Private Health Insurance Amendment (Modernising the Private Health Insurance Rebate) Bill 2026

Dr WEBSTER (Mallee) (13:04): I rise to speak about the Private Health Insurance Amendment (Modernising the Private Health Insurance Rebate) Bill 2026. But I want to start with some quotes from people in my electorate who have written to me. Peter, who's a pensioner from Avoca, has said: As an age pensioner, I want to say how annoying this "intergenerational" rubbish is.

The planned removal of the health fund rebates for older Australians, down to the base rebate, by Labor, is ridiculous. With only a pension as income it is already a huge stretch to afford private health cover. Also, because I have private cover I find myself more out of pocket after a hospital visit than someone in the public system.

Peter, I want to say to you: I have the same questions. He continues: The likely outcome will be a huge exodus from private cover to the public system. Please look into this and see if it can be blocked.

Well, Peter, if I could block it by myself, I would. If the coalition with our current numbers could block this, we would. Robyn from Mildura says: I wish to express my strong opposition to the government's proposal to reduce the rebate available to Australians aged 65 and over.

Many older people rely on this support to help manage rising living costs, and reducing it would have a significant negative impact on their financial wellbeing. I believe the government should protect, rather than reduce, rebates. Older Australians have contributed to society throughout their lives and deserve continued support, particularly during a time of increasing living expenses.

I am sure they can allocate money toward Aged Care by another means than stealing again from those in need. We have not been a burden on the Public Health system due to paying Private Health Insurance. Perhaps look after the older generation as we have paid our taxes and contributed to society for all our working lives.

And then there's Cheryl from Horsham. She says: We need our health insurance we need it because of our age group we are both on the pension. Don't earn or have loads of money.

Husband has type two diabetes and heart problems. What we have here are voices from Mallee, who I am incredibly proud and honoured to represent, making it very clear they understand what this tax grab is all about. These are people who have paid their taxes all their lives, as Robyn said.

These are people who have paid into their private health insurance for decades. They have paid and probably not required it. Now they're over 65, they do require it.

They're pensioners. They don't have extra money. This is a fixed income, which, as Peter rightly pointed out when he wrote to me, makes it incredibly hard to stretch the increase in insurance so that he can remain insured.

What it will mean is that these people will go into the public health system. It seems to me that the Labor government hasn't caught up with the fact that our public health system is struggling. It is struggling with ongoing ramping at the doors of the emergency department.

It is struggling to get GPs—particularly in the regions where I come from and which I proudly represent—let alone gerontologists or the number of nurses that are required to run a great aged-care system. There are so many problems. And yet what this Labor government wants to do is come after our elderly and say: 'Well, you know what?

You and the 31-year-old living next door should pay the same thing for private health insurance.' It's like this intergenerational equity rubbish—and it is rubbish—means that people who have invested for decades are seen as the same people where this Labor government can come and take money out of their pocket. And what is it going to do? It's like the government does not have the foresight to see the writing on the wall.

It is not in its DNA to look into the future and see how this will actually work out. It won't work out well. What we know today is that 1.2 million pensioners are going to be impacted by this decision the government has made to cut the rebate for our older Australians.

We know that the cost is going to be exponential into the future. I ran a survey in Mallee in 2025. Although it was one year ago—I can't believe it!—57 per cent of those over 65 said they had private health insurance cover.

So does this issue matter? Yes, I reckon it does. It absolutely matters to the people who live in my electorate.

It matters to every person in every electorate. There are so many older people worried right now because of the moves of this government to take money out of their pockets. Twenty per cent of those in my electorate who have private health insurance cover felt their current level of cover was inadequate.

But guess what? Their cover will be even more inadequate thanks to this government. Labor—clever with the marketing; terrible in government—have discovered their spending was so out of control they needed more money.

It's just an absolute shocker. Where were they going to go? That's right.

Remember former health minister Plibersek said, 'Wherever I needed money in health, I went after private health.' So, today we have Labor's $11 billion hit on older Australians in this cut to the rebate for 65-year-olds and older. Minister Butler claims this brazen tax grab will pay for aged-care beds. What it won't pay for are the additional people ramped at public hospitals and in the public hospital beds because they've reduced or dropped their private health cover.

A brief trigger warning for the member for Barton and those opposite: I am again going to acknowledge the struggles public hospitals face. Somehow, when I talked about this on 18 August, the member for Barton thought that this was an attack on public health workers by me. Quite the opposite.

