Australian news and politics recap May 26: Mark Butler rules out taxpayer-funded bailout for Healthscope

This concludes our live politics and news coverage for the day.

Scroll back through for all the updates on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s stance on Israel, NSW’s floods, Healthscope going into recievership and more.

Join us tomorrow for more live news action, here at thenightly.com.au.

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The ‘messy middle’ of Australia’s energy transition could leave power bills orders of magnitude higher as the cost of constructing transmission soars.

As part of Labor’s plan to shift power generation to as much as as 82 per cent renewable energy by 2030, States are racing to build energy infrastructure to connect remote regions, leading to significant labour shortages and cost overruns.

A sharp escalation in the cost of maintaining and upgrading the nation’s power networks has prompted the Australian Energy Regulator to increase the default price Eastern State households and small businesses will pay for electricity from July 1.

The AER’s revised Default Market Offer, released Monday, follows the release of the Australian Energy Market Operator’s Draft 2025 Electricity Network Options Report, which showed transmission line project costs have risen by as much as 55 per cent compared to two years ago.

The AER said benchmark prices for retail electricity customers in New South Wales, South East Queensland and South Australia will rise between 0.5 per cent and 9.7 per cent, depending on their region.

Read the full report here.

Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson reports: Large solar and wind power projects should be approved faster and nuclear options taken off the table following Labor’s comprehensive Federal election win, energy experts have told a conference.

But international investors could still face substantial hurdles to putting up money for renewable projects in Australia, they warned, and the rush to install discounted household batteries was likely to prove challenging.

Experts, including Climate Change Authority chair Matt Kean and Windlab chief executive John Martin, made the comments at The Energy’s policy panel on Monday.

The stark contrast between policies from the major parties represented a “fork in the road” for the nation’s future, Mr Kean said.

“The government has a mandate to get on with this energy transition,” he said.

The coalition had committed to developing seven nuclear power plants if elected, while Labor planned to expand renewable projects and launched a $2.3 billion policy to cut the price of household solar batteries.

Mr Kean, a former Liberal NSW energy minister, said opposition parties should listen to voters and remove nuclear energy from their plans.

“It was clear that nuclear was always too slow, too costly and too emissions-heavy,” he said.

-- AAP

Read the full story here.

In today’s Newsworthy episode, Ben O’Shea unpacks Victoria’s machete ban and discusses Anthony Albanese’s toughest ever comments on Israel. Plus, the Federal Cabinet comes to WA.

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Healthscope CEO Tino La Spina echoed the Health Minister, reassuring patients it would be “business as usual” at all 37 hospitals.

“I’m at John Faulkner today,” he said. “For this week we have 8700 patients coming to our facilities. They can expect the same fantastic care from dedicated professionals, nurses, doctors and support staff you would any other day of the week.

“Business as usual.”

Westpac and the Commonwealth Bank have both agreed to contribute funding to allow the facilities to continue operatiing with the CBA stumping up a reported $100 million.

Mr La Spina said the company was “confident” there is interest in a buyer taking over the Healthscope business as a whole.

“We have ten non-binding indicative offers,” he said. “Some are for the whole and others potentially could include the whole under certain circumstances. That is the focus.”

When asked why the businesses couldn’t run effectively, Mr La Spina highlighted three core issues.

“One is there’s too much secured debt and that’s being addressed,” he said. “The other is the rentals that the company are paying are out of the market, too high, that will get addressed as part of this process.

“The third, as widely spoken about, is the industry structure with private health insurers, basically having squirrelled away billions and not putting it back into the private sector.

“That is a fight for another day.”

Speaking on Healthscope, Mark Butler assured reporters the sale process would not delay the hospital funding agreement and further reforms.

“We have a range of other possible reforms to improve the operation of the private part of our healthcare system including the viability of hospitals, but I think people who observe this part of our healthcare system understand that Healthscope and its ownership structure directly over the past several years is something of a unique case, an outlier, so I would not draw any sector wide extrapolation from what is happening in this company,” the Health Minister said.

While Healthscope is the second biggest private hospital company in the country, owned by Canadian asset management giant Brookfield Health, Health Minister Mark Butler said they would not receive a taxpayer funded bailout.

“I made it clear that the owners of this company, which you will remember is an overseas private equity firm, will not receive a taxpayer bailout to deal with this, they need to go through a proper sale process,” he told reporters.

“I made that really clear from the time that speculation first emerged about these that we would be ensuring that a sale process took place in a way that protected the interests of patients but also the 19,000 hard-working doctors and nurses and staff who turn up every single day, 365 days a year, to deliver those procedures and care.”

Health Minister Mark Butler has addressed the news Healthscope, a health provider that owns 37 hospitals, has gone into receivership, saying it was not a surprise.

“This decision to place the ownership of Healthscope into receivership is not unexpected,” he said.

“We have been meeting as a government with Healthscope for some considerable time as speculation about this decision has been spreading. Through the expectations the interests of patients and hard-working staff are the highest priority, through this process once it eventuated.”

He said he expected to see an orderly sale process eventuate, “with no impact on patients and hard-working staff”.

“My department has recently met with the receivers and made that exact same point to them,” Mr Butler said.

“We will engage closely through the receivership administration process to protect the interests of staff and patients going forward. I say that I have been reassured by the Healthscope statement released over the past hour or so that makes it clear that hospitals will continue to operate as normal.”

Australian hospital group owner Healthscope has been forced into receivership with two of the big four banks stepping in to help keep the doors of 37 hospitals open.

Westpac and the Commonwealth Bank have both agreed to contribute funding to allow the facilities to continue operatiing with the CBA stumping up a reported $100 million.

The Northern Beaches Hospital is one of the newest facilities in the Healthscope portfolio and has been the centre of a swirling storm of accusations around it’s status.

Receivers, led by McGrathNicol partner Keith Crawford have been appointed, as the Commonwealth Bank and Westpac who are reportedly owed over $1.6 billion by the company, try to ensure the hospital operations continue.

The Prime Minister will host his new-look Cabinet in WA next week, signalling the importance of the State just a month since he was returned to government.

Anthony Albanese described the trip west as an “important opportunity” while addressing his first Cabinet meeting in Canberra on Monday.

“Next week, the Cabinet will go to Perth, Western Australia. Again, a reminder of the importance that we place on the whole nation, not just the East Coast. That will be an important opportunity,” he said.

Mr Albanese said while his ministry and departments had been getting across their briefs in the past few weeks since their emphatic election victory, it was time to get “back down to work”.

He said despite distractions, like the Coalition’s messy start-stop split this week, he wanted his team focused on delivering on election commitments.

It included their housing, cheaper childcare, and clean energy pledges.

“We should be focused on them and what their concerns are, and that’s the platform that we have to implement, the one we’re elected on.

“So we’re down, back down to work again. I know that people have been working.”

Parliament will return on July 22.