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 SONYA FELDHOFF, JULES SCHILLER AND RORY MCCLAREN, ABC ADELAIDE MORNINGS

Monday, 12 October 2026

Topics: Private health insurance rebate changes; public hospital pressures; specialist fees and means testing.

E&OE……………………………………

SONYA FELDHOFF: Earlier this year, Health Minister Mark Butler announced that the additional private health insurance rebate cut for over-65s would end in April, I think, next year. Now, that's to bring equity amongst all age groups, according to the Health Minister. Many of you have complained that this is going to be the end for you. We've taken those calls, haven't we, Jules? People who have contacted us saying, 'We are pushing to keep our private health insurance, and this will be the end for us.'

JULES SCHILLER: Or they're having to downgrade their private health. So you might have been on gold, you go to silver, you go to bronze. So you're still on private health, but you're not getting as much covered.

SONYA FELDHOFF: And when we've asked Mark Butler in the past, he has said that the number of people they've modelled who will leave private health insurance as a result of this change would be around the 44,000 mark. Now, that's been challenged by many. Now it is in black-and-white documents. Senator Anne Ruston is the Shadow Health Minister. How did you get your hands on these documents, firstly, Senator?

SENATOR RUSTON: Well, interestingly, somebody did a freedom of information request on the particular documents, and they became public knowledge through the freedom of information mechanism. We've been asking the government for months and months, saying we didn't think the numbers were right, and now we find out that they knew all along that they weren't right.

SONYA FELDHOFF: So what is the difference between what Mark Butler has been telling us in numbers and what these documents are saying?

SENATOR RUSTON: Mark Butler said 44,000 older Australians would drop their cover altogether. These documents show 78,000 older Australians will drop their cover altogether. And it's also worth noting that nowhere in the government's assumptions or estimations have they modelled the number of people who dropped their cover, as you mentioned in your introduction.

JULES SCHILLER: Was he saying just in the first year, or was that altogether, the 44,000 he said, Senator?

SENATOR RUSTON: He said overall it would be 44,000, but it will be 44,000 every year because once you drop your cover, you've dropped it.

JULES SCHILLER: I mean, doesn't he have a point, though, that we need to kick more money into aged care? And, you know, if we have an extra $3 billion from this rebate change, then we desperately need that in aged care.

SENATOR RUSTON: Well, it's a pretty sad state of affairs that a government's lost control of its budget such that it's actually having to rob the healthcare system to pay for the aged care system. I think, you know, we expect our governments to be able to make sure our economy is strong and that our receipts are strong, to make sure that we can pay for both our health and our aged care. And it's a false economy, allowing people to get sicker or require more care, because all it does is put them into a system at a more acute stage, which costs more.

SONYA FELDHOFF: But is it robbing the healthcare system, or is it just bringing equity to the healthcare system across the age groups?

SENATOR RUSTON: Well, I would argue it doesn't bring equity, because eventually the taxpayers end up paying for this system regardless. And it will be younger Australians who pick up the bill for our public health system, because they're the ones who are currently paying tax. And we also need to remember these are older Australians, many of whom have paid for their health insurance for 40 or 50 years because they were told it was the right thing to do, and they did it. And now, when they're likely to need their private health or access to healthcare more than they have previously when they were paying their insurance, Mark Butler wants to pull the rug out from underneath them and make it more unaffordable for them.

RORY McCLAREN: So, Senator, what is the Coalition's position on this, then?

SENATOR RUSTON: Well, we are going to try very hard this week to make sure the legislation doesn't pass, because we believe it is absolutely unfair and cruel. But if it does pass the Senate, we will repeal it should we be fortunate enough to win the election.

RORY McCLAREN: Do you have the numbers?

SENATOR RUSTON: Well, certainly the Greens have made some very strong noises around them being dissatisfied with what the government's put on the table. They're particularly concerned, as we are, that half of the people who are likely to be affected by this are actually pensioners. Seven hundred thousand of those are full pensioners. You know, these are people who can ill afford to absorb any more costs in their everyday lives on top of everything else that they're having to pay extra for. So I think the Greens are very likely to force the issue. Whether they vote against it in its entirety is yet to be seen, but they certainly are very dissatisfied.

RORY McCLAREN: What about One Nation?

SENATOR RUSTON: Well, I would hope that One Nation would, as would all of the crossbench. We would be very hopeful that they would see the sense in not imposing this cruel tax on older Australians.

SONYA FELDHOFF: You're listening to the federal Shadow Health Minister, Senator Anne Ruston, here on 891 ABC Adelaide with Sonya, Jules and Rory. You described it as being a false economy to cut, to abolish this rebate cut. In what way do you see this impacting our broader health system through our public hospital system?

SENATOR RUSTON: Well, every person who moves from the private system into the public system is one more person who is turning up at our hospital system in South Australia, where we already know that ramping is really high. We already know we've got very many older Australians who are stuck in hospital beds because they haven't got anywhere to go, because the government's not releasing new home care packages or there's no place for them in an aged care home. So forcing potentially 78,000 — and that could well be a conservative estimate — 78,000 more people into our already overburdened public hospital system is going to see every Australian and every South Australian waiting longer: longer ramping, longer waitlists for elective surgery and potentially more people stuck in hospital beds because they haven't got anywhere else to go.

RORY McCLAREN: Senator, another issue the federal government is looking at is the prospect of potentially imposing price caps when it comes to medical specialists. Is this a policy that you will support?

SENATOR RUSTON: Well, obviously we need to make sure that Australians have got affordable access to healthcare. And so it's very, very important that we have a system that allows Australians to be able to afford to get access to that care. But I think the government needs to be much clearer about how it's going to go about this, because the last thing we need is to see a situation where we lose more of our health professionals because they won't stay in the system. I think there's a lot more work that needs to be done on this policy, but on the surface of it, of course, we support Australians getting access to cheaper and affordable healthcare.

JULES SCHILLER: So you agree that gap fees for specialists are out of control?

SENATOR RUSTON: Well, certainly we've seen some gap fees that I think every Australian would be questioning. But I think we need to be very clear that this is a broader issue, and make sure that we have got a system that is actually delivering health outcomes for all Australians.

SONYA FELDHOFF: Glenys on the text line, she says, 'Why are you only going for low-hanging fruit? All major parties, target and change the tax rules so that millionaires who use offsets to pay no tax contribute something to their country.' Could there not be a carve-out for pensioners, for instance, or means testing in relation to this?

SENATOR RUSTON: There already is means testing, yeah. So there already is means testing. It's the base level, which is the level that this is going to affect most predominantly: people who are pensioners and part pensioners, to a large extent. So these people are already means tested. You do not get the additional rebate. In fact, you don't get any private health insurance rebate once you are over a certain threshold of income. And what we're saying is that the people most impacted by this are going to be the ones on very low incomes. Most of them — well, at least half of them — are under $37,000 annual income, which is a very low income by anybody's standards.

SONYA FELDHOFF: Senator Anne Ruston, thank you for your time. Shadow Health Minister here on 891 ABC Adelaide.

ENDS