Page 3527 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 2010
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Fifty-seven per cent of surgical procedures are done under the private health system. So let us assume that a whole bunch of people—I do not know what it will be, 10 per cent, 15 per cent or 25 per cent—decide to opt out of the private health system and go back to the public system. Can you imagine the impact that is going to have on our elective surgery waiting lists? We already have the worst in the nation. Our median waiting lists are 75 days compared to a national average of 34 days.
What you are going to see out of this Greens policy is a flow-on effect for ordinary people—because the people that will opt out are the poorest people. The most wealthy will continue to be able to afford it. This is going to affect the people who are struggling, people who say they really wanted it but now they cannot afford it because they are on a wage that just cannot sustain it—they are paying too much rent or a big mortgage, and they are paying school fees that are going to go up under the Greens as well. This is going to rip people out of the private health system, and those queues in emergency departments waiting for treatment, for elective surgery, are going to get longer and bed occupancy rates will go up. Our system will not be able to cope as a result of this reckless policy.
We need to turn now to education. About 50 per cent of parents in the ACT send their kids to an independent school of one sort or another. The Greens’ policy will rip $60 million out of the pockets of those schools. You have to realise that private education, independent education, is about choice. There is a philosophical difference here. The Greens want everybody to be the same, to come down to the same level—everyone has got to be the same. That is called socialism. We are not supporting socialism. You, in the Greens ––
Mr Barr: That is from a political science lecture.
MR HANSON: Well, it is socialism. There is no support for independent schools. They would take away all the support for independent schools; there would be a gradual erosion of support for independent schools.
Mr Barr: Are you suggesting they are actually ––
MR HANSON: I know you want to defend the Greens and I know that you, Mr Barr, equally are not a supporter of independent schools. You were dragged kicking and screaming because you had to—
Mr Barr: I was a student at an independent school, Jeremy. I went to an independent school.
MR HANSON: When it comes to half and half, you do not support independent schools. You were sent to an independent school—so was Mr Rattenbury; he was the beneficiary of a private school education. He got a scholarship to attend Canberra Grammar School, so he has been the beneficiary and he has got where he has on the back of, largely, or in some part, a private school education. Now Mr Rattenbury wants to rip money out of those same schools that he is the beneficiary of. That is the sort of hypocrisy that we get from the chardonnay-sipping socialists of the Greens. And that is what you are with these policies.
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