Matters of Urgency — Senior Australians

Deborah O'Neill

Senator Ruston has submitted a proposal, under standing order 75, today, as shown at item 12 of today's Order of Business:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Albanese Government to immediately reverse its harmful treatment of older Australians, including its decision to gut the private health insurance rebate for Australians over 65, impose a flawed algorithm on aged care needs assessments with no capacity for human override and bury a so-called 'widow tax' in rushed legislation, which together demonstrate a profound disregard for the dignity, security and contribution of older Australians.

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Anne Ruston

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Albanese Government to immediately reverse its harmful treatment of older Australians, including its decision to gut the private health insurance rebate for Australians over 65, impose a flawed algorithm on aged care needs assessments with no capacity for human override and bury a so-called 'widow tax' in rushed legislation, which together demonstrate a profound disregard for the dignity, security and contribution of older Australians.

I stand today to speak on this urgency motion because I believe it should be the opinion of the Senate that this Labor government is waging a war on older Australians. I am pleased to move this urgency motion standing in my name; it's an urgency motion that calls out the Labor government for waging a war on older Australians through higher taxes, higher healthcare costs and reduced aged-care support. Older Australians are being hit with a triple whammy—an $11 billion cut to the private health insurance rebate which impacts over-65s; a flawed aged-care assessment algorithm that puts a computer, instead of a person, in charge of somebody's assessment being introduced into a system that is already seeing blowouts in wait times and waitlists; and a hidden widow's tax that strips Australians of the promised grandfathering protections when they are at their most vulnerable.

Labor's $11 billion rebate cut is a tax on older Australians who have spent decades paying for their own private health insurance. From April 2027, couples over the age of 65 with gold cover will pay up to $1,614 more per year—a 21.3 per cent increase; the largest increase on record—and the government admits it doesn't even know how many of the 3.1 million older Australians who will be affected are pensioners. But we know that over 50 per cent of these people are likely to be pensioners, because National Seniors have already estimated that 55 per cent of those 3.1 million Australians who will be impacted will be pensioners.

Many older Australians will have little choice but to absorb the costs, because they rely so heavily on their private health care. Older Australians disproportionately hold gold and silver policies covering procedures like joint replacements and cataract surgery. Losing cover means longer waitlists in our public hospitals and greater pressure on our public health system.

There's Labor's aged-care assessment algorithm. It's an assessment tool that allows assessors to collect information, but the algorithm, the computer, is the one that makes the decision that determines the funding. Assessors have no ability to override incorrect outcomes, even when the clinical assessors' professional judgement says the decision is wrong.

Since the rollout in November 2025, almost a thousand older Australians have sought reviews to challenge the outcome of their assessment. Thousands of older Australians have had care reduced or been found ineligible, despite their worsening health conditions. The Inspector-General found that only 0.1 per cent of cases are classified as urgent, even for people with advanced dementia or motor neurone disease. The Commonwealth Ombudsman is investigating this algorithm, following thousands of complaints. The Inspector-General of Aged Care, and peak organisations, including OPAN, COTA, MND Australia and the Australian and New Zealand Society for Geriatric Medicine, have all called for human override. This week, we, in this chamber, have the opportunity to be able to put that back in, and I hope everybody in this chamber supports that.

And there's the 'widows tax'. Under Labor's new CGT and negative gearing laws, Australians were promised that their existing assets would be grandfathered if held on budget night. That promise was another cruel hoax from Labor. Buried in Labor's legislation, which it rushed through the parliament with the Greens, was a provision stripping grandfathering provisions and protections from Australians who lose a partner through death or divorce, or who are fleeing domestic violence. Because ownership structures change, the protections disappear—at the very moment when Australians are at their most vulnerable.

Whether it's higher taxes, higher health costs or denying older Australians the care that they have been assessed as needing, Labor continues to make life harder for older Australians. This Treasurer has got no idea about the details of his budget. This government has got no idea about the details of legislation that it has jammed through this place.

