MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Dr WEBSTER (Mallee) (15:46): If confidence delivered outcomes, I'm sure that the Labor Party would do a fabulous job, but the fact of the matter is it doesn't. Nobody held back, nobody left behind—that was the promise of this prime minister. Older Australians remember it.
They were told this prime minister understood aged care, the cost of living and dignity. Now they actually see the truth. Labor has broken faith with the people who built this country—those who worked hard, paid taxes, raised families, volunteered, served their towns and did the right thing all their lives.
Many went without so they could keep private health insurance not for luxury but for security. They wanted to know that—if they needed a hip replacement, a knee replacement, surgery or specialist care—they would not be left waiting in pain in that incredibly long queue. What has Labor done?
It has targeted them. Labor wants Australians over 65 to pay more for private health cover. More than three million older Australians will be hit.
Many will pay hundreds more a year. Some couples could be forced to find well over $1,000 extra. For pensioners and self-funded retirees on fixed incomes, that is not loose change.
It is the groceries. It's the fuel. It's the medicine.
It's the power bill. This is not fairness; it is a blatant Labor tax grab on older Australians. There is nothing fair about punishing people for ageing, nothing fair about telling someone in their 70s after decades of premiums that they're now the budget problem, and nothing fair about pushing people out of private health and pretending public hospitals can absorb the pressure.
In regional Australia, we know what happens when the system is stretched. People wait longer. They travel further.
They sit on lists. Families take time off work to drive mum or dad hundreds of kilometres for care. When Labor makes private health more expensive, it does not just hurt household budgets; it piles pressure onto already stretched hospitals across the nation.
Aged care is no better. Older Australians were promised dignity and better care. Instead, too many are waiting a year or more for the support they need to stay safe at home.
They deteriorate while they wait, as the member for Gippsland aptly described—many of the constituents in my electorate. Families are left exhausted. Some end up in hospital beds because help did not arrive on time.
Home support is not a luxury. Help with showering is not a luxury. Meals, transport, cleaning, nursing and personal care are not extras.
They allow an older person to stay in their own home in their own town close to the people they love. Yet, under Labor, older Australians are told to wait, pay more and accept less. They are pushed through phone assessments and computer systems when what they need is a person who will listen.
I hear from older people who are proud and independent. They do not ask for much. They want to pay their bills, see a doctor, stay safe at home, keep the private cover they worked hard to maintain.
They want respect, not lectures. Labor has no credible plan for the future of the Commonwealth Home Support Program beyond 1 July 2027. That matters.
These basic services keep people out of hospital and out of residential care for longer. This is the Labor pattern. Promise compassion, then bill Australians for it promised reform, then deliver delay.
Promise fairness, then make older Australians pay. Older Australians are not the problem. They are the backbone of this country.
They built the roads, staffed the hospitals, ran farms, opened businesses, built homes, cared for children, paid taxes and held communities together through drought, flood, fire and hardship. Older Australians are not savings measures—better than a health policy that forces a choice between insurance and food, better than an aged-care system that makes people wait until their health collapses.
Labor's attacks on older Australians must stop. This parliament should stand with older Australians. They kept their end of the bargain.
It's time this government kept theirs too.