Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In continuation of my remarks in opposition to this bill, I want to confirm again that the bill will have consequences for public hospital waiting lists, and that is that they will increase, that there will be consequences for private hospital insurance premiums and that there will be upward pressure for battling Australians.

Minister Lara Giddings missed an opportunity by refusing to acknowledge an invitation. I am advised she not only refused to acknowledge the invitation but also refused to appear and give evidence in Hobart on Friday, 8 August in regard to this matter at the Senate inquiry. Why didn’t she express the views on behalf of Tasmanians to make it clear that this will be adverse to Tasmanians? The committee held hearings in every state capital; however, I am advised that the Hobart hearings were cancelled due to a lack of interest by the state government. That is very disappointing when they could have expressed a view of concern and made it very clear.

Nevertheless, let us have a look at the statistics in terms of private health insurance across the country: 9.477 million Australians or 46.6 per cent of the population are covered by private hospital cover. In Tasmania, that is 213,000 people who are covered by full hospital cover and 240,277 by some form of cover—48.4 per cent of the population. That is a huge percentage, nearly half. Private health insurers paid a total amount in benefits of $232 million to Tasmanians for the year ended March 2008, an increase of 9.8 per cent on the previous year. That is a huge injection and that is why our system is a good one with a balance between public and private. The current high numbers are due to a commitment to increasing private health insurance membership, particularly amongst people aged between 20 and 50, based on three incentives: firstly, the 30 per cent rebate; secondly, the Lifetime Health Cover for people over 30; and, thirdly, the Medicare levy surcharge.

Federal Labor now appear intent on removing these incentives one by one. Certainly, it would appear that way. The biggest losers look set to be the poor and the sick, playing on the misconception that private health insurance is a product purchased primarily by wealthy Australians. Let us have a look at the stats on that one. In reality, there are more than one million Australians with private health insurance who live in households with an annual income of less than $26,000 per annum, and 27 per cent of the overall hospital insured population—or 2.24 million Australians—live in households where gross annual income is less than $48,049. So it is not just for the rich and wealthy. In fact, the figures show the opposite. This is going to hurt the less well off, the disadvantaged and those on low incomes. The government has tried to score some cheap political points by raising the surcharge threshold, and it is these low- and middle-income households that will suffer.

The Senate Standing Committee on Economics was informed last month by the ANU’s Professor John Deeble that there would be an increase for families in terms of the premium of about $70. But, of course, the Australian Health Insurance Association estimate there could be an increase of up to 10 per cent.

These are the consequences. What do the Australian Medical Association say? Why isn’t the government listening to these organisations? They have expressed views; they are credible. The Australian Medical Association said that there will be a huge increase in the numbers on the public hospital waiting lists. They have also said that they have appealed for some sort of compensation for low-income families and people who are disadvantaged and struggling to make ends meet.

The Senate economics committee has had inquiries around the country and has discovered that single, young, healthy people will be the first to leave private health insurance. However, families and pensioners are soon likely to follow as they fail to be able to meet the rising costs from petrol prices, grocery prices and making ends meet across the board. So, despite the estimated additional strain on the public health system, the Labor government is yet to announce any additional funding to assist with the increased burden on the public hospital system. Isn’t that interesting? They know the facts—they are faced with them—but they are refusing to acknowledge or respond to them.

In conclusion, you can thank the coalition for the system that we have, the success of the private health insurance premium and the balance that is struck between public and private health in this country, and you can be assured that federal Labor are ideologically antagonistic to private health insurance. It is disappointing that they are doing this. That really is the underpinning behind this initiative that they want to foist on the Australian people, which will be bad for public hospitals, lengthen the waiting list, put upward pressure on private health insurance premiums and be particularly disadvantageous to Tasmania.

Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the front page of the Herald Sun of Tuesday last week was a heart-rending story that goes directly to the debate on this Tax Laws Amendment (Medicare Levy Surcharge Thresholds) Bill 2008. The front page featured the story of six children and was emblazoned with the headline ‘Save us’. But it was the subheading that let the reader know about the threat from which these children were seeking salvation. The subheading on the Herald Sun front page tells all. It proclaims: ‘400 children forced to wait for heart surgery’. These boys and girls are threatened by an overcrowded public hospital system without enough paediatric intensive care beds to accommodate those in need. The Herald Sun tells of eight-month-old Lincoln whose arteries are too small but who has suffered seven cancellations of his surgery over the past 30 days or so. Then there is eight-year-old Kevin, who has languished on a waiting list for over a year with an opening in his heart, and 10-month-old Julian, who also has an opening in his heart as well as a narrowed artery.

These stories are merely part of a microcosm in a public healthcare system that is in crisis throughout Australia. Our public hospitals in particular are overworked, overburdened and overstressed. I know this firsthand in my own state of Victoria, where last year 70,000 patients waited eight hours or more on emergency room trolleys before admission to beds and where 40,000 sick and injured people are trapped for months and even years in a medical maze of surgical waiting lists while they wait for proper treatment. There is an old saying which proclaims ‘When you’re in a hole, stop digging’, and there is now no doubt that Australia’s public hospitals are in it up to their eyebrows. But, rather than fill in that hole, the Labor government has set to work with a policy steam shovel that promises to bury public health care and many of its patients. The government’s proposal to raise the Medicare levy surcharge threshold is pure madness. It is a scheme that is illogical; it is a scheme that is irrational; it is a scheme that makes absolutely no sense; it is a scheme that is opposed by NGOs ranging from the Australian Medical Association to Catholic Health Australia; it is a scheme that reflects an economic illiteracy that can only be found in a government dominated by former trade unionists and, as we have seen over the past week or so, that is a domination which is only increasing.

To be fair, though, the Medicare levy surcharge threshold initiative is not a measure that the Treasurer has sought to surreptitiously and quietly slip into some other bill in the hope that it will pass unnoticed; he is bandying around the Medicare levy surcharge threshold increase as if it were a badge of honour, rather than a public policy train wreck. It is all supposedly part of Labor’s plan to ease the cost of living pressures, as Mr Swan declared in a recent media release. But instead of delivering for working families, as the Treasurer claims, he will actually be delivering a body blow to an area in which public health is very much ailing. The bill proposes an increase in the MLS threshold from $50,000 to $100,000 per annum for individuals, and from $100,000 to $150,000 for families. So in one fell swoop many Australians will be able to drop private health insurance without suffering any penalty. In one fell swoop the financial incentive to acquire private health cover will no longer apply to thousands of Australian families.

The Treasury’s own modelling predicts that 485,000 people will cancel their private health insurance as a result of the Treasurer’s proposal, but this figure does not include children or dependants, and the industry estimates put the real number of people dropping out of cover at closer to 900,000. What will be the result of this massive shift? What will happen to health insurance companies that suddenly begin to haemorrhage policyholders by the hundreds of thousands? Sharp increases in premium prices to offset lost revenue will be the mandate of those firms in order to survive.

This Labor measure should come as no surprise. Labor have always been opposed to the private health system. They have always failed to understand that Australia’s health needs are best catered for in an environment of choice between a strong public health system and a strong private health system. We know, for instance, that Labor have long wanted to axe the private health insurance rebate. They promised at the last election that they truly believe in the private health insurance rebate. They put their hand on their heart and said they would not tinker with the private health insurance rebate. I guess, technically, Labor have honoured that commitment. Instead, Labor have found a sneaky new way of attacking the rebate—not by axing it, not by tinkering with it but by creating a situation whereby far fewer individuals will be eligible to claim it. Australia’s private health system and those families who rely upon it will become the real collateral damage for the next salvo of Labor’s class war and envy politics.

Let me now turn to the impacts of premium increases. From day one, the government has been talking up inflation in the economy. We had the Treasurer saying that the inflation genie was out of the bottle. Of course there is an inflation challenge—there is always an inflation challenge; part of the job of being a government is to deal with the challenge of inflation—but there is no crisis, and the Reserve Bank Governor has confirmed that. However, if the government is concerned about inflation, why is it taking so many decisions that will actually increase prices? The government’s raft of new tax slugs and the completely discredited Fuelwatch scheme will all contribute to higher fuel prices. And this bill will result in higher private health insurance premiums, and this will exacerbate inflationary pressures in the economy.

