Mrs HULL (1:28 PM) —I rise to support the Health Legislation Amendment (Private Health Insurance Reform) Bill 2003 and the reforms to private health insurance, which continue this government's efforts to encourage people of all ages to take up health insurance. Basically, I am a great supporter of the private health system, as this government is, because I believe that to be reliant on the state Labor run public health systems now is nothing short of playing Russian roulette. Whilst the staff are generally beyond reproach and deal with a significant amount of work in the best possible way, the system falls dramatically short in resources. And it is so nice to see that the member for Banks is not having so much difficulty with his nodding head just at the moment. It is a long day and a long night for him.

This bill is of paramount importance with regard to ensuring that people recognise what the private health system really offers. I have taken on board the comments of the member for Stirling that the community has not caught up with what we are setting out to achieve. Perhaps I need to provide some substantial evidence in educating the people in my electorate of the Riverina on the benefits they receive from a private hospital system, purely because there is a private health system, so that they can gain an income from that system, in order to run the services right across the region.

My electorate of Riverina is home to just one private hospital. This private hospital continues to provide all the private hospital services which are available to my entire electorate. From Cootamundra right through to Hay, Calvary Private Hospital is responsible for the provision of private hospital services, although many other health services provide necessary care to the people right across that region. Calvary Hospital is a private charitable hospital owned and conducted by the Sisters of the Little Company of Mary.

Calvary Health Care at Riverina has been providing health services to the Riverina region since 1926 and could not possibly do so if it did not cater for private health insurance patients. It boasts a range of services including a maternity wing, surgical and medical wards, a sleep disorder unit, a high dependency unit and operating theatres. A Department of Veterans' Affairs care coordinator is on staff to ensure that Veterans' Affairs patients receive the highest level of care during their time at Calvary Private Hospital.

Private hospitals see rural and regional areas attracting much needed specialist services. Without those specialist services being able to operate in a private health system, such as that offered by Calvary Private Hospital, we would not attract those specialist services. We in rural and regional areas would again fall far short of our requirements, simply because operating time in public hospitals is now almost non-existent. If people are relying totally on a public health system and they live in a rural or regional area where private hospitals are unavailable to them, the likelihood is that they will be on a waiting list for three, four or five years for a simple hip replacement, knee replacement or significant surgery. They can be assured that they will be waiting for that length of time.

The private hospital system is filling a much needed and sincere service in all of these areas. As I said, it has attracted all of those specialist services. If specialists wanted to come in and operate in the public hospital system, they could not do it. Operating times have been cut so dramatically by the state Labor governments that there is no ability for specialists to earn an income, so naturally they will stay in the cities where they can do so. But if they have a private hospital which is primarily propped up because of the fact that we have private health insurance, then they will come; they will stay and they will offer rural and regional people the type of health care that they are entitled to.

One such service I have in mind is the Riverina Cardiovascular and Physiology Centre, which provides state-of-the-art diagnostic and therapeutic services, including digital subtraction, angiography, cardiac catheterisation and vascular imaging services—something that we did not previously have. This is the only unit of its kind in rural Australia. It was brought to the Riverina, to Calvary Private Hospital, by Dr Gerard Carroll, the consulting physician in Wagga Wagga. He is an absolute asset and I cannot praise him highly enough for his determined commitment. He is a Sydney born boy who came out to Wagga Wagga 20-odd years ago, who has delivered technology far in advance of any other centre in Australia. He is delivering that technology in Calvary Private Hospital simply because he has a private hospital in which to deliver it. Thus we in rural and regional Australia are able to access the type of treatment that can be accessed by people who live in the city areas. This is because of the commitment and dedication of one physician, Gerard Carroll, who is absolutely devoted to ensuring the delivery of all health services in rural and regional Australia, and particularly in the Riverina.

