Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

That is right, Senator Cormann: make an appointment for between two and four on certain days of the week and you might find her in the office. Higher premiums will make it much harder for many to keep their insurance. What will happen is that even more people will drop out. Public hospitals are already stressed and strained. As I have said, now we have this grand plan. Except that it is not really a grand plan, because we do not have any great detail. We certainly do not know how it is going to be funded.

Labor has been saying that it needs this tax on private health insurance because of the global financial crisis. But let us not forget that its attack on private health insurance started in its first budget, way before the global financial crisis, so their argument is very misleading. Kevin Rudd said that he needs the money for health reform. He told Australians that the recent intergenerational report showed that it would deliver $100 billion over 10 decades to come. He forgot the fact that there was no such figure written into the intergenerational report. But what is a fact? When does this Prime Minister ever let facts get in the way of spin over substance?

Then you had Minister Roxon. She said that the money from this new tax would be used to fund e-health. Then the minister said that it would be used for new medicines and improved technology. Then the Treasurer came along and spelt out in the budget that the new tax was to pay for the increase in the age pension, which put the lie to what the Prime Minister and the health minister were saying.

This measure is supposedly estimated to save $1.9 billion over the forward estimates, at the expense of so many Australians. It is actually a mere drop in the bucket considering the billions of dollars that this government is squandering. They cannot even put pink batts in ceilings, let alone try to fix the health system in this country. They have wasted so much money on schemes like the Julia Gillard memorial halls, the pink batts—you name it. In everything that this government has touched it has squandered money.

From our perspective, at the last budget we suggested that we could potentially offset these moneys by an excise on tobacco, but of course this government refused to consider that alternative. The reality is that this government is ideologically determined to hit those Australians who pay to look after their health needs. The changes that the government is now proposing, yet again, and which have already been rejected, are just the latest phase in the government’s unrelenting war against private health insurance, because Labor hates private health insurance.

The coalition introduced an open ended private health insurance rebate because for every rebated dollar, a privately insured person contributes two more dollars to our health system as a whole. The coalition believes it is the right of all Australians to take charge of their own health care needs and plan for the future. We have always worked hard to deliver incentives to promote the uptake of private health insurance and take the pressure off Medicare. People will drop out because they cannot afford the much higher premiums. They will restart the catastrophic premium membership death spiral of the 1980s and 1990s, when Labor almost wiped out private health insurance.

Let us have a look at what Labor said and promised on this issue of private health insurance before the last federal election. On 26 September 2007 Minister Roxon said:

On many occasions, for many months, 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.