Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Labor do have a very clear understanding of the enormous contribution that carers make to the people whom they love. I know from my own family the enormous personal sacrifices that people make, and they do it because they love the people they care for. We also know that an enormous lifetime of contribution has been made by the senior members of this country. We recognise that, we respect that, and that is why we want to ensure that, as they grow older, they are both supported financially and provided with services. We know that for many carers the cost of the sacrifice they make is both deeply emotional and financial. It is a very tough task that so many people take on. They want to take it on because they care so much about the people whom they care for.

It is the case that so many carers in this country earn a lot less than other members of our community. In fact, one-third of primary carers are in households that rank in the poorest 20 per cent of households in Australia. We as a government do understand it; we understand it from our own families. Many of these people have significant additional costs, whether it is for that special medication, for the equipment they need to help care for their loved ones or for the additional transport costs they have in visits backwards and forwards from hospital. All of these issues do impose an extra financial burden on so many carers.

Also, for many carers there is often a very significant cost to their own family lives—for example, the pressure placed on other members of the family. One woman said to me that the hardest thing for her is not only having to care for the individual child whom she has to take on a regular basis to the hospital but recognising the impact of those many hospital visits on her other children, who often do not have their mother to care for them as much as other children have.

These are very significant issues that so many carers do face. They are enormous personal sacrifices and enormous financial sacrifices that each and every one of us understands very deeply. Right at our core we do have an unshakable belief, an unshakable principle, that all Australians should share in the economic prosperity that this country is experiencing. Labor thinks each and every person should share in that prosperity. That is why we are making changes to the utilities payment, and I will talk about that a little later.

The Prime Minister has said quite categorically that the reports in the media that pensioners and carers may be worse off are wrong. He has made it absolutely clear that those reports are wrong. He has also said that, when it comes to the bonuses that have been paid in the past, senior Australians and carers will not be worse off. That is a guarantee that the Prime Minister has given to senior Australians and carers. One of the things that the government is prepared to do, unlike the previous government, is to give some certainty past this budget to those carers and seniors. We want to give both of those groups greater security into the future. Rather than having to deal, as they did, with the previous government’s series of one-off payments, we are proposing to look for new ways to make sure that we can give both older Australians and carers greater certainty into the future. We know that this will provide them with a much greater sense of security than the previous government was ever prepared to do.

A few minutes ago the member for Warringah said that the previous Prime Minister, John Howard, had delivered. One thing the previous Prime Minister did not deliver was any sense of certainty into the future about these bonuses. We know that all the current opposition was prepared to do before each budget was to say, ‘We’ll give a one-off bonus.’ Before the last election, as the Prime Minister indicated in his earlier remarks, the opposition was not prepared to give any guarantee that it would pay this bonus if it won the election. It certainly gave no guarantee that it would pay the bonus or give any security into the future for seniors or carers. One thing that is very clear from the current opposition’s election statements and the state of the budget is that, when we look at the budget papers from last year, we see that this bonus payment was not on the books. If ever we needed any evidence whatsoever of its intentions, the previous government had no intention of paying this bonus in a secure way. It had no commitment whatsoever.

The previous government had no commitment to continuing these bonuses. The Leader of the Opposition and the member for Warringah have stood up in this place today and made an enormous amount of noise, but I think they should be honest with the carers they speak to individually and through this parliament. They made no commitment in the budget last year and in the lead-up to the election that they would pay these bonuses. There is no money in the budget for them. A little bit of honesty from the opposition would be welcomed by the carers they are speaking to. All they were prepared to do was offer short-term election year bonuses. They were not prepared to make an ongoing commitment to carers. They were not prepared to do so because they had no dedication to resolving the issue and giving people the security they deserve. Unfortunately, from the previous government there was a decision to deliver things on a one-off basis and not in a continuous way so as to give people security.

There is another area of hypocrisy from the opposition that is quite breathtaking. These are the same people—the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Warringah would have been in the cabinet when the decision was taken—who proposed taking the carer allowance away from nearly 30,000 parents of children with a disability. This is what the Canberra Times reported back in August 2003:

Nearly 30,000 families who care for children with disabilities are expected to lose their government carer allowance.

The article went on to say:

These figures show that almost 30,000 fewer families will receive the allowance this financial year.

That was a proposition from those in opposition now who are making the most extraordinary hypocritical statements in this debate. It got much worse in 2003 for these parents of severely disabled children. Following the outcry, the Age reported on 13 August:

Parents of more than 5,000 disabled children have lost their $87 fortnightly allowance under a Howard government review.

That is what the previous government were on about. There has been a lot of noise today and lots of suggestions that things were different, but, when you look at the record and at what the previous government were on about, you find that they were not about providing any certainty for the future or making sure that carers and seniors were able to cope with the significant financial pressures that they faced.

Unlike the opposition, the government is all about giving certainty to carers and seniors because we do not want to leave them hanging. We do not want to leave people hanging until budget night, year after year after year. That is the task that we have taken on, because it was never taken on by the previous government. There was no previous commitment in the budget to deliver these bonuses. There was no previous commitment given by the now opposition just before the election that they would pay these bonuses. The Prime Minister has made it absolutely plain that, as far as these bonuses are concerned, no carer and no senior will be worse off. He has also given a guarantee that we will give some security to these people so that they are not hanging out every budget night for information on whether or not the bonuses will be paid.

I want to also make a few remarks about the very important election commitments that we are about to deliver to over three million Australians—to seniors, carers and people with a disability—in increasing the utilities allowance from its current level of $107 to $500 a year, and we are going to pay it on a quarterly basis. We know just how important this is for those who are on the seniors concession allowance, so eligible self-funded retirees too will be getting the $500 utilities allowance and it will be paid quarterly to them. The opposition needs to make sure that there is no nonsense in the Senate when this issue is debated this week. The government wants to make sure that this utilities allowance is paid on 20 March as we promised. We promised that it would be paid on a quarterly basis and we promised that the first instalment would be paid on 20 March, and the only thing standing in the way of that promise is the federal opposition. We want to be able to give this additional help to senior Australians, to carers and to people with a disability, so I would ask the Leader of the Opposition to guarantee that there will not be any delays in the Senate while this issue is debated so that we can make sure that the seniors, carers and people with disabilities actually get what they need.

We hear from those opposite that they wanted to do this. They actually had 11 years to increase the utilities allowance. They had 11 years to make sure that the utilities allowance was available to carers. They had 11 years to make sure that the utilities allowance was available to people with a disability. Each and every one of us knows—but, more importantly, each and every senior Australian, each and every carer and each and every person with a disability in Australia knows—that that utilities allowance was, firstly, not increased to $500 by the previous government and, secondly, was not extended to carers or to people with a disability. This money is very important in helping people with the rising cost of living. The first instalment will be delivered on 20 March—next week—as long as the opposition make sure that it is quickly delivered through the Senate.

I did say at the outset that we understand the concerns of carers. We understand the very significant financial pressures they are under. We also understand the very significant financial pressures that senior Australians are under. That is why we have made sure—the Prime Minister has assured these most vulnerable members of our community—that, when it comes to these bonuses, they will not be one dollar worse off under the forthcoming budget. It is important that people are given that financial security, and this government will give it to them. (Time expired)

Question put:

That the motion (Dr Nelson’s) be agreed to.

See this speech in context