Riverina Medical Imaging provides all general radiology services, including ultrasound, CT scanning, MRIs and bone mineral density investigations. These are all done in conjunction with Calvary Private Hospital. The resources of Calvary Private Hospital are able to be utilised because there is a private health system which is viable and has been considered by this government to be of utmost importance. Before Riverina Medical Imaging was set up, my constituents had to travel to Sydney. If the people of the Riverina electorate wanted to have an MRI scan, they booked it six months in advance and had to make the excruciating journey to Sydney by car or by bus. A person with an amazing back condition, or a really difficult problem, went to Sydney. I think the first facility was in Edgecliff and, 10 or 15 years ago, people headed to Sydney, but there were supreme difficulties involved in getting there. Now, in conjunction with the private hospital service, and in conjunction with a positive health service, all these facilities are available in rural and regional Australia. But, without the availability of the infrastructure, it would not be possible to provide these services.

There is a pathology laboratory and collection centre also situated in the grounds of the Calvary Private Hospital. This centre provides pathology services for inpatients and is also a central collection centre for the general community. Two years ago we saw the people of the Riverina go forth with an amazing campaign. They raised over $3 million in order that their own Riverina cancer care centre could be built. That centre is currently in operation, again in the grounds of the Calvary Private Hospital. People right across the region, and into Canberra, can get first-class chemotherapy and radiotherapy at that centre. We have Canberra patients coming in to access treatment. As I said, this centre was established with huge community support and fundraising efforts. I will be eternally grateful to this government for the provision of the health program grant funding to enable this to take place. At the same time, we are raising money for Lilya Lodge, to accommodate all of the people who, unfortunately, have to come into the area to utilise this service. We have the support of the Calvary Private Hospital. This could not be done in a public hospital centre and can I reiterate that it could not be done without a viable private health system.

We also have very great difficulty in attracting GPs. I heard the previous speaker talk about bulk-billing. In my electorate bulk-billing has never been available. In Wagga Wagga we do not have bulk-billing; it just does not take place. In Wagga Wagga we had one doctor per 3,300 patients. That is a significant workload. We had no after-hours support teams. But again, through this government, with a grant of $450,000 we were able to set up an after-hours GP clinic. That was established in the hospital grounds by the Riverina Division of General Practice. We were able to establish that clinic to provide after-hours services so that doctors could get a break and so that we would not lose our GPs because of overwork. That meant that we were able to have doctors working in a practice, hopefully getting privately funded people—private medical benefit funded people—out of the emergency system at the Wagga Wagga Base Hospital.

Privately funded people were jamming up the public hospital system for people who, as the member for Stirling indicated, cannot afford to pay for private health insurance. They jammed up that public hospital system because there was nobody to go to after hours. Now we can move those privately funded people to a user pays system and get them out of that public system—out of accident and emergency and out of casualty—move them over to this practice in the grounds of the private hospital and relieve the pressure on the state system. It is amazing what you can do with a little bit of forethought, a little bit of vision and a little bit of positiveness about the great benefits that you can provide by ensuring that you have a viable private health system.

Mr Melham —You need to put a little bit of moolah into the public health system.

Mrs HULL —Yes, it does take money and, yes, we do spend our money on it. But let us face it: what in life is there that you get for nothing? In this scenario we might find that everybody gets a little bit of nothing because nobody wants to pay for anything. If you have a health system that relies totally on everybody getting a little bit of everything for nothing, you have nothing substantial at all. That is what we would see if the opposition were to put in their health system. I think that the majority of the Australian people recognise this.

Again, as a result of the infrastructure available in a private hospital due to private health insurance, we have O'Connor House, which provides programs for both alcohol detoxification and illicit drug rehabilitation. We have all of those facilities available to us. Peppers, the illicit drug program, is funded under the National Illicit Drugs Strategy and provides a supportive environment for those who want to learn to live drug free. But it is not there for private health insurance patients; it is there for the general community—the general public—so that they in turn get another benefit from having a viable private health system. Calvary Health Care also provides breast screening assessment services for women in southwest New South Wales and north-eastern Victoria—Griffith and Albury. We provide a huge number of important services on the back of a private hospital and a private health system.

