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

Mr CHESTER (Gippsland—Deputy Leader of the National Party) (10:25): It's a pleasure to join this debate, the Private Health Insurance Amendment (Modernising the Private Health Insurance Rebate) Bill 2026, after my great friend and colleague the member for Dawson. I want to associate myself with everything the previous speaker had to say about this government's approach to older Australians because what this legislation before the House does is confirm what everyone on this side of the chamber knows, and what more Australians are understanding every day—that is, this government is at war with older Australians and is at war with people who have aspirations to look after themselves and who take steps to save and prepare for their own retirement.

Everything you need to know about this bill before the chamber today is included on this speaking list. There are 94 members of the Labor Party in the House of Representatives, and yet they've run out of speakers. The only speakers left on this list are on the coalition side.

We have far fewer numbers on our side of the chamber compared to Labor Party, and yet they are missing in action. I have been in their position. I have been part of a previous government where changes had been made that I didn't always enjoy.

What you would do there is avoid speaking on the legislation. You'd avoid having your name on the record defending what is garbage legislation. They have 94 members on that side, compared to the lower numbers on our side, and they've run out of speakers.

That tells you all you need to know. They're hiding in their offices because they do not want to be on the public record defending these cuts to the private health rebate for older Australians. This is an assault on older Australians.

This is an assault on the aspirations of people who have worked hard, tried to get ahead, made difficult choices about spending their money on private health to try to look after their own healthcare needs in their later years. They are asking me, and I'm sure they're asking members on the other side of the House as well: 'What did we do to deserve this? What did we do wrong?

We worked hard. We saved our money. We took out private health insurance like you told us to do, and now you're cutting our rebate, which is making it harder to have private health at exactly the time we need it the most.' Now, this decision by the government has real life impacts.

I want to read from a letter I received from Joanne in my electorate. She said to me, 'This proposal feels like boomer bashing, which seems to be becoming increasingly common in many quarters. We boomers had our own hard times and made sacrifices to get where we are today.

I'm on a part age pension and would be unlikely to continue paying for private health insurance if the rebate is cut or removed. It is already one of my greatest household expenses and something of a luxury.' I asked the Prime Minister yesterday, 'Why, Prime Minister, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, is your government making life harder for 1.5 million aged pensioners like Joanne?' And just like those members opposite who are missing in action here today and refusing to speak on the bill, the Prime Minister refused to answer the question.

He handballed it. Quick hands. He handballed it to the minister for health and dodged going on the record to defend this appalling decision.

So what did the minister say? Well, the minister waffled and procrastinated his way through something that vaguely resembled an answer. What he tried to claim was this: the government is using the money saved, which has been ripped out of the pockets of older Australians—$3 billion in fact—to put into more Support at Home packages.

Is the minister seriously trying to tell us there is going to be a direct hypothecation from the savings of this measure into aged care year on year? I've seen the way budgets are formed in this place for 18 years now, and there is no such budget rule that involves a direct hypothecation of money saved from one part of the budget going directly into the hands of the Support at Home package.

If that were the case, then the fuel excise would be directly hypothecated to road safety measures, which it's not. I think the minister is making things up on the spot. The minister is pretending that there's going to be a benefit for older Australians by taking money out of one group of older Australians to pay off the problems the government has accumulated in the aged-care system.

At its core, this bill is a government deciding to make life harder for one section of the Australian population primarily because they realise that that section of the Australian population probably doesn't vote for them that much after all. Older Australians, self-funded retirees and people who've taken out private health insurance are probably not a core constituency for the Labor Party, so it's, 'Let's hit 'em; let's hit 'em and take more of their money out of their pockets and then pretend we're going to hypothecate it to the aged-care system.' Even if that's not the case, even if I'm wrong about the government's motives, any decent government—any government that didn't have a culture of secrecy and sneakiness—would have the courage to take these changes to the Australian people at an election.

That is how public policy is formed in this nation. Major changes of this nature are traditionally taken to the Australian people to decide, because we live in a democracy. We live in a democracy where big decisions, big changes, are taken to the voters, and they decide for themselves.

Because of the sneaky culture of this government, it doesn't do that anymore. It didn't take its capital gains tax changes to the election. It didn't take its negative gearing tax changes to the election.

In fact, the Prime Minister said 50 times—he claims he said 50 times—'no changes to these tax measures'. Well, Prime Minister, that was deceitful, that was dishonest and that was untruthful, just like these changes. It is sneaky.

It defies the traditions of our democracy to make such major changes to people's personal financial arrangements and not give them a chance to vote on it. And the government know it; they know it because they're not here speaking about it. They're not here defending it.

They know it was sneaky and deceitful to do this to older Australians, because no-one heard about it until it popped up in the budget as another savings measure. This is just another broken promise. Again, it wasn't taken to the election, and the reason it wasn't taken to election is that the Labor Party knows that Australians wouldn't have voted for it.

They know that Australians would have seen how unfair this is. This is unfair because people have done everything the government asked them to do. They've worked hard.

