The federal government has left the door open to granting Medibank Private's policyholders a head start in the health insurer's $4 billion sharemarket float.
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Finance Minister Mathias Cormann is facing calls to give long-term policyholders priority access to shares in the initial public offering and a ''meaningful'' discount to all retail shareholders.
The Australian Shareholders Association said small investors s should get access to shares at 10¢ a share lower than institutional investors.
The ASA said policyholders should get priority if the IPO was oversubscribed.
The issue of what rights Medibank's customer base should have has been a thorny one for the government since the Howard government prepared to float the insurer in 2006 before pulling back to give the final tranche of Telstra shares priority in going to market.
Then prime minister John Howard and his treasurer Peter Costello supported giving policyholders incentives in a float.
Senator Cormann said on Thursday no decision had been made on whether to give policyholders priority in the float, expected early next year. ''The precise structure of the sale, including any incentives to policyholders, will be decided closer to the sale,'' he said.
In 2006, the government faced furious opposition to a sale, led by broadcaster Alan Jones who called it ''immoral''. In a radio editorial on Thursday he sounded a warning that his view had not changed.
As part of the confidential scoping study in Medibank, Senator Cormann is understood to have obtained updated legal advice that the federal government has no obligation to pay out Medibank Private customers in the same way that members of MBF and Manchester Unity paid cash to members and NIB granted shares when they were sold.
Former Liberal finance minister Nick Minchin was forced to seek legal advice in 2006 after a Parliamentary Services report found that Medibank was best characterised as a government controlled not-for-profit entity and therefore was ''not strictly owned by either the Commonwealth or the fund members''.
At the time, Medibank's founding chief executive, Ray Williams, said he believed there was a ''moral obligation to compensate Medibank's members''.
