Senator RYAN (Victoria) (1:22 PM) —It is my privilege this afternoon to follow Senator Ferguson’s contribution. In Senator Forshaw’s interjection earlier he tried to defend the government’s view that somehow placing these bills at the top of the legislative agenda for this week did not reflect on the empty words of the Prime Minister about the greatest moral challenge of our time. His only defence was that Labor’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was No. 2. Call this a plain reading of the English language, but I would assume that the greatest moral challenge of our time would at least rank No. 1 on the list of legislation in a sitting week.
Moving away from that, it is a pity that this debate is being conducted by one side of the chamber. It is a pity that there is no-one from the government standing up to argue their case and to defend their decision. I can only assume that it is out of a sense of shame because this is a clear breach of an election promise. My colleagues have outlined that in detail. There is no ambiguity in this. The Labor Party, the Prime Minister, who was then opposition leader, and then shadow minister Roxon explicitly promised not to take away the private health insurance rebate. They explicitly promised to keep it. Now, for the second time in under 12 months, they bring legislation forward in this place to do the very opposite of that. I will not go through all the quotes again, but there are two in particular that I want to mention. On 26 September 2007, in a media release, then shadow minister Roxon 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, including the 30 per cent general rebate and the 35 and 40 per cent rebates for older Australians.
The Liberals continue to try to scare people into thinking Labor will take away the rebates. This is absolutely untrue.
I do not see an asterisk on that press release; I do not see a footnote that says, ‘Except if you earn over a certain amount.’ It says ‘all of the existing private health insurance rebates’. There is no ambiguity there. Similarly, only days before the 2007 election, in a letter to the Australian Health Insurance Association, the then Leader of the Opposition said:
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, including the 30 per cent general rebate and the 35 and 40 per cent rebates for older Australians.
Again, there is no ambiguity, no footnote and no qualification. Nowhere does it say, ‘Except if you earn over this much.’ It says ‘the existing private health insurance rebates’. This bill, the Fairer Private Health Insurance Incentives (Medicare Levy Surcharge) Bill 2009 [No. 2], does the opposite. It is to the shame of Labor members opposite that they are not willing to come here and own up to that fact.
The truth is that we on this side knew that those words could not be trusted. We knew that the Leader of the Labor Party and their spokeswoman on health could not be trusted because Labor has always wanted to do in private health insurance. The dream of the Labor Party is to have a National Health Service type of system. The dream of the Labor Party is to remove the very choice that allows middle Australia to take care of their own health.
It is the same with independent schools. I guarantee that if the country is unfortunate enough to see the Labor government re-elected, the next schools agreement will do exactly the same thing. They will not stand by their word. This is an example of how they cannot be trusted at all. The government now claim that this legislation is necessary because of the global financial crisis. That is simply fiction, written by world-class fiction writers on the other side. Their fiction is world-class, if not the quality of their writing. Their first attacks on private health insurance began when we were talking about an inflation genie. Who hears about the inflation genie these days? No-one, because it is always an excuse. As Senator Ferguson outlined earlier, there is always a different excuse from a different minister. It is simply another broken promise in a litany of broken promises.
We could talk about the promise to take Iran through the international judicial process. We could talk about the promises to deal with Japan over whaling, the promises about the GP superclinics and the promises about ending the double drop-off. The list goes on. But very few issues are as explicit as this. What we know lurks under the surface of every Labor member and senator is a wish to do away with the universality of the support for private health insurance. That is what Labor wants to do and what this legislation does. Labor constantly says that Medicare cannot be means tested, that Medicare should be universal. But the one thing that cannot be universal is the ability for people to support their own health care. We have heard from my colleagues that $1 in the rebate buys $2 of extra spending. But Labor does not want that. It claims that spending should be determined in the health system on the basis of need, but—and this is the key difference—it does not want Australians to make that determination themselves. It wants the government, a bureaucrat or someone other than the person concerned to determine what health care that person needs and when they need it.