They've saved their money. If they've been in a position to be able to afford some private health insurance, they've done that. The rebate has helped to make it more affordable for them, and, at precisely the time they're most likely to need that private health, they're now faced with higher costs, and the consequences during a cost-of-living crisis are going to be very severe on a large number of people.

What the government has also been dishonest about is the flow-on consequences. You can't pretend that you make changes like this to people's personal financial arrangements and there aren't consequences. The first consequence is that you're going to force people out of the private health system.

When they're already struggling with the cost-of-living pressures, this extra cost is going to make many households examine their budgets and say: 'I simply don't see how we can afford our private health anymore. We're going to have to drop it.' They don't want to do it, but they're going to have to drop their private health insurance or they're going to downgrade their coverage.

What does that mean? That means you'll have more Australians fully dependent on the public health system. They don't exist in isolation, Deputy Speaker Buchholz.

You know that. I know that. We have a private health system.

We have a public health system. It's all part of the health system, and, if more people drop out of private health, that's more pressure on public health. That is more pressure on waiting lists.

People are already waiting too long to have surgery. People are already suffering in pain on those waiting lists for months and months. Putting more people on the public hospital waiting list is a poor health outcome for all Australians.

It is madness if anyone on that side thinks there's not going to be a consequence on the public health system. You're going to shift the cost from private health to public health and increase the waiting times for people, and people will be suffering in pain for longer to get the treatment that they want. The other thing it'll do, which concerns me greatly as a regional member of parliament, is make it harder for our private hospitals to remain viable.

In some of our regional communities, there may only be one private hospital. For my electorate, there's one private hospital servicing about 50,000 square kilometres. It's the only private hospital.

It's already quite marginal in those thin markets in regional areas to operate a private hospital. But, when you take away more private health customers from a hospital like that, the margins get skinnier, it gets harder and they become less viable. That is another consequence of this decision: we're going to see private hospitals, particularly in regional areas, find it harder and harder to maintain their services.

And, again, if they shut their doors, it will all fall on the public health system to pick up the slack, and that is not a good outcome for all Australians. The coalition opposes these measures for all the reasons I've just described. They're an attack on aspiration.

They're an attack on older Australians. They're sneaky; they were never taken to an election. And the long-term consequences of this decision will flow through the entire health system.

You don't have to take my word for it. On our side of the House, we have been inundated by people who've been impacted and also by other jurisdictions. The state health ministers right across the country have made it very clear that they are concerned about the impact it's going to have on the states' budgets in every corner of our nation.

According to a ministerial media release from the New South Wales government—the New South Wales Labor government—there are now over 3,600 patients stranded in state hospitals across Australia waiting for Commonwealth government aged-care places. So there's already pressure on the state system, with older people not being able to access the services they need.

They made the point: Public hospitals were not designed as alternatives or substitutes to aged care facilities, and patients waiting indefinitely in hospital face poorer prospects for recovery. There is now a united front amongst Labor and coalition state health ministers, who are saying this policy will add to the waiting list of an already overcrowded public system, where there's already 3,600 patients waiting in state hospitals to receive the care that they deserve and need.

The Queensland minister for health has indicated this will punish older Australians, forcing them to pay for their own aged care. He says: Queensland remains ground zero for stranded older patients, with more than 1,270 stuck in our hospitals and interim care through no fault of their own. The Tasmanian minister for health, Bridget Archer, said: Too many Tasmanians remain stuck in our hospitals, sometimes for weeks and even months at a time, because the Federal Government has not provided them with the aged care or NDIS supports needed.

The Victorian Labor minister Ingrid Stitt said: Every older Victorian deserves to age with dignity—and no one should stay in hospital longer than they need to. We'll continue to advocate strongly to the Commonwealth to ensure its aged care reforms are properly funded and no Victorian misses out— which is the core of my concerns. We already have in the order of 200,000 older Australians waiting for the care they deserve in the aged-care system.

We have 100,000 waiting for Support at Home packages. Last financial year, more than 4,800 older Australians died on the waiting list for Support at Home. These were people who had been assessed as being eligible for a Support at Home package, and they died before the support was ever provided to them.

That is a national shame. We have to do better than that, and it's because there is not enough support being provided to actually deliver the services, particularly in our regional communities. Everything this government is doing with changes to the private health insurance rebate is going to place more pressure on the state system and more pressure on the care that is being provided in our regional economies.

Finally, this is the last point I want to make, which deals directly with the question of whether the private health system will be able to survive with a reduced number of people contributing to their private health. Latrobe Health Services in my electorate have written to me to make precisely the same points that I've endeavoured to make today. They're saying the proposed policy changes will obviously increase the financial pressure on older Australians.

This is from a letter they sent to me only a few weeks ago. They're saying that it will involve reduced activity in local private hospitals and that there will be increased pressure on the public health system. So, even if this sneaky, deceitful, dishonest government doesn't believe what members of the coalition are saying, surely it will listen to people with direct lived experience in the field who are delivering the health services that Australians need.

I urge the Albanese government to stop this war on older Australians and to stop this war on the aspirations of the people who have worked so hard to prepare for their own retirement.