Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That all the words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

1. condemns the Government’s cuts to Australian pensioners;

2. notes that the Government is giving a one-off payment of $75 to single pensioners with one hand, while removing the permanent Energy Supplement of $365 per year from all new pensioners;

3. calls on the Government to drop its unfair cuts to pensioners and vulnerable Australians; and

4. calls on the Government to drop its plan to increase the pension age to 70, the oldest pension age in the world.

This afternoon I am speaking on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017. Labor will support this bill. Of course we will not deny pensioners the very modest one-off payment that is outlined in this bill. However, no-one would be surprised to know that Labor will not be letting this government of the hook. We will not let the government get away with their terrible record of cuts to our pensioners, because the Abbott-Turnbull government's record on pensions is nothing short of a disgrace. Today the Liberals will no doubt carry on like they are the best friends that pensioners have ever had, but pensioners will not be fooled; they know the truth. In every single budget the Liberals have handed down since Mr Abbott, the member for Warringah, was elected as Prime Minister, they have proposed cuts to the pension. In four budgets in a row they proposed cuts to pensions. In four budgets in a row we have seen this Liberal and National Party government try to cut the pension. This government has absolutely no shame when it comes to cutting pensions.

Let us be clear: the energy assistance payment in this bill is merely an attempt to distract Australian pensioners from the fact—and this is a fact—that this Liberal government still intends to try to abolish the energy supplement. The government is offering a one-off energy assistance payment of $75. So, $75 will be paid, once, to single pensioners. That is less than $1.50 a week. At the same time, they are going to try to take $365 each and every year from single pensioners by removing the energy supplement to new pensioners. A one-off payment of $75, or $1.50 a week, is nothing like $365 in assistance every single year to help pensioners keep up with increasing energy costs. This is something that pensioners are very familiar with with this Prime Minister, a Prime Minister who is giving with one hand a tiny little bit and taking an awful lot more with the other. Pensioners know that $75 does not equal a cut of $365. Pensioners know this comes from what can only be described as a very two-faced Prime Minister, who wants to claim credit for giving money to pensioners on the one hand but is ripping away far more with the other hand.

We all should remember the origins of this one-off payment. It did not come about as a result of any reform process or policy review; it suddenly appeared on the day that this Liberal-National Party government did a deal with the Senate crossbench to get its company tax cuts through the Senate. That is actually how this came to pass. Let us be very clear about this: this government is not making this one-off payment by choice, and they are certainly not doing it because they care about pensioners. They have done it to get their company tax cut through the Senate. It really tells you all you need to know about this Liberal-National Party government. The only time they are actually motivated to do anything good for pensioners is when they are horse trading to get their company tax cuts through the Senate. Let us look in detail at the trade-off. Pensioners are going to get a one-off—only one—payment of $75. That is on the one hand, while on the other hand billions of dollars in company tax cuts will be delivered to businesses in this country. How on earth could that be fair? Pensioners get $75, or $1.50 a week, once, and businesses get billions of dollars in company tax cuts. This really tells you absolutely everything you need to know about this Liberal-National Party government's priorities.

By contrast, Labor understands the needs of pensioners. It was in the last Labor government that we saw an increase to the pension of $30 a week in 2009, the largest ever increase to the pension. That $30 a week was each and every week, not once. We actually increased the pension. All this government does—the Liberal Party and the National Party—is, each and every year, come up with a new way to cut the pension. On this side of the parliament, we understand that pensioners deserve to be treated with respect in their retirement. We understand that they have worked very hard all of their lives and have contributed enormously to our country. They just want access to a modest pension to be able to enjoy a decent standard of living in retirement. Of course, we will not deny pensioners this very modest one-off payment, but we will oppose, when it comes back into the parliament, the government's attempt to remove the energy supplement from the most vulnerable Australians, and we expect to see that cut re-emerge very soon.

The 2017 budget actually confirms that the Liberals and Nationals still want to abolish this energy supplement. If the Prime Minister really cared about the living expenses of vulnerable Australians, he would not be trying to take this energy supplement off 1.7 million Australians. I just wonder whether all of those opposite actually know that that is what is going to happen when they vote on the abolition of the energy supplement—that 1.7 million Australians, including aged pensioners, disability pensioners, people on the carer payment and people on Newstart are all going to lose the energy supplement. For single pensioners, that will mean a cut of $14.10 a fortnight, or $365 a year. Couple pensioners will be worse off by $21.20 a fortnight, or around $550 a year worse off. The government should stop actually insulting aged and disability support pensioners by trying to give a little bit with one hand and take a lot with the other.

