Doorstop Interview with Minister Butler, Canberra – 14 October 2026

MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING, MINISTER FOR DISABILITY AND THE NDIS: This afternoon, we saw the resurrection of the “Noalition” under the new leadership of David Shoebridge. A partnership that is determined to thwart the agenda of the government without debate, without consideration of amendments. Simply by a political stunt to discharge a Bill that is intended to fund more aged care beds, more aged care packages and better care for older Australians.

Last week, the Senate Inquiry delivered a report that indicated, particularly from the Greens Party, a desire to have a debate in the Senate and for there to be consideration of amendments. But instead, under David Shoebridge's new approach to the Greens Party leadership, he teamed up with the Coalition simply to discharge this important part of the government's budget.

I just want to go through what the Senate has just discharged. I think everyone understands the need for more aged care beds, more aged care packages at home, and better care for people who are receiving that support at home. And to do that, we've had to make some hard decisions. Budgets are about choices. We get a lot of lectures from the Opposition about the need for strong fiscal management. Yet every time we bring a difficult save to fund new important services, politics takes over, and the Coalition decides to oppose it because they think that it can ground a strong political campaign for them.

And on the side of the Greens Party, you have a Party that, for years and years now, has had as part of their policy platform a commitment to shifting funds from the private health insurance rebate into public services, instead, decide today to support the Coalition to discharge this bill without debate, without the ability for government to consider amendments. This is an absolute travesty that flies in the face of any of the members of the Coalition's professed commitment to sound budget management and flies in the face of, I thought, what was a clear understanding across the Parliament of the need to fund better aged care services.

The Government is committed to pressing ahead with this budget measure. Older Australians deserve better aged care services, and we're determined to do everything we can to find the money necessary to deliver those services.

Tomorrow, we intend to reintroduce this bill. It is important that the Parliament have a proper debate. That these really important questions for older Australians are not held hostage to political stunts, but instead that the elected members of the House of Representatives and elected Senators take these issues seriously and debate them properly.
 
JOURNALIST: Will the bill, when it's reintroduced tomorrow, be exactly the same as it was when discharged today?
 
BUTLER: Yes.
 
JOURNALIST: Does this change mean anything in terms of your budget outcome in terms of that money going into aged care?
 
BUTLER: We're pressing ahead with the changes to aged care services that we announced would be funded by this measure. Older Australians need that, and they deserve that, which is why we are so determined to press ahead with the Budget measure that will fund that.
 
JOURNALIST: So that $3 billion goes into aged care, regardless of what happens with this bill?
 
BUTLER: We're determined to press ahead with this bill. I don't think anyone in this parliament denies the need for more aged care beds and more aged care packages. I think it's time that senators, in particular, faced up to their responsibility to recognise the need for hard choices to fund a rapid expansion of aged care services that is demanded by the demographic shift that we're all witnessing.
 
JOURNALIST: Is the government at all tempted to use this towards a double dissolution trigger? Is today the first step towards a possible trigger, and would you have to put it to a vote in another three months' time?
 
BUTLER: I haven't considered that. I don't think anyone in government has, which is why we're doing it tomorrow, because it is that urgent. We're not going to delay these things. We're determined to press ahead so that aged care providers and older Australians who potentially need to use aged care services have the confidence that the expansion that I think we all understand is needed is going to be delivered.
 
JOURNALIST: Can we just clarify when you plan to move to a vote again?
 
BUTLER: We've only heard of this over the last couple of hours. I've said we're not waiting around. We're going to reintroduce the bill tomorrow morning, and we intend to press ahead quite how that fits into the Parliamentary schedule over coming sitting weeks. I can't tell you right now, Rosie, but we're not going to be delaying this. We want to push ahead with this as quickly as possible.
 
JOURNALIST: Minister, if the Senate have said they're not going to pass this, what is the point in reintroducing it in its exact same form? Is this just trying to call their bluff?
 
BUTLER: We had a Senate Inquiry delivered last week where the Greens Party senators, who were part of that inquiry, said that they wanted the Senate to consider amendments. Yet, when it came to a question of whether the bill could be debated to allow amendments to be moved and considered by government senators and other senators, they instead teamed up with the Coalition in this resurrection of what we saw during the last term of Parliament simply to thwart the will of the Government for political purposes, rather than having a genuine debate.
 
JOURNALIST: So, are you prepared to have carve-outs for pensioners to get the Greens support?
 