There's one thing you can be assured of: we will stand on the side of you, older Australians, who deserve a more dignified retirement and ageing process than this government is prepared to give you. The Labor government have declared war on older Australians. Older Australians deserve policies that will support them, not punish them. That means that we need to make sure that Australians get the care and the aged-care support that they need, and that they should not be taxed when they are at their most vulnerable.

Ellie Whiteaker

Well, what another ridiculous scare campaign from those opposite. And it's not all that surprising. I mean, they're badly down in the polls; just when we thought they couldn't drop any further, they have. They're in absolute chaos. They're in coalition with not only the Nationals but also One Nation. They are in a desperate attempt to distract from the chaos, from the division, from the divisiveness that we're seeing from the Liberal Party and the National Party and One Nation working together. They're in an attempt to get the Australian people to miss the fact that they've voted against our tax cuts for working Australians in this place and that they've stood in the way of every attempt we have tried to make to build more homes and get more young people into their first home, and that they have stood in the way of every attempt that we have made to help with the cost of living.

They are sinking to new lows with this desperate scare campaign, using older Australians in their political quest for relevance. It is absolutely shameful, it is irresponsible and it is wrong. In the other place, we saw the shadow treasurer claim the government had scrapped rebates for private health insurance for people aged over 65. This is wrong. It is simply not true. It is not what our government is proposing. He went even further and suggested it was because the government does not want to provide health care to older Australians.

What a ridiculous proposition to say about this Labor government, which has done more to deliver health care for Australians than any other government since the establishment of Medicare—and certainly more than those opposite. It's a particularly 'egregious' claim—to use Senator Hume's words—about our tax cuts by those opposite, who were found by the royal commission to have overseen an aged-care system of neglect of older Australians. For them to come into this place, and the other place, and accuse us of not being on the side of older Australians is a desperate scare campaign. It's a desperate political tactic to hide from the Australian people the truth about what they stand for, what they don't stand for and what they stand in the way of. They stand in the way of our attempts to deliver tax cuts. They stand in the way of our attempts to build more homes. They stand in the way of our attempts to deliver cost-of-living relief, time and time again.

The bill to which Senator Ruston refers to, the Private Health Insurance Amendment (Modernising the Private Health Insurance Rebate) Bill 2026, ensures more funding for aged care by removing the additional private health insurance subsidy provided to Australians aged 65 and over. We announced these reforms in the budget, and, really, what they mean is that all Australians will receive the same private health support, based on their income rather than their age. Under the current private health insurance arrangements, the government provides a higher subsidy to Australians aged over 65. This bill simplifies the rebate tiers and removes this inequity.

On the other matters that Senator Ruston has raised in her motion—the widow tax, come on! Again, it's another scare tactic and an attempt by them to muddy the truth. On the jointly held assets question about how these matters are dealt with under the existing arrangements prior to our tax reforms being passed through the Senate, the Treasurer and the Prime Minister have said that those matters will be reviewed and considered as we continue to work through these important reforms in a staged way, which is entirely consistent with how these matters are delivered at home. On the question of AI and its use in aged-care assessments, we've been really clear that there is always human oversight over these decisions, as there should be.

But we know the facts don't matter to those opposite. The truth doesn't matter to those opposite, because the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation are committed to working together to stand in the way of the things Australians want to see our government taking action on. But we won't allow them to do it.

David Pocock

I want to again commend Senators Ruston and Allman-Payne for the work that they've done in aged care in shining a light on the use of an algorithm that doesn't seem fit for purpose, shining a light on an assessment tool that—despite what the government says—seems like its only human oversight is the putting of numbers into the algorithm. You can't change it once it comes out, and that is no way to treat Australians.

This leads us to a very important and much broader challenge that we're facing—how do you have more transparency and accountability when there is widespread use of automated decision-making and widespread use of algorithms? Clearly, so far, we haven't figured that out as a country. We need the government to step up when it comes to recommendations from the royal commission and when it comes to transparency of an algorithm that has such a big impact on people's lives.

Long debate text truncated.