Private Health Insurance Amendment (Modernising the Private Health Insurance Rebate) Bill 2026
Ms ALDRED (Monash—Opposition Whip) (13:08): They did the right thing. This government is punishing them. I rise to speak on behalf of thousands of families in Monash and millions of older Australians right across this country who are being punished by this government's cut to the private health insurance rebate for Australians aged 65 and over through the Private Health Insurance Amendment (Modernising the Private Health Insurance Rebate) Bill 2026.
This is a government going after people who have worked hard, saved hard and done the right thing. At a moment in their lives when they will most need this assistance, they will be least able to afford it. A few months ago, I asked people across my electorate for feedback on this policy.
In the space of just a few days, I was inundated with hundreds of emails from people who told me they felt let down, hurt and betrayed by another broken promise. There are 1.4 million Australians in the affected age bracket, and this change is set to cost many of them up to $640 more every year. One of the emails I received came from a woman in my electorate I'll call Rhonda.
This is the first time in her life she has written to a member of parliament. Rhonda told me that older Australians are made to feel, by this government's own rhetoric, like they are stealing from younger generations simply by existing. Rhonda's husband spent his whole working life as a brickie and a landscaper.
He spent decades doing physical labour, and that hard work has worn his body down. He has had to scale back his work, and, like many tradies across the Gippsland region, he's going to need real medical support in the years ahead. Rhonda and her husband did everything right.
They worked hard. They saved hard, and, for decades, they paid into private health cover so they would not be a burden on the public system. And, now, because of this rebate cut, they will barely be able to afford to hold on to that cover, precisely at the point in their lives when they will need it the most.
That is desperately unfair. It is wrong and it is bad public policy. Rhonda is far from alone.
Chris wrote to me and simply said, 'I've always had private health insurance until Labor decided to take away my ability to pay for it.' Robyn, an age pensioner who has held cover for more than 50 years, is worried about the growing burden on the health system for people like her who have tried to do the right thing all their lives. I could stand here and read from hundreds more emails just like these, and every single one of them tells the same story.
People have worked hard, saved hard and paid into their own cover for decades so that they would not be a burden on the public system, and now they're being told by their own government that their contribution doesn't count. That is not fair. Let's be clear about what this government has actually done.
Since 2004, Australians aged 65 and over have received a higher private health insurance rebate than younger Australians on the same income, in recognition of the fact that older Australians are more likely to need hospital care. That's just a simple fact. It's a simple reality.
This government's bill rips that recognition away and makes the rebate purely income based. The health minister stood up in question time and called this 'intergenerational equity'. Well, I call it what it is—a broken promise dressed up in fairness language, used to raise $3 billion off the backs of the generation that helped build this country.
This is a government that promised Australians it would ease cost-of-living pressure; instead, it has gone looking for savings in the private health cover of pensioners and retirees on fixed incomes to fix their bad economic management. Now, let's talk about what this actually does to our health system, because this is where the government's own arguments fall to pieces.
The health minister claims there will be no material impact on public hospitals. Every credible piece of evidence outside his own department says otherwise. I draw your attention to Private Healthcare Australia, the peak body representing more than 20 health funds and 50 million Australians with cover.
They estimate that as many as 62,000 older Australians will drop their cover altogether under this change and that a further 200,000 will downgrade it. National Seniors Australia's own member survey found that 8.4 per cent of older Australians are considering dropping their hospital cover entirely and 12½ per cent are considering downgrading—figures that, if reflected across our entire population, would mean that up to 270 000 people will be dropping their cover and 400,000 will be downgrading it.
That's not a rounding error; that is hundreds of thousands of older Australians who will sooner or later turn up at the door of public hospitals instead—public hospitals like the Latrobe Regional Health hospital, West Gippsland Hospital, South Gippsland Hospital and Bass Coast. These are hospitals that do the best they can with the limited resources that they've got with highly skilled, highly dedicated staff.
But those hospitals are bursting at the seams. I was at West Gippsland Hospital only recently, with my state Liberal colleague Wayne Farnham, the member for Narracan. Jess Wilson, the Victorian coalition leader, was in town as well.
I am so pleased that Wayne has fought successfully for a commitment for a new West Gippsland hospital. We need it very, very badly, because that hospital is bursting at the seams, and the policy change by this federal government on this issue will exacerbate that. It will make it worse.
