Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Nobody does Christmas cheer like the Liberal and National parties. Here we are a couple of weeks before Christmas, and their gift to the pensioners of Australia is a pension cut. If you walk through a shopping mall anywhere in Australia at the moment the bells are ringing with Christmas carols, but the present that this government has got for people who are down on their luck is to deny them a job search allowance. Really? You have never found a more mean-spirited, petty, pea-hearted, thimble-headed initiative from this government than what we see before the House today.

We oppose the bill, of course; it's not the first time we have. We oppose the bill. It was first introduced as a part of the 2016 budget when Malcolm Turnbull was the Prime Minister. Now, he got woken up and he dropped it, and so should this ad man who's running the country at the moment. It should be dropped, because it simply does not make sense.

You might recall a few months ago there was a fair bit of noise in this country about retirees. You couldn't bump into a Liberal Party politician without them waving a placard at you, saying: 'We're going to fight for retirees. We've got the interests of retirees at heart, and we're going to fight for retirees.' Obviously, they didn't mean all retirees because in this bill they've singled out one group of retirees, and they've lined them up and they're going for them. Of course I'm talking about migrant retirees or retirees who've got a relative or family overseas. They're the ones that they've lined up. They're the ones that this bill has squarely lined up to ensure that they're going to cut their entitlements.

This bill means that your age pension supplement will completely stop after six weeks overseas, if you're on a holiday overseas. It's a terrible proposition. In a community such as mine around 26,000 people were born overseas, and many of them, particularly once they hit retirement, like to go back to the old country, to visit relatives, to catch up with a cousin—maybe it's the last time they're going to see that person before they pass away; maybe to go back to care for an ageing relative; or maybe to go back for a lengthy period of time to warm their aching bones in the Mediterranean sun during the heart of an Australian winter. And what does this government say? 'If you're there for six weeks fine, but if you're there for six weeks and one day we're going to cut your pension.' It's miserable and should be knocked off. It doesn't make sense.

I have so many residents in my electorate who come from the United Kingdom, who come from the Republic of Macedonia. There are close to 1,600 people who were born in the Republic of Macedonia, and when they retire they like to go back there regularly. Because there are so many people from Macedonia, I thought I'd inquire into some of the pension arrangements that exist between Australia and Macedonia. Something stood out that just did not make sense. You would know, Deputy Speaker Goodenough, that Australia has around 30 pension agreements, social security arrangements or treaties, if you like, between Australia and other countries: the United Kingdom, Denmark, Macedonia as I've already mentioned. These treaties have a commitment between one government and another. If our citizens, or former citizens, have moved to another country and go and reside there, there's a knock-for-knock arrangement where we agree to pay a pension arrangement or a social security arrangement with another country. And when their citizens come to live here, their government supplements their pension or their retirement payments for their citizens who've come to live permanently in Australia. Under the agreement we have with the Republic of Macedonia—and I'm quoting directly from the Department of Social Security's website:

Australia will treat somebody who resides in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia—

that's actually offensive to most people who come from Macedonia; they've got to update their web page or just abbreviate that to Macedonia—

as being a resident of Australia, so that the person can lodge a claim for an Australian Age Pension.

What's more:

Australia guarantees to pay Age Pension indefinitely into the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, provided the person remains otherwise qualified to receive it.

Now, I want you to think about that for a moment, because what's quite clear here is that if you go over there permanently, if you move from Australia to Macedonia, to Great Britain, to Denmark or to any of these other countries that we've reached a pension treaty arrangement with, we'll continue to pay your pension. You can go over there to live and we'll continue to pay the pension. But don't go there for six weeks and one day, because we'll cut off your pension.

It does not make sense. The only conclusion you can get is that this miserable bloke over here is against holidays. That's the only conclusion you can take from this absurd arrangement, where we will continue to pay a pension if you go and live overseas permanently but not if you go over there on holidays. Do you realise that that's what you're about to vote for? It is an absolutely absurd proposition. And believe me, the migrant communities know exactly what's going on here. They can still hear the echo from six months ago, when every Liberal and National Party coalition member was running around the country saying, 'We will stick up for retirees,' who now know that when this government said they were going to stick up for retirees they didn't mean them. They've squared them up, they've lined them up—six weeks and one day, and you're off your pension. It's not right, it's not fair and it doesn't make sense.

We know that the economy is lagging. There are almost two million Australians who either are looking for more work or are unemployed. It is a pretty tough time of year for those people. They're going into the Christmas period. They're seeing the ads up in the shops. If they've got young kids, maybe last year they had a generous Christmas and this year they're thinking it's not going to be so flash for them, can you imagine what is going through their minds when they realise that under this miserable government the waiting period is going to be extended and the government is going to ensure that it is going to be that much harder, during this Christmas period, for them to get access to job search allowance? Through changes to the liquid asset test, the payments that they may have got through a redundancy payment, the government is lifting the bar to ensure that they're going to have to run down that small stock of capital that they may have before they gain access to Newstart.

If I'd got a redundancy at this time of year, I'd know that it was going to be pretty damn tough to get a job over the next few months—not the best time of year to be going and looking for a job. The bills are coming in, but the number of job adverts isn't going up. It's going to be tough. This government's about to make it harder. And those people who have a modest redundancy payment that this government's going to make them run down through the changes envisaged in this bill are probably thinking to themselves: 'I've got my car rego coming in; if I don't have my car, I can't go out and look for a job. That's a big grumpy bill coming my way in a few months time. I've got the kids going back to school in a few months time; I'd better put some money away to ensure that I can afford to put school shoes on their feet, have a bag for them to carry their lunch in to school and ensure that they can turn up to school again next year, just the same as every other kid.' But this government's miserable answer to people who are finding themselves down on their luck at this time of year is to say, 'We're going to make it even harder.'

It's a miserable bill from a pea-hearted, cold-minded opposition that don't know what it is like to be struggling, and it should be rejected. Nobody does Christmas cheer like the coalition. We've got to knock this bill off, because it's the wrong bill, directed at a group of Australians who deserve and expected so much more from this group.

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