Andrew spoke in opposition to the Government’s plan to reduce the private health insurance rebate for older Australians. You can watch his speech or read an excerpt below:
“…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 uh historically. It’s quite it it’s as simple as that. And the fact is that they’re already in the retirement phase.
So it’s not like they can just 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 are 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 make it work just. But then to retrospectively, in effect, change the arrangements for someone in the retirement phase, that is just bad policy.
That’s really bad policy. You shouldn’t be making any retrospective changes when people are in the retirement phase. They got no room to move. Particularly if you are a single age pensioner on $31,000 a year or you’re doing a bit better and you’re enjoying the median income as a single retiree on about $40,000 a year.
You’ve got no room to move. Now I’m not talking about small numbers here as far as the number of people that are affected.
In fact, something like 40% of older Australians rely entirely on the age pension. I’ll say that again, deputy speaker. About 40% of older Australians who are retired are relying entirely on the age pension.
And about another 25% of Australian retirees are part 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.”