QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS
Senator DEAN SMITH (Western Australia) (15:11): I move: That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today. Australians only have to wait another 324 days until the next election, on 7 August 2027. That is the first possible date for the next federal election.
It's just 324 days of waiting for Australian voters until they get an opportunity to cast a verdict on the performance of this Labor government. If the Australian Labor Party was a car, it would be called a jalopy or a clunker. The wheels are falling off, the rain is getting in, the equipment is faulty, and the engine can't be relied upon.
This has been a bad week for the Labor government. Labor luminary Bill Kelty had some very insightful things to say about the performance of the Labor prime minister and the Labor treasurer, and I'll come to them in a moment. The Prime Minister's colleagues and the Treasurer's colleagues have been backgrounding anonymously, as you'd expect, about their performance on the economy.
I'll come back to that. Of course, today we had a very, very necessary backdown by the Labor Party, by the Labor government, in regard to a very, very poor, heartless, harmful policy decision that would have hurt veterans and their families, and the coalition welcomes the decision by the government today to back down on its plan to hurt veterans with a $5,000 cap on their ability to access allied health services.
Then we had a very half-hearted defence by Senator McAllister, representing the Minister for Health and Ageing, trying to defend the Labor government's very, very poor policy decision to hurt 1.3 million pensioners by abandoning the private health insurance rebate that is available to people over the age of 65. My great prediction is that that is now the next battleground, having successfully secured the government's decision to back down on its harmful, hurtful treatment of veterans and their families.
On that particular point, I want to make this observation. It is powerful when Independent senators work with Greens senators and work with coalition senators, coming to parliament, amplifying the concerns and the voices of veterans and their families, forcing the government to a very significant rethink. I remind you that on every occasion in this Senate that Labor senators had to stand with coalition and independent and Greens senators against this policy initiative, they chose to vote for— The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Smith.
Please resume your seat. Senator O'Neill? Senator O'Neill: I have a point of order.
Perhaps you could clarify for me which question it is that Senator Smith is giving his speech to, because there were no questions about these matters today. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Normally we do give a fair bit of latitude in these remarks. However, I will ask you to make sure you are relating your comments to a particular question, Senator Smith.
Senator DEAN SMITH: Senator, O'Neill, perhaps you were late for question time because the first question time today was from Senator Gatenby, the new senator from Tasmania, on the private health insurance rebate. You either weren't here or you weren't paying attention. Really!
This is why my grand prediction is that the next battleground that will force the Labor Party into a significant policy retreat is its plans to slug 1.3 million pensioners by abandoning the private health insurance rebate that they're currently entitled to. That is a plan that will hurt pensioners and add older people to state hospital waiting lists. It is unfair.
It is unmodeled. It's another demonstration how the Labor Party does not care for people in our community. On every occasion in this Senate people like Senator O'Neill, Senator Polley, Senator Stewart—they all voted to retain Labor's hurtful, harmful $5,000 cap on allied health support services for veterans and their families.
How outrageous. There just 324 days until the next election. With the brief minutes available to me, let me just remind people what Bill Kelty had to say about Labor at the moment.
He said that it is ridiculous that the Treasurer carries on the way he does with his economic policies. (Time expired)