I also want to draw the House's attention to the fact that Newstart recipients will not get one cent of this one-off $75 payment. Australians who are struggling on Newstart will not get anything out of the money in this bill. However, Australians on Newstart do face a cut as a result of the abolition of the energy supplement. A single person on Newstart will lose $8.80 a fortnight, or around $220 a year.

Let's also not forget that when the government came to office in 2013 they promised all Australians lower energy prices. What has actually happened? They promised all Australians, including pensioners, that their energy bills would fall. What actually happened is that wholesale prices have doubled since this government came into office in 2013. Another broken promise, as energy prices have gone through the roof under the Liberals and the Nationals.

The other measure in this bill is the restoration of the pension concession card to around 90,000 pensioners who lost their pension on 1 January this year as a direct result of this government's cut to the pension assets test. Let's not forget why this measure is in this bill. This is actually a very embarrassing backflip for the government. Labor has forced the coalition into this backflip. For two years we have actually highlighted this issue. It has been a double blow for pensioners to both lose their pension or part pension as well as their pensioner card and all of the concessions and discounts that come with it.

Just a few months ago, the Minister for Human Services, Mr Tudge, said on the issue of pensioner concessions that it was a matter for the state, territory and local governments. He was on the radio. The interviewer said, 'But do they lose their pensioner concession card because that gets them discounts on things like rego and council rates, utility bills as well?' Mr Tudge said: 'That's up to each local council and each state and territory government as to how they're going to deal with that. I mean we deal with what the federal policy is…' That is what the Minister for Human Services said back in December last year. The presenter went on to say, 'But you can't give them any guarantee that on the other stuff.' The minister said, 'Well it's up to each state and territory government what their policy decisions are.' All of a sudden it seems the Minister for Human Services and all the other people on the government benches have realised the federal government can restore pensioner concessions to these seniors. What pensioners do know is that they certainly cannot trust the coalition. I will just remind those opposite how this actually came to pass. In the 2015 budget speech the then Treasurer, Joe Hockey, said:

Importantly anyone who currently has a Pensioner Concession Card will continue to receive a concession card that provides the same benefits, such as subsidised utilities and transport …

That is what the government promised in the 2015 budget. But it turned out—pensioners were not surprised about this, of course—that Mr Hockey and everyone on the government benches misled pensioners.

Now, we have, in this bill, the Liberals and the National Party scrambling to try to fix the problem. They all said, 'This will all be fine; we'll give them a Commonwealth seniors health card, and that will entitle them to the same concessions.' Well, they were wrong. They were absolutely wrong. They actually knew that many state government and local council concessions were available to pensioner concession cardholders but not to Commonwealth seniors cardholders. They failed to negotiate concessions with the states and territories to make sure that these former pensioners would not be worse off. The Minister for Social Services and the Minister for Human Services travelled around the country repeating this mistruth. They carried on with the fiction that it was somehow the fault of the states and local councils. That was just untrue. I have been around the country attending many seniors forums. I can tell you that seniors know exactly who created this mess. They blame the Liberal-National government.

Labor, of course, welcomes this backflip. It is a good thing that the government have finally come to their senses on this issue. But no-one should think—and, certainly, pensioners do not think this—that the Liberals or the Nationals have done this out of the goodness of their hearts. They have only done it because they have been caught out. They have done it for political reasons. They have only done it because Labor and pensioner groups have pressured them into it.

If there is one thing that we on this side of the House will not let the Liberal government forget, it is the promise that they made before the 2013 election. They promised—in fact, the member for Warringah did it the night before the election—that there would be 'no cuts to pensions'. That is what the Liberal Party signed up to; that is what the National Party signed up to. Then, in every single budget, the Liberals and the Nationals have handed down budgets that contain cuts to the pension. In the 2014 budget—that horror budget—they tried to cut pension indexation. It was a cut that would have seen pensioners forced to live on $80 a week less over a 10-year period. In 2014, they also tried to reset the deeming rate thresholds—changes that would have hurt half a million part pensioners. Fortunately, we defeated those measures in the parliament. Labor stood firm with pensioners and stopped those horrific cuts going through the parliament.

