Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. You can understand why those opposite are ashamed. Before the last election, the Prime Minister said on national television that there would be no changes to pensions. 'No changes at all', the Prime Minister said—and it was not the first time he said it. He was absolutely unequivocal about it: 'No changes to pensions; no cuts to pensions.' That was the promise that this Prime Minister made to 3.7 million pensioners around Australia before the last election.

We now know that this Prime Minister can no longer be believed about anything he says. He has told a huge untruth to all pensioners in Australia. We now know that this Prime Minister's words stand for absolutely nothing. In their first budget, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer broke their promise with an unprecedented attack on Australia's pensions. It is written in the budget, there for every single person to see, that what this government wants to do is cut the indexation rate for the pension, cut the deeming thresholds for the pension and increase the age for the age pension—to the highest age in the developed world.

Mr Chester interjecting—

The member for Gippsland is making a heck of a lot of noise. He has done nothing to defend pensioners. But what he did do is come in here on 24 June last year as a member of the National Party and vote for a cut to pension indexation. Each and every one of them on that side did so.

Mr Morrison interjecting—

The minister at the table is saying that it was not voted on. You were here! You voted for it! You were not the minister at the time, but it was in a bill that came into the parliament on 24 June last year—and each and every one of you voted to cut pension indexation. Each and every one of you voted for that bill, each and every one of you voted to increase the pension age and each and every one of you will now be held to account in your electorates as we campaign right around this country to show how untruthful you have been. Shame on each and every one of you as you seek to punish age pensioners, as you seek to punish disability support pensioners. Each and every one of you also voted to cut the indexation of the carer payment on 24 June last year.

All of us on this side of the parliament know that pensioners have to get by on a very modest income of around $20,000 a year. We also know, and pensioners increasingly know: if this government were ever to get their way in the Senate—and we will do everything to try to prevent that—the Australian Council of Social Services has worked out that there would be an effective cut of around $80 a week. Pensioners would be $80 a week worse off over the next decade if this government got its way.

This minister and this government continue to try to mislead pensioners. The Prime Minister tried to say that pensioners are not getting their pension cut, but pensioners are not fooled. Pensioners are also not fooled by this minister, who again today claimed that pensioners would be better off under the current government than under Labor. This is of course completely and totally false. Labor's fair indexation system makes sure that the pension is indexed by whichever measure is the higher: the Consumer Price Index, the Pensioner and Beneficiary Living Cost Index—which Labor created and this government wants to get rid of—and male total average weekly earnings. Labor will always make sure that the pension is benchmarked against male total average weekly earnings.

John Howard understood how important it was. He put it into legislation. This government wants to get rid of that link to wages. Peter Whiteford at the Australian National University has done analysis of this to show what would happen over the next 40 years. The government did not show this in the Intergenerational report. They were too frightened to put this detail in the Intergenerational report because the independent analysis shows that the pension would go from the current level of 28 per cent of male wages to 16 per cent of male wages. That is exactly what would happen if those opposite were to get their way.

The Parliamentary Budget Office has also belled the cat on this issue. The Parliamentary Budget Office, independent of Labor and independent of the government, has made clear that this government will spend $23 billion less on pensions. Whose pockets is that money going to come out of? It will come out of the pockets of pensioners, because pensioners will not be getting the same level of increase that they would have got if Labor's method of indexation had continued.

What we know, and what the all pensioner organisations know, is that this will drive pensioners further into poverty. Does this minister want to have, on his head, the driving of pensioners into poverty as a result of this change to pension indexation? Is that what everybody over there wants to have?

I see the member for Barton is here. There are 17,500 pensioners in the electorate of Barton alone. And this member for Barton has already voted, on 24 June last year, to cut the pension indexation of 17,500 pensioners in his electorate. We could say the same for National Party seats. In the electorate of Page—just to choose another electorate—there are a lot of pensioners. In the electorate of Page there are 21,800 pensioners, but the member for Page also voted for these cuts. The member for Page is going to have to go along to the pensioners in each of the towns and villages in his electorate and own up to them that he has voted to cut the pension.

What Labor is going to do continuously, from now until the next election, is make clear the dishonesty of each and every one of those opposite—from the Prime Minister down. The Prime Minister promised before the election that there would be no changes to pensions. We are going to stand with all the pensioners—aged pensioners, disability pensioners and carers—and we will fight these unfair changes each and every day until the next election, and we will make sure that until these changes are dropped from the parliament the government is held to account by the pensioners of Australia.

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