Labor’s response is to accuse the coalition of siding with the private health insurance industry. Labor seek to portray the coalition as siding with big business whilst Labor play the role of supposedly the people’s champion. Sadly, it is yet more spin. If Labor want to know who the coalition are standing up for, I am happy to help them. We are standing up for the millions of Australians with private health insurance who face massive hikes in their premiums; we are standing up for the hundreds of Australians working for private health funds whose jobs are at risk; we are standing up for the dedicated doctors, nurses and staff of our public hospitals, who are already under extreme pressure and overworked but who face an even bigger workload with these proposed changes; and we are standing up for all those Australians who rely on our public health system, who after years of neglect by state Labor governments face even longer waiting lists for vital procedures and surgery. So we will not be verballed by Labor and their dishonest attacks. We know exactly who we are fighting for in this parliament and we will not back away one inch in the face of Labor’s opportunistic posturing.

But of course the ravaging of the private health insurance industry is only part of the problem. Our public health systems in every state and territory are stressed, strained and cash-strapped. There are not enough intensive care beds as it is; there are not enough GPs as it is; there are not enough nurses, operating theatres or diagnostic imagining equipment as it is. So how will our public hospitals cope with this massive influx of new patients who have left private health care for the public system? The answer is: they will not cope—at least not very well. The answer is: longer waiting lists, and longer lists translate into longer patient suffering.

Public hospitals in New South Wales are already burdened with surgical treatment queues that total 59,000 patients, and yet the Treasurer’s scheme will bring another 140,000 people into the state’s public hospital system. For some patients this influx will prove almost a death warrant. AMA President, Dr Rosanna Capolingua, predicted that Labor’s MLS threshold scheme will have a ‘cascade effect’ with far-reaching consequences, and none of those consequences will be positive.

It is said that the definition of insanity is to try the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. But the Treasurer has taken that principle one step further. Not only is he doing nothing to address the existing waiting-list crisis that plagues Australia’s public health systems but he is consciously taking action that will make it worse. It is nothing more than a massive exercise in robbing Peter to pay Paul. It is designed to purchase a cheap headline by putting a few extra dollars in people’s pockets at the cost of wreaking havoc on a public healthcare system that is already creaking under the existing strain.

But there is an extra sweetener for the government in pursuing this measure. It is revealed in the Treasurer’s press release of 13 May 2008, which said:

The overall impact on the Budget—

he boasts—

is a net saving in excess of $299 million over the next four years.

So there you have it. It is just about the bottom line—just like the alcopops tax grab, just like the condensate tax hike and just like the luxury car tax hike. This is nothing more than a revenue enhancement scheme thinly camouflaged as a measure for the public good.

So we on this side of the chamber will heed that cry for help from those six young children, as reported on the front page of the Herald Sun. We will stand up for a health system with both a strong private sector and a strong public sector. We will stand up for Australians struggling under cost-of-living pressures, who hardly need an increase in their health insurance premiums on top of their other challenges. And we will stand up for the men and women working in our public hospitals, who do not need the added pressure of hundreds of thousands of extra patients streaming through their doors to add an even more extreme workload.

We will oppose this cynical measure that seeks to reap a bit of short-term gain at the expense of massive long-term pain. This is the type of legislation you get when you have a government that is obsessed with spin and devoid of substance, and it deserves to be defeated.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In opposing the Tax Laws Amendment (Medicare Levy Surcharge Thresholds) Bill 2008 I want to talk about a hospital. It is a pretty new hospital; it was opened in the last 10 years. It is in the city where I have my office, Townsville. There was an old hospital that had been there for decades, but it was determined to be inappropriate and a new hospital was needed. So the Queensland Labor government decided to build a new hospital. That announcement was greeted with wild applause by anyone who has anything to do with the hospital system in Townsville. Admittedly, it was out in one of the newer suburbs, quite a long way from the old hospital, but, still, it was on a greenfields site and it was going to be the hospital that everyone would look at as a precedent.

