John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fairer Private Health Insurance Incentives Bill 2012 and related bills. I ask: what is this bill doing in the Senate? I will tell you why it is here. Let us go back to the untruths spoken on 20 November 2007. Federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd wrote to the Australian Health Insurance Association and said:

Both my Shadow Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon, and I have made clear on many occasions this year that Federal Labor —

that is you lot over there—

is committed to retaining the existing private health insurance rebates, including the 30 per cent general rebate and the 35 and 40 per cent rebates for older Australians.

I am right that that lot over there are federal Labor, aren't they? That is what the then Leader of the Opposition, the politically slain Prime Minister, Mr Kevin Rudd, had to say on 20 November 2007. Two months earlier, in a media statement, shadow minister Roxon said:

The Liberals continue to try to scare people into thinking Labor will take away the rebates.

This is absolutely untrue.

My colleague Senator Birmingham spoke an hour or so ago. We were chatting at the side of the chamber and we were saying that people have lost trust in the government. The Australian people do not trust you. They do not trust you because you said before the 2007 election, 'There will be no new taxes. We're not going on a taxing spree.' Along came the luxury car tax, the alcopops tax and the flood tax. We have got the mining tax coming; the carbon tax has been through. They are a government of taxation, because they have blown the dough. They are broke. They have sent us into $232 billion of gross debt as of last Friday.

Here we have another broken commitment by federal Labor—that lot over there, the Australian Labor Party. I must clarify that, because we do have a representative in this Senate from the Democratic Labor Party, and that has a totally different attitude from the Australian Labor Party. I ask the question again: what is this bill doing here? Let's check out the member for Lyne, Mr Oakeshott, who supported this bill in the other place, in the House of Representatives.