Portfolio — 26 August 2026

The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Ms Rishworth, used a media appearance to defend the government's restructure of the private health insurance rebate, framing it as a targeted reallocation toward aged-care investment rather than a cut to health support for older Australians.

**Private health rebate reform**

Ms Rishworth confirmed the government will not scrap the private health rebate for over-65s. She said the government will instead introduce a uniform income-based rebate of up to 24 percent for all Australians [TA-260826-dewr-86f97ace69bf]. The Minister estimated the change will affect about 0.4 percent of pensioners and characterised the impact on private health take-up as modest [TA-260826-dewr-86f97ace69bf].

**Aged-care investment**

The budget includes an additional $3 billion for aged-care home-care packages, which Ms Rishworth said responds to demand that has tripled since 2020 [TA-260826-dewr-86f97ace69bf]. The portfolio's approach is to reallocate resources toward growing aged-care needs while preserving a baseline rebate, signalling a shift toward supporting older Australians within fiscal constraints [TA-260826-dewr-86f97ace69bf].

This positions the rebate reform as a fiscal rebalancing exercise: trimming a health subsidy for higher-income retirees to fund expanded aged-care delivery.

**Opposition response**

Senator McKenzie, the Nationals Senate Leader, criticised the decision as an ideological trade-off. She linked the rebate change to broader energy and net-zero policies, arguing that savings from scrapping net-zero could fund aged-care [TA-260826-dewr-86f97ace69bf]. This cross-portfolio framing positioned the rebate reform alongside the government's climate agenda, suggesting the Opposition will contest the measure as part of a wider spending critique rather than on health-policy grounds alone.

The single media release for this window carried no parliamentary counterpart, so the record captures the government's messaging posture and the Opposition's rebuttal but not any chamber exchange.