Page 3890 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 15 December 1992
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Mr Lamont: Mr Kaine, our party room meetings are not as dangerous as yours. I can understand why you have private insurance.
MR KAINE: You can have the bed. You can deprive the little old lady of the bed in the hospital, but I will not. I will go into a private hospital and pay my own way, which I suggest is what you should be doing, and so should anybody else who can afford to provide their own cover. Reduce the cost of the public health system, but make provision through the public health system for those people who cannot afford to take out their own cover; you have to provide for them.
As in every other field of endeavour in Australia, there is room for a partnership of public and private facilities. For any government to set about discouraging people, first of all, from providing private health facilities to take people out of the system and, secondly, from contributing to private health insurance when they can well afford it and forcing them into the public health system - that is what the Minister advocates; he has done it time and time again - is misplaced enthusiasm for an ideology. It is imposing an enormous burden on the whole community. Those of us who can afford it should remove ourselves from competition with the people who cannot, as I do. I suggest, if Mr Berry would only admit it, that he is privately insured too, and he has done it obviously to protect himself and, I am sure, to take himself out of the public system and leave room for the people who have to go in there.
Let us get down to the facts about this. Let us stop this raw ideological argument that goes on every time the Minister gets to his feet. Let us acknowledge the reality that the position adopted by the Liberal Party is the correct one and encourage people to do the right thing, which is what all Australians are about, except perhaps the Minister. We will have a better health system for everybody, and those who can afford it will pay their own way.
MR LAMONT (4.45): Madam Speaker, I understand that there is just a short time left. It was interesting to note that in a number of the presentations this afternoon reference was made to the AMA and the marginal electorates campaign they are proposing to run.
Mrs Carnell: No, we did not.
MR LAMONT: I did not say that Mrs Carnell mentioned it. Mrs Carnell mentioned no matter of substance, so she certainly would not have mentioned that one.
Mr Kaine: And I did not mention it.
MR LAMONT: Equally, you mentioned no matter of substance either. It was mentioned by the people who contributed properly to the debate from this side of the house, much to the chagrin of those people sitting opposite. They have lost probably their only competent person, a former staffer of the Opposition who, I understand, has gone to work for the AMA, to try to run the AMA's campaign. I think that speaks for itself in relation to the ideologies adopted by this side of the house and the ideologies adopted by the AMA and how they see the health industry operating. I think that is the question we needed to address this afternoon, and it has been adequately addressed by this side of the house.
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