Unfortunately, the Queensland government, in building this shiny, brand new hospital, decided in its wisdom to put fewer beds in it than were in the old hospital it replaced. So right from the start, a city that has expanded very considerably in the last few years—a city with a rapidly increasing population base that continues to expand as part of the migration from southern states to not only south-east Queensland but to Mackay, Townsville and Cairns as well—has a brand new hospital but, regrettably, with fewer beds than the old one.

This hospital is staffed by some magnificent doctors and very caring and qualified nurses and support staff, who all do a fabulous job. I think that applies to hospital staff everywhere in Australia. We really do owe them a debt of gratitude. But they are being pushed almost to extinction by the conditions under which they currently work. At 3 pm on 26 August just passed, there were 24 people at Townsville hospital who could not get a bed because of overcrowding—that is 24 people who should have been in a hospital bed but were sitting around the hospital because they could not get a bed. At 10 am on the same day there were 18 patients in the emergency department waiting for an in-patient bed.

When the poor harassed staff at the Townsville hospital were asked what they were doing about it and why this could possibly happen, they said that—and this came as news to me, I have to say, because I live in Ayr, about an hour south of Townsville—usually when they get very busy at the Townsville hospital they transfer patients from Townsville to the Ayr hospital, 90 kilometres to the south, where they are parked while they deal with the overcrowding in Townsville. They were also doing that in Ingham, which is about 100 kilometres north of Townsville. So, if you were an in-patient at the Townsville hospital and it was overcrowded, they would ship you off an hour in each direction or an hour to the west out to Charters Towers so that they could deal with emergency cases in Townsville.

That was just one instance at Townsville, but it is repeated time and time again. The number of stories that come up from people who at the present time simply cannot get beds in the Townsville public hospital is enormous. A Magnetic Island doctor who had been ill and needed treatment at Townsville was reported by the Townsville Bulletin as saying that waiting for a bed in the overcrowded Townsville hospital was like ‘torture’ and she had had ‘first-hand experience’ of it. Sometimes you say that patients are a bit ungrateful and complain at the earliest opportunity, but here is a GP who was herself unable to get a bed.

In Townsville we have had the first reported case of ramping. I do not know if you know what ramping is, Madam Acting Deputy President. It is when the ambulance comes along to discharge a patient to hospital and if there is nowhere to put the patient they just park the ambulance out the front of the hospital and leave the patient in the ambulance. That happened for a number of hours and is happening, regrettably, more and more as time goes on. I do give credit to the Townsville Bulletin here because they have been running a magnificent campaign to highlight the inadequacies of the Townsville Hospital system.

Townsville regrettably is not on its own. The Queensland government announced that it was going to sell the Mackay airport. Why: because they wanted some money to build a new hospital in Mackay. It seems a strange way to fund a new hospital. But, lo and behold, when the detail came out it was a smaller hospital than the existing hospital. For senators who are not aware, Mackay is one of the fastest-growing communities in Australia at the present time on the back of the coal boom, tourism, sugar and beef cattle. It is a very diverse economy and huge numbers of people are coming into Mackay. What do they do? We get a new hospital but it is smaller and the overcrowding will continue yet again.

In Cairns the debate goes on about a new hospital. There are suggestions that they are going to sell the Cairns airport to get a new hospital for Cairns. Cairns Hospital is already overcrowded and one can only assume that on past record the Queensland government will make the new Cairns Hospital much smaller. It does not stop in the north of our state. In the fastest-growing locality in Queensland, south-east Queensland, the Royal Brisbane Hospital and Women’s Hospital have magnificent reputations going back over many, many decades. It was reported in the Courier-Mail on 29 August that ‘the emergency department was in “gridlock” yesterday’—so that would have been 28 August—and the hospital administrators had to ‘redirect ambulances to other facilities for more than two hours.’ People should have been at the Royal Brisbane Hospital or the Women’s Hospital but were directed elsewhere. It goes on:

22 patients were sitting in chairs in an overcrowded corridor. Some had been waiting more than 24 hours to be admitted, with no guarantee when a bed would become available.

