6PR Perth
E&OE
PRESENTER:
Morning thanks for your time today Minister
MINISTER:
My pleasure.
PRESENTER:
It wasn’t long ago I don’t think, in fact in the last few weeks we were hearing that the health care card may be taken away from self-funded retirees. What’s your news today?
MINISTER:
Well our news is to meet an election commitment we made last year and that is that we would index annually the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card. The card value hasn’t been increased since 2001, there’s been no indexation and therefore it hasn’t kept up with the cost of living particularly for those self-funded retirees who have the CHSC.
PRESENTER:
In real terms do you know what this could mean for I think it’s around 27,000 additional people who’ll be brought into this under the scheme. What could it mean for them in their pocket?
MINISTER:
It means at the moment that if you have taxable income of under 50,000 as a single or under 80,000 as a combined income as a couple then you can qualify for the Seniors Health Card, by indexing it that means that threshold will change according to the consumer price index in other words the cost of living annually in the future. It means that some people who don’t qualify at the moment may well qualify, up to 27,000 people and it also means that some people who have some changes in their income reflected through their cost of living and their expenses and their income they may still stay on it when otherwise they would have gone off it.
PRESENTER:
This obviously brings about for a lot more people cheaper access to other health benefits?
MINISTER:
That’s right, one of the advantages to people having the card is that they get the access to concessional rates on the pharmaceutical benefit scheme, in other words cheaper medicines for them.
PRESENTER:
Any coincidence in the fact that we’ve got a Senate election re-run here in WA or was this always on the cards?
MINISTER:
No, we introduced the legislation today because we want to start the indexation in September of this year so we need to get the legislation through the House of Representatives and the Senate before the end of June so that we can introduce that indexation as we promised from September of this year.
PRESENTER:
Okay while I’ve got you there is a new payment, sorry, increase payments for pensioners, around 3.6 million pensioners have come into effect?
MINISTER:
That’s right the pension increased for single age pensioners, it increased by $15.70 a fortnight and for couple age pensioners it increased by $23.80 a fortnight so that was the indexation of the pension which occurs currently twice a year.
PRESENTER:
And how does this hit on the budget bottom line that we’ve got coming up or is this not going to have any impact on that?
MINISTER:
No this all has an impact on the budget bottom line because one of the major elements of the broadly welfare bill is the age pension itself. So this has an impact on the budget bottom line but by the same token we are committed to the age pension, many Australians are reliant upon the age pension to be able to live their lives with some degree of comfort and obviously indexation reflects changes in their cost of living.
PRESENTER:
Thanks for your time.
MINISTER:
Thank you.