Private Health Insurance Amendment (Modernising the Private Health Insurance Rebate) Bill 2026
Mr WILKIE (Clark) (18:05): The Private Health Insurance Amendment (Modernising the Private Health Insurance Rebate) Bill 2026 is a shocker, and I for one will not be supporting it. We've already heard from honourable members a range of reasons why it's unsupportable—including most recently from the member for Nicholls, who I think laid out the case against very effectively.
Let me dwell on a few of the points that have already been well ventilated. Firstly, older Australians who are in the retirement phase simply cannot afford this change. It's not about where the savings go or whatever.
It's the simple fact that most Australians will not be able to afford this and as a result many Australians will either drop their private health insurance or cut it back significantly. Let me explain the mathematics behind this, the numbers. The median income for a single retiree in Australia is about $40,000.
The median income for a retired couple in Australia is about $60,000. By any measure, that is not a lot of money, and that's the midpoint of the bell curve. It's $40,000 or so for a single person and $60,000 or so for a couple who are retired.
That is not the sort of income where people can afford to suddenly be having to pay significantly more for their private health insurance. That's the midpoint of the top of the bell curve there. Remember, a lot of Australians are reliant on the age pension.
The figures there are that a single retiree fully dependent on the age pension receives about $31,000 in age pension a year. That's with all the supplements, I would add. For a couple reliant on the age pension with all the supplements, it's about $47,000.
These people certainly cannot afford to suddenly have to find more money to maintain their private health insurance at the level they've had it at historically. It's as simple as that. The fact is that they're already in the retirement phase, so it's not like they can suddenly earn some extra money to cover the gap or suddenly find some extra savings to cover the gap.
They're already in their retirement phase, which means that this change is effectively retrospective and being applied to retirees who have planned for their retirement. They've done the sums. They've worked out what they need and where they can spend money, and they can just make it work.
To then retrospectively, in effect, change the arrangements for someone in the retirement phase is just bad policy. It's really bad policy. You shouldn't be making any retrospective changes when people are in the retirement phase.
They've got no room to move, particularly if they are a single pensioner on $31,000 a year or they're doing a bit better and they're enjoying the median income as a single retiree on about $40,000 a year. They've got no room to move. I'm not talking small numbers here as far as the number of people that are affected, not at all.
In fact, something like 40 per cent of older Australians rely entirely on the age pension. I'll say that again: about 40 per cent of older Australians who are retired are relying entirely on the age pension, and about another 25 per cent of Australian retirees are partly reliant on the age pension. These people have no room to move.
In fact, they're already going without to find the money to maintain the health insurance that they do have. I'm sure I speak for many members in this place when I say that we're meeting people every day in our work who are going without basics so that they can afford their private health insurance. I've met countless constituents that go without meals.
They go without medication. They go without travelling to visit family. It's not that these people are going to have to go without an overseas holiday.
They're already going without the basics of life. They've got no room to move. The government might say, 'That's okay, we've got this fabulous public health system safety net,' if people have to—and who knows what the figure is; the government had a figure of about 40,000 people—drop their insurance or reduce their cover.
The industry estimates over 200,000. Let's use the government's figure of about 40,000 people. That would be an enormous surge on the public healthcare system—a system that, in many parts of Australia, is already stressed and stretched to breaking point, and I'll talk about Tasmania in a moment, here.
These people will not, with any certainty, be able to get quality health care in the public healthcare system, so they will get sicker. There'll be no savings down the track for these people when, instead of early intervention, perhaps through the private healthcare system, they're an emergency admission into hospital in the public healthcare system because they've let their health go, because they haven't been able to afford proper health care.
When I said that in many parts of Australia the public health system is stretched to breaking point, there's no better example than my home state of Tasmania. Tasmanians are already more likely than residents of any other state or territory to, at least, have one chronic health condition. In fact, in 2022, four years ago, 85 per cent of Tasmanians were living with at least one long-term health condition.
That's 474,700 Tasmanians that are already living with a chronic health condition. The elective surgery waiting list in Tasmanian public hospitals is—this is a very recent figure; just last month it was 9,595 people. That's the current state of the public health system in Tasmania, and it would be quite similar to a lot of places elsewhere in the country; in particular, regional and rural areas.
Those health systems can't have 40,000 older Australians, who tend to have a much greater need and more expensive needs with health care, suddenly parachuted into the public system. There is this idea that often goes around that older Australians are pretty wealthy, and they can afford this. I think baby boomers, in particular, are far too often being demonised in the media and by politicians.
Sure, older Australians are more likely to be asset rich, particularly if they're lucky enough to own their own home. They might be asset rich—more asset rich than younger Australians—but they're often cash poorer because their asset is their family home. Forty per cent of Australians are living on the aged pension.