There are reports every day in the Queensland papers. An elderly female patient with a heart condition has reported to a newspaper that she had to spend 48 hours waiting on a trolley in a hospital in North Queensland. The report goes on to say she was among 20 others queued in the corridor waiting to be transferred to a makeshift ward.

I raise these issues, not because they are new—they have been very well reported—but to come back to the bill before us at the present time. In Queensland—and I assume it is the same elsewhere but it may not be and if it is not, good luck to the other states—the Labor government is simply incapable of administering the hospital system. Enormous amounts of money have been shovelled into Queensland by the federal government over recent years to get them into a state where they can do something. I am told that there are almost more health bureaucrats than there are beds in Queensland at the present time.

Into this situation along comes Mr Rudd—a Queenslander no less—and Mr Swan—also, I say ashamedly, a Queenslander—who bring in this bill. You do not have to be Einstein to work out that if you take people away from private health insurance it means more and more people are going to need the public health system. What is going to happen in Queensland? Currently people with private health insurance can go to the many very, very well-run private hospitals. They do a fantastic job although currently they are pretty well full and have little opportunity to take any overflow from the public hospitals.

This initiative—if I could call it that—of two Queenslanders, Mr Rudd and Mr Swan, is just going to throw—I do not know what the superlative of chaos is—more chaos or super chaos onto the Queensland hospital system. It is groaning because of the problems in the system of getting beds and in the way hospitals are run. Staff are overworked and when staff are continuously overworked in crowded conditions they start looking for other employment in other parts of the country or, indeed, other parts of the world. There will be a snowballing impact on the crisis in Queensland health. Mr Rudd comes along and says, ‘We are going to make that worse for all those that are there now; we are going to add to that list.’

I had hoped that someone from the Labor Party might have been able to explain to me the sense of this. Because of the real fiscal management—not the spun fiscal management that Mr Rudd and Mr Swan talk about—of Australia’s finances by Peter Costello and John Howard, this government was left with a $22 billion surplus. They were also left with a framework that will over the next five years allow them to save—if they do not squander it, as we know Labor governments will do—

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why don’t you tell the truth? You are blocking all these measures and being fiscal vandals.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am just coming to that. Thank you very much. Over the next five years, because of the economic parameters left to them by the Howard-Costello government, the new government is estimating a surplus of something like $96 billion. That is a curious figure, because that is the exact same amount that the Labor Party left us when we came to government, only it was not a surplus; it was a $96 billion deficit. Over the next five years, because of Peter Costello and John Howard, this lot—this Labor government—will have a $96 billion surplus.

We have got rid of the so-called luxury car tax, thank heavens. On behalf of the people of regional Australia, I thank the Senate for that courageous action. If we can get rid of this stupidity by throwing this out in the Senate, that would be great for all of those people waiting in the corridors in hospitals in Queensland. But if we do that, what is going to be the financial impact that Senator Sterle’s kind interjection reminded me of? It will have an impact of $3 billion, $4 billion or $5 billion over the next five years. So instead of inheriting a $96 billion surplus over the next five years, the Labor Party—and let me get my handkerchief out—will only have a $91 billion surplus.

I stress again that this is what was left to Labor by the Howard-Costello government: a $96 billion surplus over the next five years. When we took office, due to Labor’s well-known mismanagement, we inherited a $96 billion deficit, one that had to be repaid over the next nine years of the Howard government. Even in the year that we took over—and this was hidden in the pre-election rhetoric by Mr Keating—there was a $10 billion deficit in the annual account. Every year for the first three, four or five years of the Howard government, we had to find $7 billion, $8 billion or $9 billion just to pay off the interest on the debt that Labor left us.

