MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE

Ms WHITE (Lyons—Assistant Minister for Women, Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care and Assistant Minister for Indigenous Health) (15:23): I'll tell you what's a disgrace, Deputy Speaker: the deliberate scaring of older Australians that is occurring with the comments that have been made by the coalition members on the other side of this chamber and by the shadow minister who just resumed her seat.

The shadow minister has disgracefully scared older Australians by repeating the lines of the insurance industry, stating that there will be an $11 billion hit to older Australians with private health insurance. There was independent modelling released last week and there was modelling released by the Treasury that refutes that categorically. I call on those opposite to be more responsible.

Older Australians deserve to be treated with more respect than what they're being shown by those opposite. Older Australians have been prioritised by our government. It was our government, in 2022, that came to power with a commitment to deliver— The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): Member for Mallee, you were heard in silence.

I want to see the same respect awarded to the assistant minister. Ms WHITE: It was our government that came into office in 2022 with a clear mandate from the people of Australia to invest in care, to invest in our aged-care system and to invest in our healthcare system. That is what we have delivered—a $47 billion investment in aged care this year that will see more Australians get access to the packages of care that they deserve and more aged-care beds built and delivered right across the country.

This is a government that came to office after 10 years of a coalition government that neglected aged care, that cut funding to aged care and that oversaw a royal commission with one word as the title of that report, and it was 'neglect'. You come in here and preach about neglect. How about you look in a mirror and take responsibility for the outrageous way you treated older Australians and the neglect that you showed when you were in government?

Our government has not only prioritised care, taken that to the Australian people and receive their endorsement, but we have delivered on that. We have delivered on increases in wages for our aged-care workforce, who are the people at the very coalface looking after our older Australians. We have invested in a universal healthcare system through Medicare.

We have provided greater access to bulk-billing doctor appointments. Just today, 84 per cent of doctor appointments across the country are fully bulk-billed, a significant increase because of the investment our government has made into healthcare. That benefits Australians of every age, including older Australians who can now go to a doctor for free.

We have made 137 Medicare urgent care clinics permanent, providing an option for older Australians, for all Australians of any age, to go and access the urgent healthcare that they need. That was a policy initiative that was designed and delivered by our Labor government. We have provided access to cheaper medicines, an initiative that is benefiting thousands upon thousands of Australians, including many thousands of older Australians who are now able to access the medicines that they deserve.

Many of them are now just $7.70, a price that will remain in place until 2030. Our government has provided record hospital funding with the National Health Reform Agreement which concluded this year and sees $219.6 billion invested into our state and territory hospitals right around the country over the next five years. That will include access to elective surgeries.

Now, I don't for one minute deny the fact that there are older Australians who are worried about what the changes to the private health insurance subsidy will mean for their ability to retain their private health insurance. I've met with people in my electorate and I've spoken to them, but I think it's very unhelpful of the coalition to come in here and parrot the lines of industry and continue to scare older Australians.

Mr Small: We're not here to be helpful. Ms WHITE: You should be here to be helpful. I'll take that interjection.

You should be here working on behalf of all Australians, including older Australians, who expect you to come in here and be constructive. You should be coming in here and thinking about the ways that you can support good policy design and delivery, but instead you come in here and say you want to be oppositional and unhelpful. We have an obligation to be responsible and that is the way that we take our jobs and do it seriously.

I would encourage you, through the Deputy Speaker, to encourage those opposite to do the same. There are Australians who've raised this question with me, and I think it's really important to put some facts on the table. The $3 billion that the government will be able to realise through this change in policy will all go to investing in services for older Australians.

It will mean more aged-care beds. It will mean more packages of care. That $3 billion is only going to be used to support older Australians to access the care that they need to deal with some of the challenges the honourable member raised in her contribution.

She spoke about wait times. Well, I'll tell you what. They've come down under Labor.

She spoke about problems that she's hearing in conversations with her constituents. It's a Labor government that took seriously the recommendations from the royal commission and invested record amounts of money into our aged-care system. It is important to recognise where the money will be going, and it is also important to recognise what the independent modelling and the Treasury modelling tells us.

The $11 billion figure that the shadow minister bandies around is very, very different to the independent analysis and the Treasury analysis, and I think older Australians should be comforted by the fact that what the fearmongering opposite is forecasting is, in fact, very different to what Treasury has provided advice to us about. Treasury advice shows that about 44,000 people may choose to exit private health insurance, which is a 0.4 per cent decline compared to current settings.

That is very different from what those opposite are saying. The independent research, which was released last week, that I referenced has confirmed that the impact will be minimal. Researchers have said: … this reform won't cause a mass exodus from private health insurance, and definitely won't overwhelm public hospitals as some states predict.

We want all Australians to have access to the health care that they deserve. We want our system to be fair and equitable. This is returning to the model that was designed and implemented under former prime minister John Howard, which means that if you take out private health insurance you receive a rebate.

I think it's important to put that on the record too, because there's been a lot of scaremongering, where older Australians have heard that they will lose it entirely. That is not true. You will receive a rebate based on income, and for the majority of older Australians that'll be a rebate of about 24 per cent.

That is important to note because I think a lot of people have been made to worry unnecessarily and have heard figures in the thousands of dollars that they are supposed to find to maintain their private health insurance, when in fact the Treasury modelling indicates it should be about $250 a year. I recognise that for some families and for some older Australians that might be a lot of money, but that is also why we've invested in Medicare.

We've made it free to see a GP, we've made medicines cheaper, we've invested in the Medicare urgent care clinic network, which provides more people with access to a health professional wherever they live and to not have to worry about the out-of-pocket expense. This has to be seen in the context of our investment in the broader health system. Seeing it in isolation ignores the investment that we are making in other ways and in other complementary parts of the healthcare system.

I recognise that there will be some people in our community who are worried about this and I want to reassure them that we continue to work very closely to make sure this is implemented in a way that is sympathetic. But I also call on the private health insurance industry to be responsible here. I have spoken directly with the private health insurance industry, I've heard their feedback and I ask them that, if they are worried about holding on to those loyal customers of theirs who've paid private health insurance for many years, then why don't they reward those customers by reducing the cost they pay annually?

One sure way to retain those older Australians in the private health insurance system and to reward their loyalty over many years of paying private health insurance payments would be for those private health insurance companies to offer them a discount. There is nothing stopping them from doing that. Rewarding loyalty would be a surefire way to retain their customers if they value them as much as they claim to, and I believe that they do.

So I look forward to seeing how they might respond to that opportunity. The Labor Party and this government take our responsibility to all Australians of all ages incredibly seriously, and we are continuing to deliver a healthcare system that works for everyone.