SENATOR THE HON ANNE RUSTON

SHADOW MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE

DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION IN THE SENATE

SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA

TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW WITH JAMIE BURNETT, 6PR PERTH

Thursday, 24 September 2026

Topics: Proposed private health insurance rebate changes for over-65s, pressure on WA’s public hospitals, federal spending priorities and the reported Medicare data breach.

E&OE……………………………………

Jamie Burnett: Good afternoon to you, Anne. What did you hear?

Senator Ruston: Well, basically we heard that everybody, whether it be providers, our health professionals or older Western Australians, is just horrified about the negative implications of this really lazy policy that the government’s putting forward. It’s intending to rip away $11 billion from people over the age of 65 over the next 10 years—people who have paid for their private health insurance all their lives. Just when they’re likely to need it, the government is intending to rip it away. And I’ve got to say, people are pretty hot and pretty angry.

Jamie Burnett: People are pretty hot, they’re pretty angry. I think you’re right. They’ve paid all this way, and this is the point where you need it most. How many will be impacted under those changes? Do we know?

Senator Ruston: About 3.2 to 3.3 million older Australians currently hold private health insurance. But of those, about 1.5 million are pensioners. And what is really horrific is that the government is trying to pitch this as some sort of savings measure aimed at older people who’ve got lots of money. But the reality is, if you’re on a pension, you’re not in a position to absorb an extra $300, $400 or $500 every year to keep your private health insurance. And so, if you drop it, you end up in the public system. I think all of your listeners know what the public hospital system looks like currently in Western Australia. You don’t want to be stuck on a ramp, waiting in a queue or waiting for elective surgery if you don’t have to. But putting more people in those queues is just going to make the situation worse. It’s one of the laziest, stupidest policies I think I’ve ever heard.

Jamie Burnett: Has there been modelling done on how many people would ditch their private health insurance if that rebate didn’t exist?

Senator Ruston: Well, the government’s come out with a number of 44,000. They refuse to tell us how they got that number, and they also have not modelled how many people who currently, say, are on gold cover may drop their cover to silver, or from silver to bronze, or the like. All of the modelling we’ve seen that’s been done in the past has suggested it would be well in excess of double that just for those who will drop their cover. A lot of the health insurers and private hospitals are saying that it’s probably more like, you know, 80,000 or 90,000 Australians who will drop their cover, and probably somewhere around 200,000 who will reduce their cover. So that’s, you know, in excess of 250,000 older Australians who potentially will end up in an already overburdened public health system. It’s just crazy.

Jamie Burnett: Is it the nature of rebates like this, though, that they’re not designed to stick around forever?

Senator Ruston: I think the logic of this rebate and the policy rationale behind it was that we know older Australians are likely to draw on the health system more than younger Australians. You know, even Butler himself admitted that for every dollar an older Australian pays into their insurance, they’ll get three dollars back in health care. So right now, these older Australians are paying for their private health insurance. Instead of the taxpayer paying that three dollars, it’s their private health insurer that’s paying it. So it’s not the kind of subsidy or additional rebate that makes any sense to take out of the market, because it’s actually encouraging people to pay for their own health care instead of relying on taxpayers to pay for it. It’s one of those things—I just think the government has put its federal budget bottom line ahead of taxpayers, because taxpayers will pay more for this. It’s just the federal government saving on its bottom line, and the states and territories will end up having to…

Jamie Burnett: You reckon this is more of an optics and an accounting decision?

Senator Ruston: It’s tricky accounting by the federal government, because Jim Chalmers has got a whole heap of budgetary problems. So he’s cost-shifting from the federal budget to the states and territories and to older Australians. And as I said, half of these older Australians are pensioners who will find it incredibly difficult to absorb the extra cost. Of the billion dollars a year the government is intending to save from this, half will come out of the pockets of pensioners.

Jamie Burnett: And the other side of this is the load on the public system if this does go ahead and people do ditch their private health insurance. We’re seeing here in Western Australia currently that ambulance ramping every month is at record levels. It almost feels like the norm that each month we break a record there. So our hospitals are completely stretched. What’s the impact there? I know you’re looking at it from a federal perspective, but what would be the extra impact on the public system under a measure like this?

Senator Ruston: I’ve been out to Joondalup today speaking to locals, and they’re horrified at what they’re facing every time they turn up to that hospital. People who are a bit further out were really frustrated that they were promised a new hospital at Yanchep 18 years ago. We still haven’t seen it. We only saw very recently the coroner coming out and saying that a child had died at the Joondalup hospital unnecessarily because there just weren’t the resources and staffing to manage the workload those overworked health professionals are under. There’s ramping around the nation, but Western Australia certainly is suffering a very high burden when it comes to the pressure on its public hospital system. And the idea that the federal government would put a policy in place to make that worse really beggars belief.

Jamie Burnett: You describe this as an $11 billion tax grab. Where would you find that $11 billion?

Senator Ruston: Well, first of all, I think we need to ask the government to look for the waste and inefficiency that we see in so many programs. Let’s go and look there. But let’s not rob pensioners to pay for this. You know, there are many other ways the government can be looking to save money or to make money. I mean, for a fact, just getting the economy working and getting some productivity back into the economy instead of taxing everybody would be another good way of doing it. But I think it’s really lazy politics. It’s a lazy policy by the government to argue that you’ve got to take money from pensioners in order for them to receive the aged care support they need. The government’s got to do better than that.

Jamie Burnett: So you’d support cuts to the public sector in order to find savings that way?

Senator Ruston: Well, what I would support is efficiencies across the whole system to make sure that every single taxpayer dollar spent in this country is spent efficiently and effectively in delivering the outcome it’s designed to deliver. I think you only have to look at so many reports that we’ve seen the government put in place, and they all come back and say there are incredible opportunities for more efficient expenditure of money. That’s where I think we should be looking first, before we start ripping money off pensioners.

Jamie Burnett: Hey, also today, this raised eyebrows, didn’t it? There was the Medicare hack that’s been reported. How concerned are you about that?

Senator Ruston: Well, I think there are a lot of questions we need answered about what actually happened here and the time it’s taken for Australians to become aware of it. You know, we’ve been assured by the government that none of the information accessed in this security breach was top-secret or personal information about Australians. But it is really, really concerning that we’ve had a breach of this nature and it’s taken so long for it to be brought to the attention of the Australian public.

Jamie Burnett: Anne, really good to speak to you today. I appreciate your time.

Senator Ruston: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

ENDS