One is close family (cancer). One is a close friend (heart). One is first-name morning-walk nodding acquaintance (cancer). All have the same ghastly experience – diagnosis with a life-threatening illness facing a strained health system.
One had a rejection from a private insurer on a technicality and family came to a $20,000 rescue and early successful treatment. The second has to (and can with strain) pay $30,000 for cardiac treatment.
The third has no means. That person’s cancer (in a vital organ) cannot be surgically treated in the public system for three months. Cancer does not wait. If not cut out, it can and does metastasise making treatment more difficult if not ultimately impossible.
With these three anecdotal examples, it is quite apparent that we now have a two-tier system where money determines whether you live or die and where money determines whether you wait in pain or get quick treatment. And in that two-tiered system many of those who pay cannot really afford to do so.
Anecdotal examples are important because lived experience and word of mouth do more to change people’s political inclinations than any amount of political campaigning and propaganda.
These are examples of the uninsured. But now not even private health cover will automatically save you. Last week, the Australian Medical Association eviscerated the private system.
Its private health insurance report card (https://www.ama.com.au/media/report-card-reveals-warning-signs-private-health-australia ) said, “Australians are paying more for private health insurance while getting less value in return”.
It cited runaway premiums, low-value offerings and shady tactics like removing cover for some procedures or closing off policies to be replaced by policies with higher premiums.
Every year since 2008, premium increases outstripped inflation, health-sector inflation, average weekly earnings, and the indexation of the Medicare Benefits Schedule, the report said.
Over the six years to June 2025, benefits for in-hospital treatment rose by just 18.1 while profits in the private medical sector rose nearly 50 per cent over the same period.
Meanwhile, other evidence suggests that private hospitals are commondifying health – concentrating on the quick, routine procedures and leaving the complicated, risky, and emergency procedures to the public system. That is the way to greater profits.
And specialists’ gap fees have gone up 73 per cent since 2010, and that is adjusted for inflation.
In the words of former Prime Minister John Howard, health cover is now a barbecue stopper. He was referring to the work-life balance in 2001 – without the slightest admission that his policies were causing the problem, just as his policies are the root cause of what the health system is experiencing now.
Indeed, the issue is so financially severe it has moved up the socio-economic ladder to become a dinner-party stopper.
But it is a slow-ticking time bomb for Labor. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese cannot forever rely on a presumption that Medicare will always be better under Labor. As health costs rise and critical care is delayed, voters will not accept that Australia cannot afford prompt, quality, free health care. We had it in the late 1980s, why can’t we have it now, they will rightly ask.
And if it continues the way it is going, they will be susceptible to any snake-oil promises made by the Coalition or One Nation.
Voters want politicians to fix things.
It is the same with housing. Again, anecdotal evidence tells the story of young adults staying with parents longer; finding it impossible to find rentals; or finding that saving for a deposit is an impossible chase of moving goalposts as prices spiral.
Government policy is the root cause of the housing crisis. Policies aimed at alleviating it – home-buyer concessions and the like – have only ever added fuel to the demand fire, and fear of missing out fans the flames. Other indirectly related policies have made it worse, especially tax and high immigration.
Blaming poor supply is misguided. High demand causes shortages. It is basic economics that neither major party nor the Greens will acknowledge.
But ordinary voters are very attuned to it. A Resolve Political Monitor report last week showed a radical difference between what voters say and what politicians do.
Two-thirds of voters supported the radical proposition that ALL immigration should stop until the supply of housing has caught up with demand. It showed that 81 per cent of voters thought that immigration is too high because “there are not enough houses and it pushes prices up”. Seventy-three percent said high immigration puts pressure on health and education services”.
These are big majorities stating the obvious. Voters will rightly ask why bring in a net 316,000 people a year when you cannot house or provide health and education for the people already here.
The Government should take note of these opinions and have a sensible winding back of immigration to a level where Australia’s population is steady. That way it can avoid this issue becoming very nasty. The same poll showed record support for One Nation. Its immigration rhetoric is laced with racism and intolerance.
One Nation support is now at 14 per cent. That jump is critical. It would result in One Nation getting a senator elected in each state. Over two cycles it would have 12 senators which would have a poisonous influence on all policies as governments of any complexion tried to cobble together a majority to get legislation through the Senate.
A sensible winding back would not be racist or anti-immigrant. To the contrary, it would take dangerous heat out of the issue and reduce support for One Nation.
The danger for Labor – in the light of jobs for mates and smelly travel-allowance arrangements – is that it gets branded with the epithet: “They’re all the same.”
It should (and can) be the party that fixes things – like Assistant Minister Andrew Leigh is fixing bad consumer experiences – and not the party of picking mates for jobs and government-paid travel for family members to attend nice events, as revealed in the past week or so. And, of course, the anecdotal scandal stories spread by word of mouth rapidly in a corrosive, vote-depleting way.
Crispin Hull
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times and other Australian media on 9 December 2025.
Further to my previous comment, tonight’s news has the RBA considering a rate hike. Rate hikes only quell demand from those who are faced with non tax deductible interest rate expenses ie young first home buyers. Those aspirational older investors just pass it over to their accountant for a write-off. Here’s a question for the government, “If housing demand is currently causing a housing price spiral, then who are the current buyers?” Clamp down on that demand and you are three quarters there.
RE: Ending Corporate Tricks. Good luck Glynn Palmer and John F. Simmons: I have emailed the relevant minister many times about similar issues and only ever received one reply which assured me the regulators have everything under control in the consumer’s’ interests.
One Nation have a policy of reducing immigration to 120,000 per year. That is still higher than the 80,000 per year it was before John Howard tripled it. I support this policy but not for the reasons many of the One Nation supporters have. A net inflow of 80,000 per year will be enough to cover the low fertility rate and would result in our population stabilizing at about 30 million in twenty years time.
“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world, is either a madman or an economist.” Kenneth Boulding (1910-1993)
Health and housing are the two policies outlined within the article and both are complex to fix. Health and housing have deteriorated over many, many decades. Immigration is a current factor but it has not been the sole factor or even a root cause.
Health has been compromised by warring political ideologies since Whitlam first introduced Medicare. The largest impact was Howard’s Private Health Insurance with punitive tax penalties for those who chose to opt out. Covid created the necessity of telehealth but the government wound it back due to Budget cost (increased consultations) whereas GPs charged normal fees for 5 minute calls. The whole health system needs a program of modernisation (once promised under the current government but swept under an empty hospital bed).
Housing deteriorated through tax concessions and advantages spreading from the wealthy (eg trusts, Pitt St farmers, etc) to middle class welfare in the same manner as superannuation benefits. A major flaw in housing, apart from concessions like NG and CGT, is the application of tax exemptions on the primary residence. This has allowed owner builders, renovators etc to play the loopholes where, along with Mum’n’Dad aspirational investors, form a large block of demand. Housing will never be fixed until its foundations are corrected for current social needs.
The Albanese government, in my opinion, has been a major disappointment. It’s main achievement has been correcting the many errors of the Abbott and Morrison governments (Turnbull never rose above the destructive faction of the Right).