Private Health Insurance Amendment (Modernising the Private Health Insurance Rebate) Bill 2026
Dr TRISH COOK (Bullwinkel) (11:47): Today, I rise to speak in support of the Private Health Insurance Amendment (Modernising the Private Health Insurance Rebate) Bill 2026. Before coming to this place, I spent decades working as a registered nurse and midwife, and, when you spend your life on the front line of healthcare, you learn very quickly that every health system is really about practical care, responsible choices of where resources go, dignity for people and when systems are well supported.
You can see the strain that's placed on hospitals and families when aged-care services fall behind. This legislation delivers on our 2026-27 budget commitment to modernise our health framework and, crucially, to deliver more funding into aged care. This reform is about fairness, and it's also about intergenerational equity.
Above all, it's about making the deliberate, responsible choice to reinvest every single dollar saved from the private health insurance rebate straight back into aged care because the dignity and quality of life for our older Australians is crucial. It's what they deserve. To understand why this bill is necessary, let's look at the current private health insurance rebate operations.
Under existing arrangements, the Commonweal provides a higher percentage rebate to Australians aged over 65. That's regardless of their income. A retiree on a substantial, comfortable income receives a greater taxpayer funded percentage discount on their private health premium than a younger working family on an identical or even lower income who are balancing mortgages, child care and the daily pressures of modern life.
The current policy has become increasingly hard to defend. I have had complaints. I met with a constituent—let's call him Geoff—in my office.
He was complaining about this reform. I have received many emails from constituents raising their concerns as well, but let's take Geoff as an example. He is a gentleman who is retired.
He is on a joint income with his wife of $180,000 a year. He is the owner of three investment properties. He has had his children grow up, go through school and university, and move on.
It's hard to defend why he should continue to get an extra rebate as opposed to young families who are paying off a mortgage and have the same joint income but also have the added expenses of child care and education ahead of them. This bill addresses the inequity of that. It provides the private health insurance rebate for older Australians to the same standard as everyone else—it's income based, not age based.
Crucially, this bill does not withdraw from older Australians the private health insurance support that we all get. The government will still contribute to subsidised discounts of up to 24 per cent of their private health insurance premiums—the exact same level of support that is provided to younger people. We must face the reality of the long-term sustainability of Australia's private health insurance ecosystem.
Private health insurance works only when there is broad, balanced participation across all age cohorts. Australians under 65, on average, pay more in private health premiums and draw less in benefits from them. Younger, healthier participants are effectively cross-subsidising older and higher-risk policyholders, ensuring that private cover remains viable for everyone.
But if we price younger people out, or if we maintain settings that are fundamentally unfair across generational lines, then young people will drop their cover. When younger Australians exit private health insurance, the risk pool deteriorates, average claims spike, premiums rise across the entire system and the burden ultimately falls right back onto the older policyholders and the public health system.
By aligning the rebate tiers so that support is based strictly on financial means, rather than age, we restore that intergenerational balance. We ensure that younger Australians feel that the system is fair, encouraging them to maintain their cover, while ensuring that older Australians continue to benefit from substantial income tested relief. Governing responsibly means making hard decisions.
I recognise that the changes to the subsidies will impact people in my electorate, and we understand that not everyone will welcome this change. However, good government cannot simply be about maintaining legacy policies that no longer stack up on equity grounds. It's about having the courage to make a principled choice and ensuring that public money delivers the greatest possible benefit to our society.
We have made the decision to take every dollar saved by modernising this rebate and channel it directly into aged care, where it is so desperately needed. This will deliver a massive, transformative $3 billion investment back to older Australians. This is a direct transfer of resources back to the generation that built this country, targeted precisely where the need is most acute: in our aged-care homes, in residential support, in dementia care and in our home-care packages.
Older Australians in Bullwinkel, across Western Australia and across the nation don't just need a rebate calculation; they need guaranteed access to high-quality aged care when they need it most. They need certainty that, if they want to remain in their own homes as they age, the services are going to be there to support them. They need to know that, if they require residential care, there will be an accredited high-standard bed available in their local community.
That's what this $3 billion investment will deliver. It'll deliver more residential aged-care beds. It expands the Support at Home packages.