Well done, Wayne Farnham. Keep fighting for West Gippsland and a new West Gippsland hospital. Think about what our public system looks like.
More than 800,000 Australians delayed or missed specialist care last year because of costs. We are in a cost-of-living crisis. The price of everything, from electricity to insurance to health care, is going up and up.
I talk to families in the Monash electorate who are staring at an electricity bill stuck to their fridge, wondering how they're going to pay that and afford their grocery bill for the week. This policy change will make that worse. We've got bulk-billing collapsing, down 11 per cent, with 40 million fewer bulk-billed GP visits in the last financial year alone.
In the last five years, 82 private hospitals have closed nationally, and 14 private maternity wards have shut their doors under this government. Every one of those closures pushes more patients, older Australians among them, into a public system that is already buckling under the weight of this federal Labor government's economic mismanagement, disdain for regional Australians and lack of care and regard for older Australians, many of whom have worked all their lives, standing on their feet and working with their hands in blue collar jobs right across this country.
They have worked hard, saved hard and done the right thing, and, now, at the very point in their lives where they need a federal government to stand with them, to reward people who work hard and save hard, they've got a federal Labor government letting them down. Maryvale Private Hospital in the Latrobe Valley, just outside Monash's doorstep in my good friend and colleague the member for Gippsland's electorate, is on the list of private hospitals that will be negatively impacted by this change.
If patients in our region drop or downgrade their cover, hospitals like Maryvale don't just lose patients; they lose the very patient base that helps keep their doors open. Once a service like that closes in a regional community, those patients don't just evaporate into thin air. They join the queue at our already overstretched public hospitals.
We are seeing the same warning signs elsewhere. In Mildura, a not-for-profit member owned health fund with more than 40,000 members, 41 per cent of them over 65, say their membership growth is already slowing and premiums for older members could rise by as much as 12 per cent next April once this rebate cut is combined with rising medical costs. My colleague, the fantastic member for Mallee, the shadow minister for regional health, has made the point better than I can that, when private services disappear, patients do not.
They are pushed into the public system, and regional hospitals like Mildura Base Public Hospital are already struggling with workforce shortages, long waiting lists and limited specialist access. That's Mildura today, but it could be Foster, in my electorate, or Leongatha or Warragul tomorrow. When the health minister tells this parliament there will be no material impact on our hospitals, I beg to differ.
I don't believe him, and, more importantly, the people who actually run our regional health services don't believe him either. This is a government prepared to gamble with the capacity of public hospitals that are already stretched to breaking point to fund an aged-care announcement off the back of a policy that punishes the very people who helped keep our public health system viable and sustainable in the first place, and that's the injustice at the heart of this.
For decades, government after government has asked older Australians to do exactly this—take out private health cover, please; keep it up, please; take the pressure off Medicare and our public hospitals, please. Rhonda's husband did that. Chris did that, too.
Robyn did that for more than 50 years. They worked hard. They saved hard.
They did the right thing by Australia. Now this government is telling them that the deal is off—that special compact—right when they need their cover the most, and it is expecting our public hospitals to somehow absorb the consequences. I want to salute the nurses and doctors and medical staff who work extremely hard in regional communities like mine.
They do their very, very best with dedication and with limited resources. They bring expertise, compassion and deep care to patients every single day under the most trying of situations and circumstances. I will not stand by while that happens to people in Monash.
I will keep fighting this cut in the parliament, alongside my coalition colleagues, and alongside peak bodies and consumer groups—Private Healthcare Australia and National Seniors Australia among them—who are standing up for older Australians on this issue. A Senate inquiry into this bill reported reports on 7 October, and the government still needs the support of the Senate crossbench to pass it.
There is still time to stop this, and I would urge anyone here today, anyone listening in the public galleries or to the broadcast who is worried about their own cover or about what this means for health services in our region to have your say. Your voice matters. Regional Australia matters.
Older Australians matter. They matter to the Liberal Party, to the National Party, to the coalition. We will stand up and fight for you even if your federal government has let you down.
The generation who built this country and the Gippsland region, who worked hard and did the right thing, deserve better than a government which punishes them for it. I will keep standing up for you.