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

I thank the member for Calwell very much for her question because she knows that this government is determined to continue to implement the commitments we have made to put a price on carbon pollution and the commitments we have made, and continue to make, to pensioners to support them and help them meet their household budgets.

It is the big polluters and not Australian pensioners who are going to have to pay for the pollution that those big polluters put into our atmosphere. We are delivering a real and permanent increase to the pension. Under our plan to put a price on pollution, Australia's 3.4 million pensioners will receive assistance that more than covers their average expected price increases. Australia's 3.4 million pensioners will get that extra assistance as a result of the legislation that this government has introduced into the parliament. Pensioners will receive both the clean energy advance and a clean energy supplement to make sure that they get ongoing assistance. That assistance will be worth $338 a year for singles and $255 a year for each member of a couple. It will be the case that both the pension and the clean energy supplement will be indexed to make sure that pensioners can keep up with the cost of living.

As the member for Calwell and everybody on this side of the parliament knows, this builds on the very significant increases to the pension that we have delivered since 2009. From next Tuesday, 20 September, pensioners in Australia can expect to get another increase to their pension as a result of improved indexation that this government has delivered as a result of the major reforms we have put in place.

What we know, unfortunately, is that the Liberals in New South Wales—

See this speech in context