Defence Portfolio

Mr WALLACE (Fisher) (19:11): Those members opposite talk about being the doyens of health care and about providing health services to Australians. There's one thing in the budget that I think I really need to point out to them. I'm very pleased that the Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care is here, but I am very disappointed that the her boss, the Minister for Health and Ageing, is not, because one of the challenges that arose out of this budget was a ripping away of the private health insurance concessions for the over-65s.

Now, Mr Deputy Speaker Wilkie, you're probably of a pretty similar vintage to me. You were told by successive governments: 'Before you turn 30, get private health insurance. You'll get it at a concessional rate, provided you do it before you're 30.

Pay your premiums. You'll have access to a cheaper form of private health insurance. You'll have the ability to choose your doctor, go to a private hospital and, effectively, be treated much more quickly than you would through the public system.' And we relied on that representation—on successive representations from successive governments.

Relying on those representations was not an unreasonable expectation of the Australian people. Yet deep within the bowels of these budget documents lies the ripping away of these concessions for the over-65s. I put out a petition a couple of weeks ago.

More than 6,000 people have signed this petition. I was at the Maleny show on the weekend. People were coming up to me and complaining bitterly about the budget in general, but older people were talking to me about the ripping away of these concessions, because it's just blatantly unfair.

It is a breach of trust from this government. The whole budget is a breach of trust from this government, but if we're now talking about health related matters, it is specifically a breach of trust about how people chose to care for and invested in caring for their own private health needs. And it was an investment, because we—'we' being the older generation, and I suppose I'm in those ranks now—made that decision decades ago and paid premiums for decades based on the assumption that future governments would abide by that decision.

Now this Albanese Labor government has ripped that away from older people. You might say, and I've heard members opposite say, 'Oh, it's only a couple of hundred dollars.' No, that's not right. If you are a couple and you happen to be on the gold standard of private health insurance, it's about $1,630 extra that these people have to find.

When they're on fixed incomes, it's really hard to find an extra $1,600 a year for your private health insurance. It's really hard— An honourable member: You can shop around. Mr WALLACE: I'll take the interjection from those opposite saying 'shop around'.

We have a situation where small private hospitals, particularly in rural and regional Australia, are saying, 'If these changes are brought in'—they're already doing it tough, some of these smaller private hospitals—'and we see an exodus of people leaving private health insurance once they're over 65, it will make our business models financially unviable.' That means job losses; it means a lack of access to health care rather than better access to health care like those members opposite so often tell us that they're so good at.

I don't understand it. No-one has been able to explain to me why this magic age of over 65 is a trigger. Why is it that when you need private health insurance the most, as you get older and more frail, that this government is ripping away the access to private health insurance?

Prime Minister, why are you doing it? (Time expired)