CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS

Mr BOYCE (Flynn) (10:06): More than three million older Australians are facing a crushing financial blow under this Labor government, with private health insurance premium increases of up to $807 per year for singles and up to $1,614 for couples. Why? It's because of Labor's $11 billion tax grab targeting private health insurance.

For older Australians on fixed incomes who are already struggling with the relentless cost-of-living crisis, this policy leaves them with a bitter, agonising choice. They have been forced to cut spending on basic daily essentials and to downgrade their health cover or give it up entirely. What makes this policy particularly cruel is who it impacts the most: those who have spent a lifetime sacrificing to keep their private health insurance cover.

We are talking about seniors who worked hard, budgeted strictly and sacrificed family holidays, new cars and small everyday luxuries year after year specifically to ensure they wouldn't be a burden on the public health system in their later years. They paid into their health insurance funds faithfully—in many cases, for their entire working lives—believing that their sacrifice would guarantee them peace of mind when they needed it the most in their older years.

Now, on fixed pensions, they are being priced out and forced out. National Seniors Australia reports that an astonishing 45 per cent of people relying solely on the age pension hold private health insurance. These aren't wealthy individuals.

They are everyday pensioners who did everything right and are now being forced to abandon the very safety net they spent decades sacrificing to build. Labor's own department admitted in writing that pensioners would be forced to cut back, downgrade or drop their cover under this policy. The Minister for Health and Ageing originally claimed that only 44,000 pensioners would be affected.

That claim has now been completely blown apart. New polling reveals that almost 40 per cent of seniors in outer suburban and regional Australia are ready to drop their cover altogether. This isn't just a coalition complaint.

State health ministers in Queensland, Tasmania and New South Wales have all sounded the alarm. They know exactly what happens when hundreds of thousands of seniors are forced out of private cover and flood the public hospital system, which is already at breaking point. By stripping away an additional rebate—a four per cent cut for those over 65 and an eight per cent cut for those over 70—Canberra is pulling off a cheap cost shift.

The federal government pockets the cash while state emergency departments and public waiting lists pick up the pieces. Private health insurance is a vital buffer for our health network. Why doesn't this Labor government understand the real-world impact of punishing the very people who've spent a lifetime contributing to it?