BUTLER: I'm not going to debate these issues in a press conference. That is the whole reason people for that red chamber down there to have a debate in the Senate. That's what I thought we were going to have. We were acting in good faith, having discussions with Green senators. In the defence of the Coalition, they were pretty clear that they were never going to oppose this, in spite of their professed commitment to sound budget management. They were just going to let the expenditure happen without the need to find a savings to fund it. But the Green Senators said that they wanted a genuine debate, they wanted us to consider amendments. I said, of course, we understand we don't have the numbers by ourselves in the Senate. We'll consider those amendments in good faith in the chamber. But we didn't have the opportunity to do that.
 
JOURNALIST: Minister, will you seek negotiations or discussions with the Greens overnight ahead of that bill being reintroduced, or are you prepared to have it knocked back for a second time?
 
BUTLER: We've been having discussions with the Greens. It appears pretty clear that the new leadership of the Greens Party was not willing to have those negotiations continue, but instead spied a political opportunity to resurrect the “Noalition” and to team up with the Coalition, flying in the face of a policy platform commitment. I thought the Greens Party were committed to that's been there for years, for as long as the part of health insurance rebate has been.
 
JOURNALIST: Minister Butler, if you can't get this bill through the Parliament this year, do you admit defeat and move on and try and find the $3 billion from somewhere else?
 
BUTLER: I'm not going to respond to that hypothetical at the moment. We're committed to getting our Budget through. I think we've seen that since May.
 
JOURNALIST: Has the Government met with the Greens to discuss this bill since David Shoebridge became leader?
 
BUTLER: Yeah, we've had discussions as late as the end of last weekend, the beginning of this week. I can't remember when David Shoebridge became leader.
 
JOURNALIST: That was two weeks ago.
 
BUTLER: And we've been working in good faith with the shadow minister, he's not shadow minister, with the Senator responsible for our policy area. We've had good, constructive discussions with Senator Steele-John, as I have, frankly, for the four and a half years that they've shared this portfolio.
 
JOURNALIST: So, was Senator Shoebridge part of those discussions before today?  
 
BUTLER: No.
 
JOURNALIST: Isn't the political reality though that the Senate's decided they don't want pensioners to have to pay more for private health insurance, and it's now gateway through?
 
BUTLER: That's not the impact of what happened today. The impact was to discharge the entire bill, not just to have a debate about amendments that might pertain to pensioners. Pensioners are about, we think, 1.2 million of the 3 million or so people who would be impacted by what I've said is a hard decision for us to take, but one that is necessary to find the funds. I think everyone understands we need to find expand aged care services. What it does is to return the design of the scheme to its original design, which saw subsidies or rebates paid to people not on the basis of their age, but on the basis of their income.
 
JOURNALIST: But regardless of whether or not today's action in the Senate was constructive, the Bill still won't pass in its current form, isn't it, isn't the onus now on the government to go back to those, you know, private negotiations and potentially make some of these carve-outs that they're asking for?
 
BUTLER: We've delivered a budget. We've set out very clearly our explanation for this measure, which is intended to fund much-needed expansion of aged care services. We thought that we had some senators who were willing to participate in a debate. That's what you could read in black and white in the Senate Inquiry that was only delivered last week. In what appears to be a rush of blood to the head by the new leadership of the Greens Party, that's all become a bit of a pile-on in the Senate and a discharge of a bill instead of a reasoned debate, which is, I think, what Australians sent their senators to the Senate to conduct.
 
Now we're going to put it back, and we're going to give the Senate another chance to have a debate. Now, at the end of the day, the vote will lie where the vote lies. If amendments are moved, of course the government will have to consider those amendments in good faith, as we have been in discussions and negotiations before the bill was intended to be debated in the Parliament. But this idea of just discharging a bill without a reasoned, proper debate, it's pretty extraordinary, and if this is the standard operating procedure for the new Greens leadership, then I think that party has made a profound mistake.
 
JOURNALIST: Are you saying that you were close to a deal with Senator Steele-John?
 
BUTLER: No, what I am saying is that we were very clear about their position, and they were clear about the reasons for their position. I think there had been some discussion about the numbers, for example, of pensioners who were covered by this measure. The Parliamentary Budget Office had produced some numbers, which I think some of the crossbenchers in the House of Representatives were using. We'd produced other numbers that meant that I think at least we were having a discussion based on agreed facts. Now we've not reached a deal. We've made it really clear that we were still committed to the Budget measure as it was originally designed, recognising it's a tough, hard measure, but one that we think was necessary to fund an expansion of aged care services, but as I said only, I think a couple of days ago at a press conference in this hall, I recognised then and I recognise today we don't have the numbers in the Senate to proceed by ourselves. We would have to listen to that debate. We have to consider a voting position, but we weren't given that opportunity.
 
JOURNALIST: Does the Senate's rejection of the bill –
 
BUTLER: It's not even a rejection. It's the discharge of the bill. It's not even a debate on the rejection. Sorry to interrupt.
 
