Joanna Gash (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A couple of days of after Australia Day, I received a letter from Mr Don Denman of Nowra. Mr Denman is 72 and his wife is 75. Both are pensioners living in a department of housing house. I would like to read a portion of his letter because it encapsulates an unsatisfactory dilemma confronting many pensioners living in public housing in Gilmore as they face the day when analogue television will forever be turned off to them. He writes, and what he has written makes me just a little bit sad:

I rang the government phone line about the change over and as I have a digital TV sort of working on an indoor antenna not very well, they cannot help us unless we owned our own house and that we will have to talk to housing commission.

All we need is an outdoor digital antenna.

We went to see the housing commission and was told that they cannot help us as we are in a house and not units and that we will have to pay for it ourselves.

We live just on the old age pension and pay 25 per cent of that to housing. We have a car to run as we can't hop in and out of busses—

Because there are no buses—

a monthly telephone, electricity and thanks to the government, this keeps going up.

It seems to us that the governments of today are treating us worse than they would treat a leper. It will cost about $300 to $350 to supply and install a digital TV antenna.

This is more than I get a week.

As well as bills and rent, we have to buy food. On food, I spend $50 a week and a little more when we can afford it.

I cannot buy one and put in myself as I have arthritis in both knees, both hips and right shoulder.

My wife is disabled with 60% of use gone in her left leg so she cannot do it and in any case we just cannot afford it.

After the TV is turned off in June, we will not have television except for Channel 9 and only this when the weather is good.

He has written more, but as can be well imagined it is laced with comments that reflect a sense of betrayal over this and other injustices faced by aged pensioners. If that is not enough, four weeks after he loses his TV signal he will have to face up to the impact of the carbon tax. He adds:

I don't usually complain about things but enough is enough!

Yes, he will be given his set-top box and it will be installed, but it will be as much use to him as an ashtray on a motorcycle.

Surely the government cannot continue its pattern of incompetence. Didn't anyone think this through? I am sure it is not an isolated case, and it is incumbent on the government to deliver a product that will actually work. Mr Denman and his wife deserve better than being treated with insolent contempt like this. Perhaps he was right in his observation when he said:

It's a big joke, isn't it?

I just want to add that Mr Denman served for seven years in the Royal Australian Navy and spent eight years with the department of main roads as a foreman on bridge works as well as managing other jobs. He says:

I'm a proud Australian and I'm worried about what is happening to my country.