STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator LIDDLE (South Australia—Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate) (13:29): Earlier today, the Leader of the Opposition, Angus Taylor, convened a roundtable at Parliament House on Labor's private health insurance changes. It wasn't a partisan meeting: around the table were the AMA, Catholic Health Australia, the Members Health Fund Alliance, National Seniors Australia, Patients Australia, Private Healthcare Australia, Ageing Australia, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, and COTA—experts in their field.

When major health and aged-care peak bodies in the country turn up to warn you about the same policy, that's not politics—that's the health system telling the government it's got it wrong. Labor wants you to believe this is a minor technical adjustment, a fairness measure, intergenerational equity; it is not. It is an accounting trick dressed up as reform.

We've seen that before, and we now have real evidence the government's own modelling is wrong. COTA's research found 82 per cent of older Australians oppose this change, and more than a third say they will downgrade or cancel their cover if it goes ahead. That is a far higher dropout rate than the government has modelled, and, tellingly, the government still refuses to release its modelling publicly.

What have you got to hide on intergenerational equity? It's a nonsense argument. It's younger Australians who will pick up the tab when older Australians drop private health cover and end up in a public hospital bed.

What we heard at the roundtable is this policy is likely to accelerate the collapse of private maternity services in this country. A policy attack on older Australians is on track to hit young families having babies too. If that's not a multigenerational failure, I don't know what is.

Labor's not listening, it's not looking and it's not providing its modelling because it's got something to hide. (Time expired)