George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw. Let me rephrase that: had by means about which we can only speculate secured the vote of Mr Peter Slipper. It was the current Prime Minister. And Mr Andrew Wilkie said that he realised that he had been deceived.

This Prime Minister, who lied to the public about the carbon tax, who deceived Mr Andrew Wilkie about poker machine reform, is at it again, because this measure is a flagrant violation of the most emphatic and unambiguous commitments given to the electorate. Senator Cormann read some of those commitments onto the record. Let me read them myself. This is what Ms Gillard wrote to the Australian newspaper in the last term of the coalition government. Referring to a letter by the then health minister, Mr Tony Abbott, which claimed that a Labor government had a secret plan to scrap the private health insurance rebate, she said:

The truth is that I never had a plan to scrap the private health insurance rebate … For all Australians who want to have private health insurance, the private health insurance rebate would have remained under a Labor government. I gave an iron-clad guarantee of that during the election. … when I make ironclad commitment I intend on keeping it.

That is what this Prime Minister's word is worth. She attacked Mr Abbott, then the health minister, for suggesting that she planned to do the very thing that she is now doing and, with mock outrage, she claimed that she was being misrepresented. We now know the truth.

This is what the then health minister, Ms Roxon, said in more recent times. On 24 February 2009, in the Age newspaper, she said: 'The government is firmly committed to retaining the existing private health insurance rebates.' In a media release issued by her office on 26 September 2007—just before the election of 2007, when the Labor Party came to power—she 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 …

During the 2007 election campaign, when interviewed on Meet the Press, Ms Roxon was asked by journalist Steve Lewis whether she committed to retaining, on behalf of the Labor Party, the private health insurance rebate. She said:

Yes, I can. We've committed to it. We've committed to the 30 per cent, we've committed to the 35% and 40% for older Australians. It's similar to the safety net. We know that many people rely heavily on the assistance that is now provided and would not be able to have private health insurance if that rebate wasn't paid. And lifetime health cover and others that go with it, we are committed to those. We understand that Australia now has a mixed health system, both private and public, and we need them both to be strong in order for our community to be able to get the services.

This is what the then leader of the Labor Party, Mr Kevin Rudd, said a week before the 2007 election:

Both my Shadow Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon, and I have made clear on many occasions this year that Federal Labor is committed to retaining the existing private health insurance rebates—

There are no weasel words here. There is no room for ambiguity or confusion. It was, as Ms Roxon said, 'crystal clear'. It was, as Ms Gillard said, 'iron-clad'. It was, as Mr Rudd said, a 'clear' commitment that the Labor Party would leave the private health insurance rebate alone.

And what are we doing this afternoon? We are debating legislation that was introduced by a government that is now presided over by Ms Julia Gillard, and in which Ms Nicola Roxon continues to sit at the cabinet table, to do the very thing they gave a crystal clear, ironclad commitment never to do. It does not get much more shameless than that. It is no wonder that, as measured by empirical data, opinion polls, anecdotal evidence or whatever, so few people respect this Prime Minister. The reason is that the Australian people know she has not only misled them but also serially misleads them. They know that misleading the people is part of the political practice, part of the modus operandi, part of the playbook of this Labor government. It is disgusting, it is dishonest and it is deceitful, but it is the way this government does business.

We in the Liberal Party will oppose this legislation tooth and nail because it is dishonest, because it is bad policy and because it is socially regressive. Why should the least well-off people in this country lose one of the benefits for which they are prepared to work those extra hours and which means so much to them, to their sense of wellbeing and to the security of their families? Why should this government be allowed to reverse a policy commitment that it gave in evident good faith, in unambiguous words and with its hand on its heart, only for the people to discover that they have been deceived? Why should Australians settle for an inferior healthcare system? Why should Australians settle for overburdened public hospitals? Why should less well-to-do Australians be put in a situation where they can no longer afford their private health insurance cover—cover that they want and that they sacrifice for—because the government lied to them? Why should they put up with that? They should not put up with that. I am sorry to say that this is—like the carbon tax and so many other things—the most recent episode of shameless, callous, cold-eyed, cold-blooded duplicity and falsehood which has been the modus operandi of this Labor government. (Time expired)