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

No, these are public hospitals as well.

Senator McLucas interjecting—

Senator McLucas, I will take your interjection. In the town of 12,000 people that I live in we do not have a private hospital. We have a public hospital, and you are going to overload it with more costs and put more work on those doctors and nurses because people are just going to withdraw from private health insurance. Do you not pay any attention to Deloitte's figures there? You think they are just porky pies, do you?

This is a problem that we have in regional areas. Already we have been left behind by many services in the health system. Thanks go to the great nurses who work so hard and the doctors. I can go down to my local doctors surgery and talk to the doctors there, as I always do when I go for my annual check up—I have a chat about how things are going. They not only look after their doctors surgery, they look after the hospital and the aged care facility. Then they get called out on weekends and on emergency. That is the public health system, and what are you doing? You are going to put more work on them as people leave the private health system.

They will not travel to the private hospitals. They will pull out and you are going to put more work on them. As I said, you are just simply shifting the cost from the federal budget onto the state budget and onto an already overstressed public health system through every state in Australia. This is what you are about.

The fact is that you have blown the money—you have wasted the money—and now there is your political promise of returning the budget back to surplus in May. I would say that you might be able to bring out the figures with a little bit in the black this May, but you wait until September 2012 and the actual realisation of that financial year. It will not be in the black, it will be in the red for sure. Labor parties do not understand what black print means on the bottom line of a budget.

I can take you back to the history of the late eighties and early nineties in South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania, where they all went broke under the Australian Labor Party's financial management. At the same time, the so-called 'world's greatest treasurer', Mr Paul Keating, was sending our nation broke at a federal level. Now we have it all over again. What about 13 years of the Hawke-Keating government? There were four budget surpluses, I think. We have never seen one in this one, so we are talking about over 17 years of Labor governments with four budget surpluses. That has happened all my life: give them the cheque book and they will empty the bank account, and more—then just run up the debt. And who has to clean up the financial mess? Every time when the coalition gets elected they have to clean up the financial mess.

Look at Queensland! For those people listening on radio now, here we have an election in Queensland. Under their figures Queensland will owe $85 billion by 2015. At a guess, the population of Queensland is 4½ million people, so 4½ million people will owe $85 billion—'b' for billion. When the Howard government was elected we had $96 billion worth of debt spread amongst about 19 million people—at a guess. Queensland has $85 billion of debt for 4½ million people to service that debt. They are broke. That is why their credit rating has been downgraded, that is why they are paying high interest rates and that is why they are selling off their rail system—because they are broke. And who has been managing their finances? The Australian Labor Party. And that is why on 24 March I hope that they get their just deserts. I am sure they will, because anyone who sends your state broke deserves to be thrown into political history for years and years.

That is exactly what is going to happen, because the Queenslanders realise what sort of a financial mess their state is in.

Senator McLucas interjecting—

Senator McLucas, you are well aware of it too: $85 billion worth of debt is something you should be absolutely ashamed of. It is where your party has taken it. It is just sending the state broke, the great state that was built for decades under balanced budgets, and they never borrowed money. They established their electricity right out to the western country, and the bitumen roads and the tourist industry. They did everything to establish the industries and never borrowed money. If only you could ever learn, but you will never learn. So long as I breathe breath it will be the same old story: give Labor the cheque book and down the tube you go. Nothing changes.

That is what this is about. You will drive people out of private health insurance and you are going back on your word. Mr Rudd made the commitment and Ms Roxon made the commitment to the Australian people never to touch this, and what are you doing? As I said, the Australian people do not trust you because with everything you say the next thing is that you are back flipping and doing a reverse—going back on your word like on so many issues. That is why the people have lost trust in you, lost faith in you and simply do not believe what this government says. You will take people out of the private health insurance industry, you will up the premiums of that smaller net which is left behind and then more will leave as that compounds—the domino effect—and it will all just fall back on our public health system, that is already overburdened, overworked and underfunded. That is what you will do, as sure as I speak now.