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

‘Trust me! I am Kevin and I am from Queensland!’ That does not say very good things about Queenslanders, but, anyway, in May 2008 on Macquarie Radio, Health Minister Roxon said:

We continue to support the 30 per cent, 35 per cent and 40 per cent rebate for those Australians who choose to take out private health insurance.

Lying yet again. In October 2008, in a speech to the Australian Health Insurance Association Conference, Minister Roxon said:

Private health insurance consumers will still be able to claim the 30 and 40 per cent rebate and the Lifetime Health Cover incentives.

Another absolute lie. On 24 February 2009 there was a comment by Health Minister Roxon in the Age:

The government is firmly committed to retaining the existing private health insurance rebates.

They were absolutely dishonest on this issue. As late as February, in that quote that I have just read from the Age, the government was maintaining the falsehood that they had no intention of launching this attack. Yet during Senate estimates recently it was revealed that whilst Minister Roxon was giving that public assurance, behind closed doors she and other senior members of the government were seeking advice on how to progress changes to those private health insurance rebates. Whilst they were ‘firmly committed’—there they were in public, hand on heart, telling the Australian public that they were firmly committed to retaining the existing rebates—secretly they were working on plans to reduce and scrap them.

We know that Minister Roxon first obtained advice from her department on 12 January 2009. Advice on how to change the rebate had been sought by the health minister’s office as early as December 2008. The Treasury provided advice on means testing the rebate on 20 February 2009 at the request of the Treasurer. The Department of Finance and Deregulation provided advice on the same measure on 22 February and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet provided advice on 23 February.

What does that tell you about this government? They are prepared to say and do anything to get into government. Then, of course, they continued this falsehood to the Australian public about what they were going to do while behind closed doors they were secretly getting advice from their bureaucrats about what they were going to do. It does beg the question: what other promises are we going to see this government break? We are seeing, as Senator Cormann pointed out, these major promises in relation to fixing health being watered down to: ‘Oh, dear me, I want to do something but of course now I have to get cooperation from the states.’ So much for cooperative federalism, because now the premiers and their health ministers are asking the very hard question in relation to this flaky policy—that is: what are the real details about it? According to a New South Wales report that has been out for some time, 117 hospitals in regional and rural areas are going to be affected as a consequence of this policy. What is going to be the viability of these hospitals? Kevin Rudd tells us that there is going to be an efficiency amount. What is the efficiency cost of having an operation in Sydney as opposed to having it in Inverell in northern New South Wales or anywhere in rural and regional Australia? Those costs are going to be different and it is important that we see this detail and not just the usual blah, blah, blah that we get from this Prime Minister.

The proposed changes will not deliver control of public hospitals to local people. All they will do is create more bureaucracy. Only the coalition’s plan for community controlled hospitals and the establishment of local hospital boards will put the budget, staffing and capital requirement decisions into the hands of those people at the local level who know and use the hospitals. Doctors and nurses have seen endless shake-ups in the bureaucracy which have never really led to more resources or local empowerment. They are going to now see another shake-up which is not going to deliver for patients. Are they really going to notice any difference to their hospital services with one extra level of bureaucracy? Where are the details about the extra beds? All this is going to do is add extra bureaucracy. It is certainly not going to affect hospital services at any time. Despite all the promises in 2007 to fix the public hospitals by mid-2009, Mr Rudd’s new hospital proposal is not going to start until 2012. If it is such a great idea, Prime Minister, why not start it now? You have been talking about this since 2007. You said you had a grand plan, but when you came into government there was no plan. It is clear from estimates hearings that there was not even a back of the envelope plan to hand over to the Department of Health and Ageing for it to start working on your grand plan. It is another plea. It is another ‘trust me’ from a government that cannot be trusted. It cannot be trusted on pink batts or on education and it certainly cannot be trusted on health.