We have the stupidity now of Mr Rudd and Mr Swan saying that they are fiscal conservatives. Talk is very cheap and easy. Spin is particularly easy for the Labor Party. They have become masters of the spin. But look at the reality. Have a look at Mr Whitlam’s government and see what happened there. They just about broke the country in three or four short years. Have a look at the Hawke and Keating government. They left a $96 billion deficit. You simply cannot trust Labor with money. Have a look all the state governments at the present time. They are all, regrettably, Labor state governments. Look at their big spends.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Are you going to talk about Menzies? He squandered our future.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Polley, you have been involved with me on a committee looking at state government financial management. And even you have to admit that Labor state governments cannot handle money. They are simply incompetent. And that is the Labor way. You appoint your mates to the bureaucracy and increase wages for fat cats in the Public Service down here. Departmental heads under Labor got a $1,400 a week increase from Mr Rudd, who preached constraint to everyone else but handed to his top public servants $1,400 a week. Why couldn’t that go into some more beds for hospitals in Queensland?

Why didn’t Mr Rudd have a look at his own state and the backyard not far from his electorate or Mr Swan’s electorate? In fact, I think that it might be in Mr Swan’s electorate. The Royal Brisbane Hospital is struggling, with people in corridors. It is not the wards that are overcrowded; it is now the corridors that are overcrowded. What is this bill going to do? It is going to throw more and more people into an already overcrowded system.

I report in sadness and in anger that hospitals in smaller communities throughout Queensland are being shut down by the Labor government. The Aramac hospital in central western Queensland was shut down. Aramac is a lovely little town. It is only a small town, but it is very community minded. Their hospital has been closed by the Queensland Labor government because they have not got the money to keep it going. And that is the story right around the nation.

I despair for hospitals and those patients needing them in Queensland. It is a bad situation now. I started my speech talking about the Townsville General Hospital. Before the last state election, Mr Beattie came to Townsville and made a promise. He said: ‘I know there’s overcrowding in the Townsville General Hospital. I’m going to give you an extra 78 beds.’ Everyone thought: ‘Gee, that’s good. We’ll vote for them.’ And so there are three state Labor members of parliament for Townsville at the moment. Do you know what we got after the campaign by the Townsville Bulletin over the last few days? The Queensland government announced that they are going to put in eight beds next year, a lot short of the 78 beds that Mr Beattie promised before the last election.

Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Eight?

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Eight new beds for a hospital that has its corridors bursting with people. This bill will only make that critical situation in Queensland worse. I would certainly urge all senators to oppose this bill to at least give the Queensland health system a bit of a chance of recovering rather than throwing additional patients into an already grossly overcrowded system.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not know where to start to respond to those comments. To say the least I think that there is a little bit of selective memory on the senator’s part. I rise today to speak in favour of the Tax Laws Amendment (Medicare Levy Surcharge Thresholds) Bill 2008. Firstly, I would like to begin by thanking all those senators who have made a contribution in support of this legislation and those who will follow me. This is an important measure and I hope that the bill is passed so that low-income earners are no longer hit with this surcharge.

This bill will increase the Medicare levy low-income thresholds for individuals and families in line with increases in the consumer price index. The bill will also increase the Medicare levy threshold for pensioners below age pension age to ensure that, where these pensioners do not have an income tax liability, they will also not have a Medicare levy liability. This is another example of the Rudd Labor government doing the right thing by working families. We are taking the pressure off families and their budgets. This measure, like our tax cuts and our education support measures and like axing Work Choices, will help working families. Essentially, as a result of this change, many individuals will be up to $1,000 a year better off and couples will be up to $1,500 per year better off.

The thousands of Australians without private health insurance who are being hit with this unfair tax will receive immediate tax relief. This bill is a good policy and it is keeping the commitment that Labor made prior to the election. Unlike the Liberal coalition, the Labor Party keep their election promises. We do not try to fool the Australian people with core and non-core promises. This measure provides real choice for families. Taxpayers on low incomes will be able to choose whether to take out private health insurance or whether to use that money in another area of their budget. Those on the Liberal coalition benches are threatening to block this bill. Why? Their only objective is to score cheap political points. This readjustment is something that is long overdue, something that the previous government should have done a long time ago but did not.

