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Should The Australian Government Privatise Medibank

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Should the Australian Government privatise Medibank Private?

Since the 1990s the Commonwealth and State governments of Australia has privatised a sizeable portion of the public sector (Reserve Bank of Australia 1997). The prospect of privatising Medibank has been a controversial matter since its proposal by the Howard government in 2006, although the former government failed to do so, the Abott government announced on March 26th, 2014 that the company will be sold off through an initial public offering (IPO) in the 2014-15 financial year (Mcllroy 2014). This essay will argue that Medibank Private should be privatised and sold publicly through an IPO for short and long term economic and social benefits. In order to determine the …show more content…

Therefore, it could be argued that the sale would not only raise money for the government but will also help to strengthen the health insurance market as a whole.

The capital raised from the sale of Medibank through the IPO could be used for further social and economic projects. Finance Minister Cormann refrained from stating a value of the insurer but went on to state that the government wants to invest the money raised from the IPO in infrastructure, details of the exact plans will be seen when the budget is revealed on 13 May 2013 (Griffiths 2014). Sloan (2014) writes that based on current multiples and the evaluation done by the Howard government it is projected that 4 billion to 6 billion dollars could be raised and redeployed to generate greater social benefits including funding for new infrastructure. He goes on to write that the privatisation would make the company more productive and the tax the government would receive from the privatised company would increase substantially (Sloan 2014). This argument is supported by King (2003) who noted that privatisation raised over 100 billion dollars for the government since 1990 (King 2002). Given that the government’s debt is forecasted to reach 400 billion dollars within 4 year, this sale would help pay down a part of it (Durkin 2014).

The main argument by the people opposing the sale is that privatisation would increase the premium of Medibank. At this point it is important to examine the

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