CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS
Mr PIKE (Bowman) (09:48): During the winter break, I spent a lot of time talking with locals in my electorate in the Redlands. Hundreds attended community coffee catch ups that I held in Birkdale, Cleveland and Coochiemudlo Island. I knocked on hundreds of doors and spoke to many at local shopping centre visits.
But wherever I went, one issue came up time and time again—Labor's cuts to the private health insurance rebate. For many older Redlanders private health insurance isn't a luxury. It's something they've paid into for decades.
They have sacrificed to take pressure off public hospitals and often made tough decisions around the kitchen table to keep their cover. Now Labor wants them to pay more. The Albanese government is pressing ahead with cuts to the private health insurance rebate for Australians over 65.
It says this is about fairness between generations, but the reality is that older Australians are simply going to be facing higher costs. In the Redlands, there are 23,169 people over the age of 65 with private health insurance. Together, they account for more than 23,000 hospital admissions every year.
Every one of those people who keeps their private health cover helps ease pressure on an already stretched public system. The government argues these cuts will save money, but the department's own actuarial modelling suggests the opposite. It found that, while the Commonwealth would save around $481 million, the resulting increase in demand on public hospitals would cost governments around $547 million.
In other words, taxpayers end up paying more, while patients wait longer. These cuts come after another round of premium increases and during a cost-of-living crisis that is already stretching household budgets. National Seniors has warned that some older Australians could end up paying more than $1,000 each year to keep the level of cover they already have.
Three million Australians are expected to dump their private health cover as a result of this policy. Thousands of Redlanders have done the right thing by maintaining private health insurance and helping to take pressure off our public hospitals; now they're being penalised for making that sacrifice. Stephen from Victoria Point wrote to me, 'The message that Labor is sending to young Australians is that they're better off not saving, not investing and certainly not taking out health insurance, but rather relying on government handouts.' Paul from Alexandra Hills told me: 'The government has kicked me in the guts with this insult to older Australians.
Only Labor could deliver a policy that will create higher costs for older Australians and longer waiting lists and still somehow manage to cost the taxpayer far, far more.'