Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Cormann for his further supplementary question. Quite frankly, the opposition are crying wolf in respect of this. We have changed our policy because the private health rebate was becoming unsustainable in a budget that had taken a $200 billion hit as a result of the biggest global financial crisis since the Great Depression. If the opposition have not recognised that then they are now crying wolf. Mr Dutton predicted last year that a million people would leave private health insurance. Has that happened? No, a million people have not left. What he said then was, ‘It’s unbelievable that a health minister would believe that they could put forward a bill which would drive up the premiums on private health insurance,’ and, of course, it did not happen. (Time expired)