 million people taking out private health you can see that there is as much as $700 million that will now be shifted onto the states’ hospital systems.

Our stance against this is not ideological, unlike the Labor Party’s—and you laugh!