Some of those people, particularly in cities like Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, may be living in an expensive dwelling, but they don't have two bob to rub between their fingers. They sure can't afford, when they're in the retirement phase with no room to move, a big hike in their private health insurance premiums. So this idea that older Australians, particularly baby boomers, are loaded and this won't be an issue for them—it's just a myth.
In fact, this brings me to a concern I have with the government's policy and why they are doing this. I can see why they're doing it: because it's a budget saving. It'll help the budget out.
But I sense there's also a pretty grubby political dimension to this. I think that the government has made the political calculation that by playing to that concern among many younger Australians that older Australians made a killing in the property market—they're doing okay—I think there's a calculation by the government to ever so subtly criticise the baby boomers.
They figure it will be a net positive. Sure, they might lose some votes among so-called baby boomers, but it will be more than made up for by increasing their popularity among younger Australians. Now, I dearly hope that's not the case, but all the evidence is showing that there is a pretty basic political calculation going on here.
I'll leave some of the last words on this to some of my constituents. Like many people in this place, I've received countless emails, phone calls and letters; I've had conversations on the street and I've had meetings with people. People have voiced their alarm about this to me, so I'll just read a couple of the comments from my constituents.
Here's one who said: 'While I understand the pressure on aged care and the public system, this change is fundamentally unfair to seniors who have acted responsibly for decades. We paid for cover we didn't use, and now we're penalised when we need it.' Another constituent got in touch and said: 'Many older Australians, including myself, have maintained private hospital cover for years, often at significant cost, while remaining healthy and making few or no claims.
We did this to reduce future pressure on the public hospitals, to take responsibility for our own health costs and to follow the implicit social contract that if we look after ourselves, we won't be punished later.' This constituent goes on to say: 'Now, just as we reach the age where we are more likely to need treatment, the government is cutting the very support that helped us keep that cover.
This feels like a breach of trust'—there's that word again!—'as we paid premiums and accepted higher costs when younger, avoided using the system when we could and are now told the rebate we relied on will be reduced precisely when our health needs arise.' Another piece of correspondence said: 'The current federal government's disregard for pensioners desperately needs to be challenged in Canberra.
The PM wants to disadvantage pensioners by removing a discount on private health insurance. Many pensioners have paid for private health for most of our lives—my wife and I since we married 68 years ago—and now, more than ever, older residents need to maintain their membership because the Tasmanian healthcare system is in disarray. We need your assistance.' Well, I'm giving voice to those constituents in the Clark electorate, and to many others as well.
In fact, I reckon those of us on this side of the chamber, and I think many of my crossbench colleagues, are giving voice to almost three million older Australians. We're giving voice to the 40 per cent of retirees who are totally dependent on the age pension and who somehow—I don't know how they do it—still manage to pay their private health insurance premium.
And we're giving voice to the 25 per cent of retirees who are partly reliant on the age pension, people who are in the retirement phase and who have no room to move. Frankly, which figure do I believe, that 40,000 will drop or reduce their cover or more than 200,000 will drop or reduce their cover? The truth is it's probably somewhere in the middle there.
But I'll tell you what, it's a lot of Australians. Tens of thousands of Australians will drop their cover or reduce their cover, in particular people in places like Tasmania where the health indicators are relatively poor, the incomes are relatively low and a lot of people still keep their private health insurance because the public system is just so broken. The member for Nicholls made the observation, and I agree with him, that, when you look at this in the context of the budget, it's a budget saving.
It really is as simple as that. It's very sad that we're debating this tonight when just this morning the House of Representatives passed a bill that would put a $5,000 cap on veterans. What is it about this government and disadvantaged people at the moment?
This morning, they rammed a bill through the House of Reps to gut the allied health treatment for veterans in this country. And here we are tonight basically talking about gutting assistance funding for older Australians, a very vulnerable group of people in this country, to help them maintain their private health insurance. They're both budget measures.
They're both budget savings. At the end of the day, that's all it is. And if we need more money for residential aged care, let's go out and find it.
Let's go find it elsewhere. We've capped allied health for veterans at $5,000. Let's not take off the additional private health insurance rebate for Australians over the age of 65.
Find the money elsewhere. We've got the 14th biggest economy in the world. We are a rich country.
It's all about priorities. Whether it's looking after our veterans better or it's looking after our oldies better—we can afford to do both. It's all about priorities, and the sorts of priorities that we've seen on full display today, whether it be this morning with the veterans bill or this evening with the health insurance bill, are evidence of a government whose priorities are out of whack, and that needs to be remedied.
I call on the government to reverse your decision on this cut to private health insurance rebates for oldies and to do it tonight. Maybe the assistant minister will stand up tonight.