Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Nine times before the last election Tony Abbott said, 'No cuts, no changes to pensions.' On the day before the election, on election eve, in that famous SBS interview—which still has the hardheads of the Liberal Party slapping their foreheads in frustration when they watch re-runs—Tony Abbott said there would be no changes to pensions. Yet today we are here arguing about the government's rotten changes to pensions. But of course we know that the government has form when it comes to telling untruths to the Australian people. Mr Abbott said there would be no cuts to schools—and there are. He said there would be no cuts to hospitals—and there are. He said there would be no changes to universities and their funding—and there are. And, of course, he said, 'No cuts to the ABC and SBS'—and that is exactly what has been happening.

This country is run by a Prime Minister who is willing to look Australians in the eye and lie to them and keep lying to them. This time, just like he did with the debt ceiling, he is using a dodgy deal with the Greens. Here we go. It almost defies belief. The Prime Minister of Australia lectured the previous Labor government for three years, saying he would never work with the Greens. If it means breaking a promise and cutting pensions, Mr Abbott will work with anyone he can, and that includes the Greens. The real problem with the deal is not that he has lied, although that is terrible—but he has certainly lowered our expectations about his honesty anyway. That is not the real issue here. The real issue here is that he has certainly broken his promise to the present and future retirees of Australia.

Let us be really clear about what is happening with this proposed legislation, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Fair and Sustainable Pensions) Bill 2015. This new round of pension cuts is going to cut the pensions of 330,000 low-income pensioner households. That will be the effect of this law, of this change. This is not people in the future. This is people right now who have worked hard their whole lives. They have made plans and financial arrangements, they have allocated money into term deposits and they have made decisions about their assets based on a set of rules. And what does this government do? It is retrospectively undercutting the ground upon which 330,000 people felt they had a contract with the government of Australia.

In these 330,000, there will be 90,000 thrown off the pension entirely. The message is clear for Australians, as we watch the debate about this legislation: the Liberal Party are coming after your pensions. You cannot trust the Liberal Party of Australia with the interests of pensioners in Australia. They tried to cut the pensions last year. In the shameful 2014 budget, the government changed the indexation rates, and they said that was not a cut, even though their own budget papers demonstrated this was a cut of some significant amount to pensions, for every pensioner in Australia. When confronted with evidence of their wrongdoing, the government chose to defend their position for nearly a year. But eventually, in their concern to save the jobs of Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey, survival instincts kicked in and, at the last moment, they have chosen to drop their cuts to pensions, even though they told Australians for a year that they were not doing what we were accusing them of. Then they decided to change what we had accused them of, because they knew we were right and the government was hurting pensioners.

The real issue here, though, is that, if you are on a pension now, or if you will rely on a pension in the future, the Liberals are coming after you—and it is only the Labor Party willing to stand in front of the Liberal Party steamroller coming to flatten pensioners in this country. The research shows that, with these proposed cuts, if they pass the House and they pass the Senate—where the Liberal Party have their new-found allies in the Greens—half of all new retirees in the next 10 years will be affected. Seven hundred thousand working Australians who will retire in the next decade will be affected by these rotten changes.

The people we are talking about are not 'Tony's millionaires', as he likes to call them. These are ordinary people who have worked hard all their lives. They have paid taxes all their lives. They have paid off their house. They have educated their kids. They have been good citizens in their community. And they have been ambushed by a government that simply cannot keep its word. There is a new generation of Australians currently planning and saving for their retirement, people in their 50s and 60s, who this government is shifting the goal posts on.

The government love to say that they are only affecting rich people. They somehow think that they have become a new Trotskyist front, where they are helping the poor and punishing the rich. The government are making out—

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