Tony Abbott Doorstop - Private health insurance means test; Julia Gillard’s carbon tax

06/07/11

TRANSCRIPT OF THE HON. TONY ABBOTT MHR,
JOINT DOORSTOP INTERVIEW WITH THE HON. PETER DUTTON MHR, SHADOW MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING

& SENATOR JUDITH ADAMS,

CANBERRA

Subject: Private health insurance means test; Julia Gillard’s carbon tax.

E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………………

TONY ABBOTT:

It’s great to be here at the National Capital Private Hospital. I want to thank Healthscope for making me and my team so welcome. It’s good to be with Peter Dutton, the Shadow Minister for Health. It’s also good to be with Judith Adams, the Senator from Western Australia and also a former nurse who brings a unique perspective to the deliberations to the Coalition and Judith of course has a particular interest in rural health.

I guess there’s two issues that I want to just talk about before taking some questions. The first is the private health insurance means test. Now, the Labor Party promised before the 2007 election that there would be no means test on private health insurance. This is probably the first big broken promise of the Labor Party because they have been trying since 2008 to put a means test on private health insurance. Their argument is that private health insurance is for millionaires. Well, that’s wrong, wrong, wrong. There are some 11 million Australians in private health insurance, more than five million of those live in households earning less than $50,000 a year. Deloitte have estimated that if the private health insurance means test goes ahead about 1.6 million people will drop out of private health insurance. That means that premiums will rise for everyone, including people earning less than $50,000 a year. The private insurance means test, if it goes ahead, will add about ten per cent to premiums and that’s going to be very, very bad news for millions of Australians including millions of pensioners and low-income earners. So, I would urge the Government to think again about this serious broken promise that will impact on the healthcare of ordinary Australians.

The other issue I want to talk about is the impact of the carbon tax on our healthcare system. The Government likes to say that the carbon tax will just make big polluters pay. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The carbon tax is going to make everyone pay including the users of hospitals like this. This hospital has an electricity bill of $228,000 a year. It has a gas bill of $70,000 a year. That means a $60 000 to $70 000 a year increase under a $25 a tonne carbon price. This is a cost that will inevitably be passed onto the users of this hospital. So, let no one think that they are going to escape the impact of the carbon tax because it’s only the big polluters who will pay, everyone will pay and when it comes to compensation, what the Prime Minister is saying is that 55 per cent of the revenue is going back to you as compensation. Well, that means the Government is taking $1 dollar out of one pocket and putting 55 cents back into the other pocket and that’s a bad deal in anyone’s language. We’ll see again today in Question Time the Government running away from legitimate questions about the carbon tax. Well, I think it is time for this Government to stop hiding and start providing the detail of this toxic tax.

Peter, I may just ask you to say a few words.

PETER DUTTON:

Thanks Tony. I just wanted to say a couple of words. Firstly, thank you very much to the hospital staff here. The hospital staff and patients not just here but around the country make it very clear that putting an extra tax onto people’s private health insurance premiums just won’t work. Driving people out of private health into the public system will just put more pressure on the public system and the young and healthy who leave the private health insurance regardless of their income, have an entitlement to go into the public system and I think our negotiations thus far with the independents have been very productive. I think the independents have taken a very responsible view in determining that this is bad legislation and I would just say to the independents, we want to make sure that they stand up like the Coalition is for the 11 million Australians because we are determined to block this legislation because we don’t want to see an extra financial burden on families who at the moment just cannot afford extra premium hikes that Ms Gillard’s proposing in relation to private health insurance.

TONY ABBOTT:

Judith?

JUDITH ADAMS:

Thank you very much and thank you for your hospitality this morning. I’m the only nurse in the Parliament. I’m a New Zealand trained nurse and it was wonderful to meet up with Liz Porritt who is the chief executive officer of this hospital and find that she was a hospital-based trained nurse. We’re a rare breed. But my interest as the Leader has said is in rural health and this really worries me with private health insurance. Having been a farmer for a large number of years something that we always did, the private health insurance bill had to be paid and I really feel sorry for the people in the Kimberley at the moment with the live cattle export problems because these are the sort of things that they’re probably going to say, ‘Well the private health insurance has to go.’ But as a farmer, the thought that you have got that private health insurance and if something happens or you want to have a procedure done in the off season from the farm, you know that you’re going to be able to get a bed in – and I’ll talk about Western Australia and Perth because usually that’s the only place to go. Your own local hospital, very rarely can you use your private health insurance. So it’s something that people really value and I would hate to see these people, see them drop it and most of them, because your wool cheque is well and truly over the threshold of where the rebate is going to be limited, these people will all lose the subsidy if the subsidy goes through.

Now, in the Senate we have debated this bill twice and rejected it and unfortunately now with the change to the makeup of the Senate with the nine Greens there now, this was one of their policy platforms they’re very strong on and they can’t wait to get rid of it. So I’m very, very sorry that that’s the situation that we’re in but for those people in Australia, as the Leader has said, it is going to affect everyone if these subsidies go and if the private health insurance goes up by 10 per cent which it looks as if it may do if this legislation is passed. So thank you all very much.

TONY ABBOTT:

Thanks Judith. Ok, do we have any questions today?

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, just on the private health, given the Greens do have the balance of power are you fighting a losing battle with this?

TONY ABBOTT:

No because we think the arguments are on our side, we think the public are on our side and we hope that the independents in the lower house are on our side.

