Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) | Hansard source

Of course it is. You mentioned earlier you think this bill is about protecting this cohort of young and low-income Australians. My whole point has been that actually you are taking away protections that are already in place, protections that were put in place deliberately, by Mr John Howard, your previous Liberal Prime Minister, to give vulnerable cohorts a safety net. I don't think any of us can deny that was the motivation behind this. Whether that's costing too much money is another question entirely.

I was interested in your talking with Senator McAllister and your exchange there. You talked about trustees having information about their members and understanding more about their members. I don't think we can assume, by the way, that trustees will always act in the best interests of their members. The royal commission has shown that that hasn't always been the case. I hope it will be, going forward. You also mentioned cross-subsidisation. You mentioned that's the kind of logic in taking away compulsory fees, the default position. Why wouldn't you, as a policy solution, have just put up legislation that makes trustees and group insurers reflect the risks of these cohorts in their pricing? That's what insurance companies do. That's how actuarial studies started—with the birth of the insurance industry in Scotland many hundreds of years ago. It's all about pricing risk. Why are those cohorts paying what they're paying? Why are they being gouged so much by insurance companies? Wouldn't a more neat solution be to have low-income and younger Australians pay lower premiums and have higher-income and older Australians pay a higher premium to reflect where they are in their life and those risks? Why is it that none of that pricing is actually occurring at the moment?