It was a bizarre attack she made about my statements, as though somehow a member on this side of the House talking about public health was implicitly an attack. My point is very clear and I will say it again slowly: cutting private health rebates will put more pressure on public hospitals. This is not difficult.

Labor are not helping public health with this bill. They are doing the opposite. I support our healthcare workers, regardless of where they work, and I will not wear unhinged rants from those opposite merely because we're speaking the truth about ramping and bed block in public hospitals.

The Albanese Labor government says its changes to the private health insurance rebate are about fairness, sustainability and intergenerational equity. Give me a break! Older Australians deserve more than slogans.

They deserve respect. They deserve honest answers about the consequences of this policy. They deserve an explanation as to why they have paid private health insurance premiums for decades in anticipation of their older age, only to have that cost move further out of reach due to the decisions made by this Albanese government.

They deserve an explanation as to why the government had not modelled how many age pensioners would be affected by this policy. What we read today, through the Parliamentary Budget Office analysis, is that pensioners will collectively shoulder $1.6 billion of Labor's private health insurance cash grab. That's around half the $3 billion Labor expects to reap over forward estimates.

There are 3.2 million Australians aged 65 and older who currently hold private hospital cover. Of those, 1.5 million are pensioners, age pensioners and self-funded retirees living on a very modest income which—I underline and highlight—is a fixed income. During a cost-of-living crisis, Labor will take money away from low-income, self-funded retirees and age pensioners.

There is one word for this behaviour: shame. From 1 April 2027, under this bill, Labor will remove eligibility for the higher age based private health insurance rebate, with rebates determined by income alone. National Seniors Australia has warned that some older couples could face premium increases of well over $1,000 per year depending on the type of cover they hold.

A couple on gold cover could end up paying $1,600 a year more. The government argues that relatively few people will abandon private health insurance as a result of these changes. Given they didn't even model it, how would they know?

The truth is that nobody outside government has seen the full modelling. Different forecasts point to different outcomes. The government's estimates suggest that 44,000 older Australians may leave private health insurance.

However, National Seniors have warned that over 400,000 older Australians could downgrade their cover and a further 270,000 could abandon cover if premiums become unaffordable. As I said on Monday in my private member's motion opposing this policy, National Seniors are not an insurance company, for the health minister's benefit. The health minister likes to smugly walk in here claiming we're speaking for the insurance industry.

No, we are not. We on this side of the House are speaking for the millions of older Australians exposed to poorer health outcomes by this Albanese Labor government. And in my case, as shadow minister for regional health and member for Mallee, I am speaking for rural, regional and remote Australians, who will feel the pain of this policy first and hardest.

Private hospitals—like the one in Lismore, New South Wales—which are already under severe pressure may close. I understand that the underspend on rural health in Australia is now well past $8 billion. What does that actually mean?

On average, about $1,000 per person is underspent on their health care just because they live in the regions. This is an absolute outrage, and I'll continue to call it out. I thank the National Rural Health Alliance for the work that they are doing on a repeat basis to ensure that this fact is well known.

Their new report, I believe, is going to sound a whole bunch worse. Regional Australians die earlier. They are sicker longer.

This is one of the reasons the underspend by this government is absolutely appalling—$1,000 per person. I recall the Prime Minister promising, in the 2022 election campaign, 'nobody held back, nobody left behind'. It was a slogan, and we now know that the Prime Minister's word is not his bond.

This bill contains no safeguards to protect rural, regional and remote Australians most likely to suffer reduced health services as a result of this policy. Australia's premiers get it, even the Labor ones. They oppose this travesty of a bill.

It is a travesty, because it is worse than a cost shift of health burden to the states. It means people get sicker without their private health treatment. They end up in ambulances, emergency departments or wards and may be stuck there for some time.

I actually heard a story the other day from someone who works in the hospital in Mildura, who said that a person had been held in a bed in the hospital because there was no aged-care bed for them to go to. I can hardly believe it. It is incomprehensible.

The New South Wales health minister, Ryan Park—a Labor minister, I have to add—says that, in New South Wales alone, 80,000 people will cancel or downgrade their cover. They estimate that around 23,000 additional surgeries per annum will be necessary due to this policy. I urge the Labor government to rethink this bad policy.