QUESTION:

You said that 1.6 million Australians will drop off the system. The sign behind you says 5.9 million Australians won’t be able to afford to get sick. Which is the right figure?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well the Deloitte study says 1.6 million will drop their private health insurance over the first five years. There are other studies which say that the impact will be even greater.

QUESTION:

Have you spoken to the independents about whether they will actually block this legislation?

TONY ABBOTT:

Peter, do you want to deal with that one?

PETER DUTTON:

Well, look, I have had discussions and our discussions are ongoing with the independents. I think it’s fair to say that the independents see a couple of things. Firstly, if the premiums increase, people will drop their private health insurance. They will go into the public system and it will put more pressure particularly in the bush on the public system and our public hospital system, as wonderful as it is, cannot afford the extra burden.

The other thing I think that the independents rightly identify is that Australian families are under huge cost pressures at the moment and they can’t afford another Gillard Government tax which is effectively what this measure will do and I think for the independents as well they hear, as we do from our communities, that those people who will remain in private health insurance, they will face with absolute certainty, increases in their premiums and that, I think is something that will be a determining factor in their decision and we want to encourage ongoing discussions with the independents and we hope that, like the Australian public, we will be able to rely on them when this comes for a vote before the Parliament.

QUESTION:

The plain packaging legislation will be introduced today. Nicola Roxon seemed to indicate that perhaps the Opposition wouldn’t, or would perhaps block it. Are you sticking by your decision not to oppose it?

TONY ABBOTT:

I think she’s fantasising.

QUESITON:

Mr Abbott, you say this uncertainty over the carbon tax will end up slugging patients here with an additional impost but do we actually know that detail? Aren’t you just playing off the uncertainty?

TONY ABBOTT:

No. Look, go and talk to Martin Laverty. Martin Laverty is the CEO of Catholic Healthcare and Martin Laverty has estimated that a $20 a tonne carbon price will add $10 million a year to the cost burdens on Catholic hospitals around Australia. Now, this is the point. The carbon tax impacts on power, it impacts on fuel and that means that it impacts on everything and we’ve had one of the Labor Party’s newest senators, Senator Gallacher of South Australia, say that unless the carbon tax is taken off diesel, it’ll add $90 a week to the cost of the average owner-driver and obviously that’s going to be passed on to the cost of the goods in our shops, it’s going to be passed on to the costs of just about everything because there’s almost nothing in our country which isn’t transported at some stage.

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott what do you make of the Treasury modelling showing that the coal industry will continue to make profits even with a carbon tax?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, the coal industry has obviously been one of the beneficiaries of the China boom. No doubt about that but the carbon tax will damage an industry which is Australia’s most important single export industry. It will damage an industry that is the most important economic mainstay of some of our vital regional areas. Now, the whole point of a carbon tax is to make coal more expensive. The whole point of the advocates of a carbon tax is to say that coal is not the foundation of a modern economy but it’s a threat to the future of the planet. I mean, coal is our most emitting form of energy and if the carbon tax is going to do what its architects want it to do, it is going to over time kill the coal industry and let’s never forget that Labor’s carbon tax is doing the job that Bob Brown and the other Greens senators are upfront about, namely to close down the coal industry.

QUESTION:

The Treasurer says that there will actually be employment growth in the industry, as opposed to jobs being lost. Do you not believe him?

TONY ABBOTT:

What’s the point of a carbon tax if it doesn’t shift energy use from coal to less emitting energy sources? The whole point of a carbon tax is to reduce and eventually eliminate our use of coal. So, the Treasurer can’t on the one hand support a carbon tax and on the other hand say he supports the coal industry because the two things are completely hostile to each other.

QUESTION:

Mr Abbott, the Prime Minister says she will be wearing out her shoe leather selling her carbon tax over the next five weeks. How’s the tread on your shoes and will you be doing the same campaigning against it?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, I think that the Prime Minister should face up to the Parliament first and foremost. I mean, what we saw yesterday was ministers on strike, refusing to be accountable to the Parliament. The first job of the Prime Minister is to answer to the Parliament. The Parliament made her Prime Minister and she should answer to the Parliament. I think it’s cowardly of the Prime Minister not to face the Parliament in the immediate aftermath of her carbon tax announcement and give an account of herself. Let’s face it, this is the most incompetent government in Australian history and they are about to introduce the most complex change in Australian history. They must be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. The Prime Minister shouldn’t be allowed to get away with going around the country to carefully staged photo opportunities. She should face the people in the Parliament. That’s what she should be doing next week.

QUESTION:

So are we basically in for a mini five week election campaign here?

TONY ABBOTT:

Well, what I think we are in for is a Prime Minister who is hiding from scrutiny and as I said at the beginning I think she should stop hiding and start providing. She should start providing the detailed answers to real problems that the Parliament will expect her to provide and this idea that travelling the country to carefully choreographed photo opportunities is somehow engaging in a meaningful conversation with the Australian people is just wrong. It’s just wrong. I know that Kelly O’Dwyer, one of my distinguished parliamentary colleagues is hosting a public forum on the carbon tax next week. She has invited the Prime Minister to attend. I bet you the Prime Minister will decline. But there should be hundreds of forums around the country next week if the Prime Minister is not prepared to face up to the Parliament, there should be hundreds of public forums around the country next week and the Prime Minister should be attending them and if she can’t attend them, she should send her senior ministers to attend them but this idea that carefully choreographed stage managed photo opportunities are an excuse for the kind of dialogue which we need is just wrong and the best form of public dialogue is in the parliament itself.