Blog No. 178 - Greg Hunt, the Department of Health and Penny Shakespeare - Part 1: 17 February 2025

Some of the claimed reasons why Greg Hunt and the Health Department refused to order the health insurers to obey the law were revealed in phone conversations.  Greg Hunt used abuse.  Penny Shakespeare – a lawyer – thought the law had no role to play in working out what the insurers were obliged to do.

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Margaret was one of the many people Penny Shakespeare from the Health Department was content to see die by agreeing the health insurers could refuse to obey the law.  This photo shows Margaret and me at our wedding on the 30th of July 2009.

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We had such a wonderful wedding!

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The evidence that the Department of Health refused to enforce the law is damning.

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Health Minister Greg Hunt rang Lift CEO Lauren Whiting at 12.15 pm on Thursday 8 August 2019 and abused her for asking him to enforce the law.  Some “lowlights” from the Minister’s abuse that day are these.

Greg Hunt Hello Lauren, this is Greg Hunt I do not appreciate you emailing me….. So I wanted to call you and be very direct This is a private commercial matter We have helped you out with this before and we did you a favour Advantage is being taken I am not your personal claims officer…. I do not appreciate you contacting me through my private email account…. Said he is sorry if he sounds terse But this is a private commercial matter and we need to let it play out through due process through The Department

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Before this phone conversation, Hunt had used his Ministerial authority to order Bupa to obey the law.  Obviously, the outcry from the health insurers was so great when he did this that he decided he would never again upset the health insurers.  

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The most logical explanation for the behaviour of the Health Department is that the relevant senior officer – a former lawyer called Penny Shakespeare – was corrupt.  An alternative explanation is that Penny Shakespeare was totally incompetent. Penny Shakespeare was Deputy Secretary, Health Financing, in the Department of Health.  

As a lawyer, she knew that the cost of obeying the law does not provide an acceptable reason for ignoring the law.  Despite this, the cost to the health insurers seems to have been the primary reason she put forward for protecting the insurers.

Here are some of the extraordinary things Penny Shakespeare said when she made a phone call to the Board of Lift Cancer Care Services Pty Ltd on the 15th May 2020.

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We've been looking into this very closely for months now. We've been looking very carefully at what you've provided to us and what the insurers have provided to us. Our policy position is we're not going to intervene to say get ministerial directions, because we don't think that this is a practice that should be encouraged under the private health insurance act.

As far as Penny Shakespeare was concerned, the law was irrelevant.  The Department refused to recommend that the Minister enforce the law because the Department did not think health insurers ought to be forced to pay when cancer patients received treatments at Lift.

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That's our position. We've done what we can to work with the insurers, to get them to pay the claims that you were just speaking with them. We've been unable to achieve that with this insurance, although there have been some things in previous success with working with others. I'm afraid that there's nothing more the department can do.

The Department had told the health insurers that it would not enforce the law and for some reason not then obvious to Penny Shakespeare, the health insurers had not agreed to obey the law.

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We have spent so much time over the last two years, working through your claims against various insurers, from a business model that seems to be something schemed up, to get around the rules rather than to follow them.

Penny Shakespeare had decided that claims for services given by Lift should not be payable under the law.  Penny was not going to try and change the law.   Penny intended to let the health insurers continue to ignore the law … and Penny defamed Lift by claiming that it was not trying to help cancer patients but had cooked up a money making scheme even though the law is extremely clear that the health insurers had a duty to pay the claims.

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The next two snippets from the Penny Shakespeare Bulls**t on the 5th of May 2020 phone conversations are very revealing.  Here, she admits the Minister had power to order the health insurers to obey the law.  She also asserted – falsely – that the claims made on the health insurers were for the cost of the treatments.  She must have known this was a lie.  The claims had only ever been for the cost of the hospital admission, not the treatments given after admission.

We looked at this over a number of months. We've spoken to the insurers, we've spoken with Lauren [Whiting], we forwarded detailed descriptions of the issues with the Type C certificates, to Lauren from the insurers. What you're asking us to do is get the minister to direct health insurance to pay for services, when it is unclear why the patient has been admitted to the hospital for a GP consultation. And where a lot of the information being provided is so this is not the GP consultation, it's exercise medicines.

Shakespeare knew the Minister had the power to order the insurers to obey the law, but would not recommend he do this.  She falsely said the claims were for the treatments given after admission.  She certainly knew that was false.  She also said the cost of hospital admission should not be payable by the insurers unless the reason for hospital admission was clear.  She knew this was legally and factually untrue.  The law did not require this and the insurers already knew that Lift patients were seriously ill with cancer.

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But the department cannot just tell the insurers to pay a claim. We don't have an authority to do that under the act.

Shakespeare is now saying she was a lawyer and I knew this was Bulls**t, but she had to say something, even though she was obviously contradicting herself.  Because the Lift Board were not lawyers (she hoped), and because they were stupid, they might not realise what she was saying was a complete lie.

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The fix was in.  The Department was not at all concerned about the welfare of people who were suffering from cancer.  The Department was concerned only to provide a Protection Racket for the insurers to ensure that they did not have to obey the law.

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Remember … this Bulls**t was spouted by a lawyer.  Bulls**t Baffles Brains is on full public display here.