Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I say to the Leader of the Opposition: here we are, back to the same old siren song of negativity and distorting the facts. He says he is concerned about this pensioner in Western Australia. I do understand that pensioners around the country actually struggle to make ends meet. We in this government understand that, which is why we were responsible for an historic increase in the pension, something delivered by this government and never delivered by those opposite when they had the opportunity. We delivered an historic pension increase. Then, when we put in place carbon pricing, because we were concerned about the circumstances of those on fixed incomes we ensured that we not only gave them the amount of money that would be necessary to deal with the average flow-through price impact, we gave them extra money because we wanted them, knowing that their budgets are tight, to benefit from this package.

The Leader of the Opposition well knows that the big drivers of electricity price increases in Western Australia are local factors and decisions of the Western Australian government.

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