I'm asked why the government made the announcement we did in the budget this year to change the private health insurance rebate arrangements for over-65s. First of all, just to be clear what it is that we have decided to do is to return those rebate arrangements, or effectively a subsidy that government pays, for private health insurance to its original design, which did not discriminate on the basis of age so the two households living next to each other on an income of $50,000 or $80,000 or $100,000 would receive exactly the same taxpayer subsidy for their private health insurance whether they were 60 or 50 or 65. We think that is a sound policy proposition. It was the original design of the private health insurance rebate system, and it is the sort of difficult decision but defensible decision, we think, that we need to consider to fund the very growing needs for aged-care services for older Australians.

This really goes to the why part of the question the member for Bowman asked me. When I was first appointed minister for health, we spent $24 billion on aged-care services, four or five years ago. This year, not 24, we'll spend $44 billion. We've tripled the number of Support at Home packages for older Australians. We've increased the number of care minutes by about eight million care minutes every single day. We've put nurses back into nursing homes, as the Prime Minister promised to do, and yet still, at a time of unprecedented demographic change in our community, particularly as the oldest baby boomers reached the age of 80, which is a very significant time of need for aged-care and health services, we continue to have to find new money every single budget and every single budget update. I acknowledge the member's constituents concerns. This is a hard decision at this time, but these are the sorts of hard decisions a responsible government needs to make if we are to do what I think older Australians deserve, and that is to provide the level of care and dignity that they deserve.