JOURNALIST: Does it tell us that the government's budget is in trouble here? This is a key savings measure of the budget. Is the budget in trouble?
 
BUTLER: No, of the $60 billion or thereabouts in savings, about $50 billion or thereabouts come from my portfolio, and that also recognises that a very big part of the Government's spending, including its growth, comes from my portfolio. This all involves hard choices, just as households are making hard choices about their budgets. It’s proper for governments to make hard choices about priorities. Now, it'd be really easy just to keep on spending every single dollar in every single program and adding to it on top. That has not been our approach in every budget and every budget update that we've delivered since we came to government in 2022, and it wasn't earlier this year.
 
Now, all of the all of the savings that that were put in place in my portfolio are proceeding well. We've had some good constructive discussions, for example, in relation to NDIS reform with the Opposition, and we're able to pass that bill a little while ago. We're acting on that, but this has been quite different. The decision by the Senate today was just extraordinary. Not even willing to have a debate. Not even willing to front up to the consequences of discharging this bill in terms of aged care services. Not having a debate and proposing perhaps an alternative stream of funding that would deliver the additional beds and the additional home care packages that I think everyone understands are needed out there in the community. Instead, some political stunt.
 
JOURNALIST: Minister, isn't the fact that the Senate has taken this relatively dramatic position a display that maybe you have got this wrong? It wasn't a unilateral decision by the Coalition and the Greens. Just before we heard from Jacqui Lambie, Monique Ryan was up here as well. It seems like the only people that are actually backing this are from the Government. Isn't this a display that you might have got it wrong?
 
BUTLER: The best way to come to a considered conclusion about that, Josh, is to have a debate at the end of the day. That's how this building is supposed to work.
 
JOURNALIST: Are you struggling to make the case for savings the Government has all but had to drop with the allied health veterans savings too?
 
BUTLER: I'm focused particularly on this bill and on my portfolio, and I think in a portfolio where everyone understands there is increased demand, particularly in aged care, at a time where baby boomers are starting to enter their 80s, hard decisions need to be made. We made that in a considered way. We made it in a way that I think will have an impact. There's no question about that, but a relatively modest impact that is in the order of 60 to 70 cents a day for the average premium holder, but also returns this policy to its original design. And I think an arguable point from equity, from an equity perspective, that says that two households next door to each other on exactly the same household income would receive the same subsidy from government for their private health insurance membership, instead of there being a discrimination on the basis of age.
 
JOURNALIST: If you can't get this multi-billion-dollar saving through Parliament, you're having to account for that in your MYEFO coming up?
 
BUTLER: We're not we're not at that point yet, which is why we've said and I’ve just announced that we'll reintroduce this bill tomorrow. We're determined to have another go at that. We think this this that important. We're not at that point.
 
JOURNALIST: Just to clarify will you try and get it through this year, or you don't have a time?
 
BUTLER: I haven't had the opportunity yet to talk to the Leader of the House, and we'll have to go through the usual process to work out whether there's a landing slot, given that there isn't that much time left of sitting in the rest of the calendar 2026. But this is part of the Budget. Age care services are in desperate need of expansion, so we're not going to sit around on this.
 
JOURNALIST: Are you concerned that this kind of tactic is going to be used more broadly by the Greens and the Coalition going forward?
 
BUTLER: We've long recognised we don't have the numbers in the Senate, and we need to negotiate with either the Greens or with the Coalition. And we've been able to do one or the other in respect of some really important government measures, and that's I think been in the national interest. If this is a change of approach under the new leadership of the Greens Party, then I think that is not going to be in the national interest. If people aren't willing to have a debate, if aren't if they're not willing to take an open mind, at least, to going into the chamber and fronting up to the argument, then I think that's going to be very much against the national interest.
 
JOURNALIST: Do you think it's in David Shoebridge’s character to do this?
 
BUTLER: I'm not in a position to say that. I think, though, this is not a good first sign of the Greens Party new leadership.
 
JOURNALIST: Just one more on modelling of the impact of the changes so pensioners, for example, give up their private health insurance. What the impact on state-run hospitals will be? Why has the government done that? Has there been any modelling?
 
BUTLER: What we have done is modelled what we think might be the impact on private health membership, and that will be modest. There was an FOI publication that extended that well into the next or into the next decade and indicated a couple of things. First, that the impact on private health insurance membership would be modest, but also that at the same time, private health insurance membership would grow quite substantially, particularly for over 65s, about 85 per cent of the growth in private health insurance membership over the next four years would be over 65s as well. We considered this carefully, obviously, when we made the decision to take this hard measure, this difficult measure but necessary measure, and we're very confident it won't have a material impact on hospitals. Thanks.