It will drive down waiting times. It lifts the overall standard of care across our aged-care network. Having just recently visited BaptistCare in York over the weekend and having seen the standard of aged care that's being delivered to people in the rural areas of my electorate, it was heartwarming to know that that standard of care was extremely high and the staff were extremely generous, caring and compassionate.
This funding builds directly upon the structural reforms of the Albanese Labor government that we delivered in our first term, where we incentivised the construction of new beds for aged-care residents. Aged-care providers, particularly those serving our outer suburban fringes, regional towns and rural communities, need capital certainty. They need the confidence to plan, construct and maintain modern, fit-for-purpose residential accommodation.
This investment delivers that long-term stability. Furthermore, this legislation directly supports our first response to the Independent Review of Residential Aged Care Accommodation Pricing, which was released on 22 April. That review laid out a comprehensive, evidence based roadmap to build a sustainable residential sector that truly delivers the homes that older Australians deserve.
Through our response to the review, we are delivering targeted new capital subsidies and updates to the accommodation supplement for supported residents, unlocking an additional 5,000 residential beds every single year. It delivers an active consultation process with providers on capital assistance mechanisms to help accelerate the construction of modern facilities, especially in underserved areas.
In communities like Bullwinkel, spanning the Perth Hills and down through our expanding valleys and regional districts, we cannot afford to have a shortage of aged-care beds. Where local beds are unavailable, older residents are forced to move away from their lifelong communities, their families, their GP networks and their social ties. That's unacceptable.
By funding 5,000 new beds annually, we can keep older Australians connected to the towns and the suburbs that they love. Reform must always go hand in hand with listening. As I say, I have listened to the people that have written to me about this item, including Geoff, who I sat down with for an hour.
Most Australians want to stay in their homes for as long as safely as possible, surrounded by the memories and the communities that they cherish. That's why our government has introduced the new Support at Home program as well as this reform. We have been closely monitoring the rollout of Support at Home to ensure it achieves its core mission of delivering more packages, higher quality support and shorter waiting times.
Importantly, when our communities spoke up about aspects of that rollout, we listened. We heard clear concerns regarding the treatment of essential daily living assistance. In direct response to the community feedback, our government changed the treatment of showering services under the Support at Home package, ensuring that showering is now provided completely free of charge alongside clinical care.
That is what a responsive government looks like. We assess how the programs work on the ground. We identify where the burden falls, particularly where it falls unfairly on vulnerable people, and we fix it.
Reinvesting rebate savings directly into this framework makes Support at Home more affordable, more dignifying and fairer for every Australian who relies on it. As someone with a clinical background in nursing, I also want to speak particularly to the specialised healthcare challenges facing our older population. Dementia is one of the most complex, emotionally demanding health challenges facing Australian families today, and it places immense emotional and physical demands on carers, loved ones and clinicians alike.
Our government is allocating over $200 million from these savings to establish 20 additional specialist dementia care program units. These are units that provide tailored intensive clinical and behavioural support for people experiencing severe behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia, offering a calm, structured and compassionate environment just like the one I saw in York at the BaptistCare aged-care centre.
While this bill modernises the rebate structure to fund aged care, the Albanese Labor government remains resolutely committed to the ongoing affordability and value of private health cover. We know that private health insurance plays an indispensable role alongside Medicare in the Australian health architecture, and this is why the government is actively engaging with the sector and examining a wide range of industry identified reform options to reduce unnecessary procedural costs, cut administration waste and ensure policyholders receive genuine value for every dollar they spend on their premiums.
The government will continue to work collaboratively with insurers, private hospitals, medical professionals and consumers to keep private coverage robust and sustainable. We could have left an outdated, unbalanced subsidy arrangement untouched, ignoring the growing intergenerational gap and the structural pressures on our health system. Instead, the Albanese Labor government has chosen fairness, we have chosen simplicity and, above all, we have chosen to back older Australians where it counts.
It counts the most in regard to their health, their homes and their care. By aligning the private health insurance rebate so that all Australians are supported on the basis of income rather than age, we treat taxpayers equitably. By pouring the $3 billion in resulting savings straight back into aged care, we're delivering more residential beds, expanding home care, funding specialist dementia services and guaranteeing that older Australians can age with the respect and quality of life that they have earned.
This bill strengthens Medicare, supports our broader health system and prepares our aged-care sector for generations to come. I commend the bill to the House.