MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE

Dr WEBSTER (Mallee) (15:13): Labor were cunning with the spin when they fooled Australians into electing them into power. Now, in government, Labor are shockers—absolute shockers. The shocking thing is that older Australians are suffering and dying because of Labor's incompetence in government.

Labor are trying to cover that up by dividing Australians yet again. This time, Labor are making it about young versus old. They call it 'intergenerational equity'.

Give me a break. While Labor talk about intergenerational equity, they are targeting older Australians with an $11 billion tax grab on private health insurance while leaving older Australians waiting for the care they desperately need. Let me be clear.

Pensioners and self-funded retirees live on fixed incomes, and, in many cases, those are not very high incomes. Some of them sacrifice heavily so they can keep up with their private health cover, yet Labor expects them to absorb higher private health insurance premiums. They have no real choice.

Older Australians will have to pay more, downgrade their cover or give it up altogether. The Minister for Health and Ageing wants Australians to believe that only 44,000 private health customers will be affected. That claim has been blown apart.

National Seniors Australia told me today, based on its July survey, that 400,000 Australians will reduce their level of hospital cover and another 270,000 Australians will drop it altogether. And I might point out to the minister for health that this is not an insurance company; this is the lobby group who work with senior Australians all across Australia—the peak body representing older Australians.

And where do these older Australians go after dropping their cover? Well, surprise, surprise—they'll end up in the public health system, and that will work so well. Lucky there is no pressure there and it's all working swimmingly!

The public health system is already choked up with ambulances ramping, older people unable to be safely discharged and hospitals under enormous pressure. Labor's $11 billion tax grab will simply cost-shift older Australians onto state and territory public health systems. I'm sure they'll be happy about that—the state governments managing their finances so well!

But it's far worse than that. An older Australians might end up in that public health system because they have fallen, had a heart attack or suffered another serious health episode after being stuck at home, getting sicker, waiting for care. So, when we say 'cost-shift' in this House, remember what that actually means.

It can mean an older person deteriorating and fading away at home. It can mean an older person ramped in an ambulance. It can mean an older person stuck on a hospital ward. 'Older person' sounds, really, fairly vague—these are our parents.

These are your parents. These are everybody's parents, their aunts, their uncles, their grandparents. This is a Labor Party that once stood on this side of the House and called the aged-care system a 'national disgrace'.

Yet look at the system on their watch. And what did the health minister say yesterday? The same old broken record—'It's the coalition's fault.' The record is scratched.

After more than four years in government, that is all they have got. They are in government. Labor are responsible.

And, when Labor get into government, they are not just hopeless; they are negligent. They talk about robotic debt determinations while implementing a system that will robotically determine whether an older Australian gets the care they need to stay alive—algorithms. I spoke earlier this week about concerns in my electorate, and I look forward to meeting with the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors next week about the untenable situation with Grampians Community Health in my electorate.

This is not an abstract policy problem. There are real people behind the statistics. One of them is my constituent Lou Horta.

Lou is in his 90s. He is legally blind. He is now in palliative care.

He's been waiting for care for 18 months—and he's still waiting. When Lou came to my mobile office in Talbot last week, he held both my hands and told me what he thought about the Albanese Labor government: I have lived in this country 70 years and have never seen such incompetence. I repeat: 'never seen such incompetence'.

Lou is the human face of Labor's aged-care failure. The government's own data shows a median wait of around 10 months between Support at Home approval and services actually starting. In regional Australia, it can be significantly longer.

National Seniors reports that some applicants are waiting up to 15 months to receive the level of care they have been assessed as needing. These are not just numbers; these are frail, elderly Australians waiting in pain. These are families desperately trying to care for their loved ones.

Labor promised Support at Home would fix wait times. Their own data shows it has not. Even Labor's own people are calling it out.

On Tuesday, Labor's aged care minister in Western Australia said the home care scheme had not lived up to its promise and that the lack of access to services was unacceptable. That's a friend of the Labor Party—a person in the Labor Party. In Western Australia, an inflexible assessment algorithm left a person with Alzheimer's and their 92-year-old carer waiting nine months for services.

This is outrageous. Yesterday, the Leader of the Opposition, the shadow health minister and I met with leading health, seniors and patient groups. We heard directly about the real-world impact of Labor's $11 billion hit to private health insurance.

They are very worried. They are worried about older Australians already struggling with the cost of living. They are worried about the pressure on public hospitals if more seniors are forced to downgrade or drop their cover altogether.

State health ministers in Queensland, Tasmania and New South Wales have also warned that this policy will put more pressure on public hospitals already under strain. Older Australians on fixed incomes are the least able to absorb this price shock. Labor is running out of other people's money, so they're going after the limited resources and the limited incomes of self-funded retirees and pensioners.

It is scandalous; it is a national disgrace. Labor is failing older Australians; they are neglecting older Australians, and Labor is leaving older Australians without the care they need. These are Australians who did the right thing.

They worked, they saved, they scrimped, and they paid their own way. They paid for private health insurance because they wanted security in retirement. Some sacrificed a great many comforts just so they can keep their private health insurance.

What I find absolutely appalling is that these people have, for decades, put money away for private health insurance. At a time when they need it for a hip replacement, a knee replacement, a cataract—our bodies actually wear out; isn't that amazing—they, who have done the right and responsible thing to ensure that they would have a future that they could maintain their responsibility for, this government is prepared to take money out of their pockets to 'fix' a problem created by this government.

It is an absolute disgrace, and the Labor Party needs to own up to its own responsibility.