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

That arrow got home, I suspect. The government are making out that somehow they are doing poor people a favour and they are going after rich people. That has been their language. But it does not reflect the reality. Most people who are affected by these changes are below average income rather than above. That is right: most people affected by this are below average income rather than above. The wealthiest households to be hit by these cuts, the so-called millionaires that the government loves to criticise—because the standard product from the government when they do a broken promise is to lie about what they are going to do, then break their promise and then blame the victim for breaking their promise—are on a total superannuation income of less than $55,000 a year. That is the household's total income. And that is if they get all their income from superannuation.

Let us have a look at what we are talking about when we talk about the assets of the people that the government have now decided are so scandalously rich that they going to cut the part-pension on them. If you are a pensioner couple, you are going to be worse off if you have assets of over $451,000—not $1 million; over $451,000. That is a pensioner couple. If you are a single pensioner, you start to lose if you have assets over $289,500. The point is: they try and convince us that the asset is somehow the annual income. They make out that somehow the asset is the annual income. It is not the annual income. What you then have to do is divide that asset by what income is raised from it each year.

Let us look at the assets that will take you up to the ceiling of $451,000 if you are a couple or $289,500 if you are a single pensioner. It is your motor vehicle. Let us imagine that some of these couples or these single people have a motor car. So you take some off for that. It includes caravans or boats. So if you are someone who has a tinnie—after 40 years of working, you like to wet your line and go fishing on the weekend—we have got to count that. Or your caravan—heaven forbid that these pensioners ever want a challenge. Also it includes licences. So, if you have a fishing licence, there goes that. If you have household contents, they are included in your assets. So part of the assets which will take you over the part pension accessing arrangements will be if you have furniture—I think it is fair enough if you have furniture—whitegoods, linen and manchester, cutlery and crockery, and kitchen appliances. Of course, these pensioners do not have computers because their NBN is rolling out so slowly they do not need a computer—they would be better off getting two cups and a piece of string and talking to each other. It also has audiovisual equipment, books—

An opposition member interjecting—

You are right. Why would this government believe that you should have assets like books? That might involve reading! The point about all of this is that the pensioners whom this government are heroically attacking for being millionaires actually have much lower asset thresholds. They will keep some of their cash available for emergencies like getting sick and then they will put the rest in term deposits and maybe they will have a bit of superannuation. But under this out-of-touch government, as soon as a single person gets to $289,000 in assets, or a married couple gets to $451,000, including all those items I said, bang, it's over—this government are going after you for your pension.

This government arrogantly say that we do not know what we are talking about and that they have looked at this matter. But we know differently. Westpac and Australian superannuation funds association have said that for a modestly comfortable lifestyle, an individual retiree would want to have about $38,000 in income in today's dollars and a couple would need about $51,000. There is no doubt that the government think that a modest lifestyle is more like $20,000 a year. What they are doing is stranding a whole lot of working people who deserve better from their government.

The case they are making for these changes include, firstly, that there are a whole lot of millionaire part pensioners who are just rorting the system. The evidence shows that that is just not the case. But then they go on to say that there is a crisis in funding the age pension. Yet they do not deal with the fact that superannuation tax concessions are going to outstrip the age pension within four years in terms of the cost to the budget. If you are fair dinkum about making retirement income sustainable policy, surely you should look at the most well-off and look at where those taxes are going.

The government seem to confuse a tax concession with cutting pensions. They think that on one hand cutting pensions for modestly well-off people is a good thing to do and, on the other hand, reducing a tax concession paid for by the taxpayers of Australia from 45c to 30c is the death of democracy, and that that was what the Magna Carta was all about.

The truth of the matter is that a single person receiving superannuation income of $19,000 will lose more than $4,000 every year from their part pension. Who do these people think they are to grab $4,000 off people on very modest incomes? A pensioner couple on a superannuation income of just $25,000 will lose almost $2,000 every year. Say you have two people who have worked hard and they get the pension, and they have $25K coming in income—and let's hope the returns are good that year from the asset because if it is a poor return year, it might be less. These people are already subject to the vagaries of the market with their private investment, their term deposit or their superannuation. This government are going to take $2,000 from their part pension. This government seriously do not know what it is doing. Because if it did know what it was doing then that makes them a rotten bunch of people, even worse. I do not believe they can understand. This backbench have been led up the garden path by their frontbench, by Mr Hockey and Mr Abbott.

Labor are up for sensible changes to the retirement income system. We will support $1.5 billion of the government's proposed saving measures, but we recognise that the real challenge is in fact superannuation. It is the fastest growing tax concession in the federal budget. But as soon as we even talk about it, we get lectures from boy wonder down at the Assistant Treasury end of the benches saying, 'Labor do not know anything about superannuation.'

The government should not patronise the Labor movement on superannuation. We are the only ones who ever voted for increases in compulsory superannuation—three per cent, nine per cent, 12 per cent, and then they rolled back. We have listened to this government lecture us for two years about superannuation, but we know that when it comes to doing something for people, this government took the tax rebate of $500 from 3½ million low-income earners. They have taken it off people with low-superannuation accounts. They have also frozen increases in superannuation on three occasions—before the election and twice since; when they did the deal with Clive Palmer and they keep freezing it in the budget.

The truth of the matter is that this government cannot be trusted with superannuation. But the real challenge when all is said and done is that this government tells lies to the Australian people. This government is telling lies, saying Labor wishes to tax everyone's superannuation. That is just a lie. We attend question time more in a triumph of hope over experience, and I listen to this government parrot lines in their idiotic fashion. When we raise a question and the chief economic adviser says there is a challenge about housing prices in Sydney, they immediately scream Labor want to lower your house price. What a lie. When we say that we want to do something about excessively generous taxation superannuation concessions, the big joke that was introduced by Costello and Howard at the height of revenues coming in, and that we should modestly rein them in, this government say we want to tax everyone's superannuation. What a lie.

When we say to the government, 'Keep a promise for once in your miserly, meagre existence about pensions and don't cut 330,000 people, don't deny 700,000 people and change the goalposts in their planning for retirement,' they say that we are protecting millionaires. The truth of the matter is that we are the only force in this country, the only political movement in this country that stands up the pensioners. We are not just standing up for today's pensioners; we are standing up for the pensioners of tomorrow. We are standing up for the people who are over 50 and heading towards 65 and hoping for a decent retirement. There is no doubt in my mind that these measures in this budget, and this particular proposal, are simply unfair.

Who knows what on earth they promised the Greens. I understand from the Greens press releases that they were promised an extension of a letter-writing offer for six weeks so you can put in your submissions for a further six weeks. What the Greens should realise sometimes is that if the deal looks too good to be true, it probably is not true. The government got up in parliament today and contradicted the poor old Greens by saying they are not going to ever change or look at these matters, never ever—you know the nature of a Tony Abbott promise. Although, maybe the Greens think that when Tony Abbott promises not to do something, they do not have to worry because he probably will contradict his position. But I do not think the Greens will necessarily triple-think this issue.

The real truth of the matter, the real reason why we oppose this, is that there are part pensioners and people who have worked their whole lives who do not deserve to be treated so shabbily by the government. This government should take these changes to the election. They should also make very clear that when they castigate people, they should understand the harm they cause

Someone who has $289,000 in that range of assets from their car to their licences to their furniture to some money in shares in the local community bank and a bit of superannuation—these people do not deserve to have thousands of dollars cut off their income by an out-of-touch government. We will keep fighting for pensioners every day. Every day between now and the election, we will fight for pensioners because—I tell you what—you cannot trust the current government to ever fight for pensioners, now or in the future.

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