I think we should be proud of Calvary Hospital, which has been ranked the top hospital in Australia, in comparison to hospitals of similar bed size, both public and private. The Calvary Day Procedure Centre has recently been rated in the top 25 per cent of private facilities and in the top 21 per cent of all national facilities. Calvary Hospital was successful late last year in obtaining funding under the bush nursing, small communities and regional private hospitals program for a number of projects. One of these projects was to provide Riverina people with a palliative care consultancy service. Calvary will now move forward and continue to provide its services to patients throughout the region, regardless of whether they are private patients or public patients. That is the spin-off; that is the benefit. That is the benefit of a viable private health system.

The maternity wing at Calvary Hospital services a huge region, with many women travelling up to three hours to deliver their babies in this private hospital, with their private health insurance taking away the stress and strain of the public system when it comes to deliveries and obstetrics. In fact, we had a problem just a year ago when we thought that due to the indemnity crisis Calvary Hospital would shut down and thus shut down its obstetrics services. Is it any wonder that I was absolutely freaking out? If they shut down its delivery services, the state health system could not cope with the extra 800 deliveries from one town a year. It just could not do it. Wagga Wagga Base Hospital could not possibly do it; it could not provide those services and it could not physically cope.

If that happened, we would have to airlift women to Sydney to have a normal delivery. We would have to make up reasons as to why a woman had to be taken from a perfectly reasonable country centre to Sydney to have a perfectly normal birth. I think that is a critical state. We were able to rectify that problem. But if you took away the obstetrics unit at Calvary you would put in jeopardy all of these other services that I have been talking about that have come about purely because of a viable private health system. I would be retracting and pulling services from right across the electorate and from other people's electorates because they are the sorts of services that have come from a very viable private health system. Is it any wonder I stand in this House and continue to say that the private health system—and this government's initiatives in and focus on it—are of paramount importance to the Riverina and me?

I am also continuing to work towards establishing a rural obstetrics training network for the Riverina region—the Riverina-Murray region, in fact—with the assistance of local obstetricians, specialist midwives and health professionals. We do not sit back and wait for it to happen. We actually get up and deliver. We determine what we want and we make it happen. This is a partnership with community, a partnership with doctors, specialists and universities. We put forward viable programs to the minister. Minister Abbott looks at them, sees the valuable role that they would play and in his wisdom says that they are valuable opportunities for us to resolve some of those problems. Again I thank the minister. I think he has made an incredible contribution since he has been the health minister. I think the idea to establish a rural obstetric training network in the region, as I said, came about following my concerns over the possibility of Calvary closing down and no longer being able to provide obstetric services and thus withdrawing all of these other services.

I decided that we would put together a program aimed at training and delivering rural obstetricians and midwives to see whether we could change the way we practise midwifery and obstetrics in rural communities. That program has been given a lot of credibility. The government has looked at it, accepted it and respected it and it has said, `With New South Wales state health, we will put your plan into practice to see whether it is able to deliver some very good and valuable outcomes'—and I am sure that it will.

Basically, the rural network of communities, doctors and state based public hospitals requires a viable private health system. Without such a system, these private hospitals could not provide services over and beyond what they are funded to provide. These things would not be in existence and available if we did not have a private health insurance system.

Since being elected in 1996, the Howard-Anderson government has introduced a number of measures to support and encourage the adoption of private health insurance in Australia. Gap cover, Lifetime Health Cover and the 30 per cent health insurance rebate have all gone into play to improve our existence in the Riverina and beyond. If you were to replicate over and over what private hospitals across Australia provide and attract into our communities, you would see the benefit of private health insurance. No opposition member could deny that it is imperative that we continue to support private health insurance in order that these ancillary programs, services and benefits are delivered, particularly in rural and regional areas.

By encouraging the adoption of private health insurance, we can assist in reducing the burden on the public health system—that underresourced and overoperated public health system that we are currently experiencing, particularly in New South Wales. If we continue to encourage people to adopt private health insurance, we will relieve that burden. If Australians utilise private health services for their range of needs, we will ensure that the public health system, resoundingly and warmly welcomed on the opposite side of the House, will be better equipped to assist those who need it most. But to do that, those opposite will have to come a little bit our way in deciding that health services and health systems are absolutely advantaged by the viable private health system that this government is advocating and has put in place in its time in office.