If its management of the public hospital systems in many of our states over the last 10 years is any indication, that should scare the hell out of many Australians. The other side of this chamber cannot be trusted. In my own home state of Victoria, over roughly a decade we have gained a million people but there are fewer hospital beds. How does that equation make it easier for people to access the health system? It does not. No number of press releases advertising how much money you have spent matter when it is harder to get in the door, when there are fewer beds, despite a million more people. The government is trying to make private health insurance harder to have and to appropriate for itself the choice about what health care Australians need and when they get it.
We know that more than half of surgical procedures these days are performed in the private health system. That is not something which this side is concerned about. That is a sign of a strong, mixed healthcare system. The private system allows people who can to prioritise and take care of themselves but also strengthens the public healthcare system by taking pressure off. If you did not have this support for private health insurance, the waiting lists would be longer. The waits on trolleys would be longer and the wait for critical care would be longer. But this government simply does not care. It is continuing its ideological war against choice, against the private health insurance industry and the private health sector. That war goes back for decades, because this is a philosophical fault line.
We believe that Australians should be supported to take care of themselves and their health. We believe that, just as we have a universal national insurance system in Medicare, having universal access to a health insurance rebate allows those who are more fortunate to contribute more to the cost of their own care. And it is those who can contribute to the cost of their own care or choose to make that sacrifice—and they are not all higher socioeconomic groups—who take the pressure off the public health system, who make it easier for those in genuine need, who are without those means, to access our public health system.
We know that this legislation, if it becomes law, will lead to an increase in premiums not just for those who lose the rebate but for all who have private health insurance. All that will do is create a cycle where people increasingly drop out of private health insurance. The people who will pay are not the people the government allegedly targets in this legislation. The people who will pay that price are those who will be pushed back in the queues in the public hospital system and it will be the other people who remain in private health insurance who seek to take pressure off the public health system and take care of their own health care.
The background to this rebate is important because the Labor Party talk about how they wish to take the rebate from allegedly high-income earners. The rebate was introduced at a 30 per cent level to prevent high-income earners having access to tax deductibility. As we know, if we have tax deductibility for private health insurance, the greater number of benefits go to those on higher incomes who are paying higher marginal tax. The rebate was introduced at a flat 30 per cent tax level and it already provides greater benefits, through the tax system, to those on lower incomes. It is another fiction of the Labor Party that this is somehow removing a benefit from wealthier Australians. The rebate was designed this way specifically to ensure that lower-income and middle-income Australians had access to effective, tax system based support, to underpin their choice of private health insurance.
I am sure we will hear from the Labor Party before the next election, just as we heard before the last election, that they will not do any more with the rebate—just as they have promised to do something about whaling, just as they will probably re-promise to do something about GP superclinics, the double drop-off and Iran. But this explicit promise, which has been broken by the Labor Party, ensures that their word can never be trusted. I urge Australians to listen to what Labor says now, to compare it with their actions in their first few years in government, as well as with what they said before the 2007 election. Just as they will undertake an attack on private health insurance—and this is only the first step, the first chink, in the armour of the private health insurance rebate which supports choice for millions of Australians—they will do it to independent schools and they will try to claim that it is to save money to put elsewhere. We know that the money being saved here will not be put into reform of the health system; it will merely go to plug the gaping deficits which this government has opened up.
There is no shortage of money with the Labor Party because it has the platinum credit card funded by Australian taxpayers. The government has prioritised things that rank so far down the list of the priorities of Australians and their families compared to health that it is completely unjustifiable that you would try to say that this is due to the global financial crisis.
This is merely the first step of Labor’s attack on private health insurance. It represents a breach of an explicit promise stated and restated by the now Prime Minister and the now Minister for Health and Ageing. Just as it is Labor’s first attack, and we will repel it from this side of the chamber, we will continue to do so in coming years because private health insurance and access to choice for Australians is a value and a principle in which we profoundly believe.