Page 3519 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 2010
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noted that 3.4 million Australians have an income of—guess how much—$35,000 per annum. That is a lot of mums. That is a lot of pensioners. It is single mums. It is people on disability pensions. It is the unemployed. There are 3.4 million Australians who have incomes less than $35,000 per annum who have hospital and health insurance, and these are the people that the Greens are going to take the assistance away from.
The Greens’ health policy reads:
… abolish the private health insurance rebate and redirect funds to the public health system, including public hospitals.
That is what it says. Ms Hunter had the chance to correct this, but of course she did not. She did not correct the record because she cannot. And the problem is: no-one can believe the Greens on this, because they say and choose what they want. Here it is. Let us go to the fifth dot point in measure 22 on page 80, under “Taxation”:
22. reduce inequities in the current personal tax system by: … abolishing the 30% Private Health Insurance Rebate in order to increase funding for public hospitals;
That is it. It is gone, abolished. The rebate goes. So this should read in full: “Abolish the 30 per cent private health insurance rebate in order to increase funding for public hospitals, by taking it away from 5.6 million Australians who have an income of less than $50,000 per annum.” Then there should be a second dot point that says, “Abolish the 30 per cent private health insurance rebate from the 3.4 million Australians that have an income of less than $35,000 per annum.” There it is in a nub. That is their policy. That is what it says. There are no caveats. There are no riders.
We had no disavowal or explanation of this from Ms Hunter before lunch. Hopefully, one of the other Greens, one of the more financially literate Greens, will get up after I finish speaking and actually tell us what this means. You can only look at it in the context of the document. There is no costing. They do not tell you how many people it affects, because they do not do the work.
They write this stuff and put it in their policies, but they give no thought to the 3.4 million Australians who have an income of less than $35,000 per annum, who understand the importance of having private health insurance and who, not to be a burden on the health system, have taken out that private health insurance. And it would be tough for a family or an individual on less than $35,000, I suspect, to be paying private health insurance.
But the Greens want to slug them. That is the party of equity. That is the party of fairness. That is the party who profess to look after those less well off. But we are going to slug 3.4 million Australians. And there it is in the policy. I would welcome any of the Greens standing up and telling me that is wrong and point to where in their document it says that it will not affect those people.
But we are going to reform the national electricity market and that reform, I guarantee you, can only come at additional cost to the price of electricity. If I am wrong, stand
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