When the Medicare levy surcharge was introduced the policy was targeted at high-income earners. The Medicare levy surcharge thresholds have not been increased since the surcharge was introduced on 1 July 1997. The fact is: since 1 July 1997 average weekly earnings have increased significantly so now many people are being unfairly hit with this tax. Around eight per cent of single taxpayers are estimated to have exceeded the Medicare levy surcharge threshold when the surcharge was introduced. If the thresholds remained unchanged, by 2011-12, 45 per cent, or more than two million single taxpayers, would be subject to the surcharge.

With the new thresholds, around 8.5 per cent of single taxpayers are projected to exceed the new singles threshold at the end of the budget forward estimates. The member for Corangamite, Darren Cheeseman, commented on this bill earlier this year—and I will use what he said because I think it reflects the state of the Liberal Party and its current situation. He said:

The threshold has been frozen for a decade. When most other similar measures have been adjusted for changing circumstances, time has stood still on this one. In a way, it has mimicked the Liberals. It has moved about as far as Peter Costello’s leadership bid, and that is nowhere. The only difference is that this has not been frozen by fear; it has been frozen because of Liberal policy paralysis.

The Rudd Labor government is committed to ensuring Australia’s healthcare system remains accessible and sustainable into the future. We support a mixed-use health system with both the public and private sectors working in tandem to meet the health needs of the community.

The reason why we have increased the Medicare levy surcharge thresholds is to get rid of an unfair tax on average income earners. When the surcharge was introduced by the previous government the then health minister, Michael Wooldridge, said:

High income earners will be asked to pay a Medicare Levy surcharge if they do not have private health insurance. These are the people who can afford to purchase health Insurance.

The Rudd Labor government shares that view, and that is why we have raised the thresholds to give relief to average earners who are now being forced to pay the tax.

Three things undermine the false argument that this measure will put unmanageable pressure on our public hospital system. Firstly, a number of people with private health insurance are young, healthy people who do not draw on the private health system and, similarly, they will not draw on the public system. Those opposite want to use healthy young Australians as cash cows.

Secondly, scores of people with private health insurance already use the public system. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the government is injecting significant resources into our public hospitals, after years of disinvestment.

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Our predecessors, those opposite, can laugh and interject but they know very well that they failed to support our hospitals. Waiting lists soared, investment in staff and training was way below the market. After 11½ years of Liberal coalition and the neglect that was demonstrated by the Howard-Costello leadership, $1 billion was slashed from public hospitals in 2003—something that they seem to want to forget. This is a disgrace. The new Rudd government understands that there is much to be done to fix the problems that those opposite created. The Rudd Labor government has identified the significant inefficiencies in our health system and Labor has committed to a reform process which will deliver much needed relief to our public hospitals. We want to make sure families can get the health care they need, when they need it. It is a big challenge but one we are committed to. While it will take time to turn around a decade of neglect, the Rudd government is determined to deliver dramatic improvements in health care. The Rudd Labor government has invested $1.6 billion in the public hospital system, $1 billion for hospitals this financial year and $600 million to cut elective surgery waiting lists.

We have a plan to fix the health system problems that the previous government created and ignored. Essentially what this bill seeks to do is bring equity back into the system. This is an important bill. Ultimately, it is a bill that demonstrates the Rudd Labor government’s commitment to providing relief to working families, particularly low- and middle-income earners. This measure is a fundamental cornerstone of the Swan Labor budget.

The opposition have indicated they will not support the bill. I feel it would very irresponsible for them to move to block this budget measure, but what else can we expect? It is what we have come to expect from the opposition. They cannot be trusted. The Australian people know that. They have proven that time and time again, and the Australian people have seen through them. They are political opportunists without any conscience who regularly come into this place espousing that they are the party of choice.

Their opposition to this bill, however, is a clear example of how they are failing the test. They are not supporting working Australian families. Senators are being given an opportunity today to provide choice to working families and to those on low incomes. I urge senators opposite to support this bill so that we can provide security for those who need it most. The government is working hard for all Australians and will continue to do so. It is a responsible government, a government that genuinely cares about families, and that is why I ask senators to support this bill.

Debate (on motion by Senator Stephens) adjourned.