In 2015, the Liberals did a deal with the Greens to cut the pension to around $330,000 pensioners by changing the pension assets tests. We know—and Senator Cormann has just confirmed again in Senate estimates—that it is still government policy for these people opposite, the Liberals and the Nationals, to increase the pension age to 70. This would give Australia the oldest pension age in the developed world. They cannot deny it. They cannot deny that it is still government policy to make farmers, builders, nurses—all of these people with very tough jobs—continue to work until they are 70. Then we see, in this year's budget, confirmed again, the next cut to pensioners—the axing of the energy supplement.

Labor will not oppose this bill today, but we will continue to do all that we can to protect pensioners from the horror cuts from the Liberal and National parties.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Isaacs. The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Jagajaga has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I will state the question in the form that the amendment be agreed to. The question now is that the amendment be agreed to.

Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017 that we are now debating has two principal intents. One is in relation to providing a one-off subsidy to almost four million Australians to help meet energy costs. The second relates to the extension of the pensioner concession card. Right around Australia the number one concern for most Australians, particularly among older and disadvantaged Australians, is the rapid rise in the cost of living. With minimal real wage growth over the past decade the cost of living, especially for energy and services, has reached breaking point. While very much focused on continued fiscal responsibility and budget repair, the Turnbull government is acutely aware of the need to do all we reasonably can to help older and disadvantaged Australian meet higher costs, and outrageously higher energy costs in particular.

This bill will reinstate the pensioner concession card to over 92,000 people who are no longer eligible for the pension from 1 January 2017 due to a rebalancing of the pension assets test. While the replacement health care card and seniors health card do provide discounts for Medicare and the PBS, they do not deliver free hearing services or other state-based concessions that were a feature of the pensioner concession card. This bill now seeks to restore eligibility for the pensioner concession card to this group, subject to established conditions such as extended overseas travel or imprisonment.

While the government's proposed reinstatement of the pensioner concession card merits our support, it is the one-off energy assistance payment to welfare recipients that I particularly want to concentrate on, because it is so indicative of where we are now as a country. We should not need to be easing the cost of power in Australia, because we are an energy superpower. We are the largest single supplier of coal on the planet, responsible for about 30 per cent of global seaborne trade. We have the fourth largest reserves in the world. Our exports are a massive contributor to national wealth—$34 billion last year. The coal industry directly employs 44,000 people, and last year paid almost $6 billion in wages and salaries. Our coal is also a creator of wealth wherever it goes, and it goes principally to Japan, India, Korea and China.

In terms of gas, we are the second largest exporter of LNG on the planet, and we are on track to be the biggest by 2020. Last year we exported 37 million tonnes, almost half as much again as the year before. Australian gas now goes to Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand in that order. We are exporting prosperity to those countries and many others, including the Philippines. We are also a uranium superpower, with the largest reserves on the planet, fully a third of all known deposits.

With energy resources like these, we should have some of the cheapest power in the world, power that ought to be affordable even for those in the safety net. Cheap energy ought to be driving investment, industry, international competitiveness, jobs and the sort of income growth that has sadly stagnated to the point where this sort of measure has now become necessary. Just a few years ago we had some of the lowest prices for electricity in the world. Those low prices by global standards did all those things: they helped drive investment, they helped our international competitiveness and they drove economic growth so that jobs were created, wages were growing, the pie was getting bigger and with it the chance for everybody to get a bigger slice, even those less fortunate and those in retirement. Energy prices are a crucial ingredient in that whole equation, yet, here we are now with some of the highest power prices in the world, requiring a bill such as the one we are debating today. Within about a decade, we have gone from having secure and reliable energy that was among the cheapest in the world to now lacking security and reliability and having one of the most expensive power prices in the world, even though we are—unlike a lot of those countries that have cheaper power—an energy superpower. The situation is ludicrous. Why do we now need, via this bill, to provide an energy assistance payment to welfare recipients of $75 for singles and $62.50 for each member of a couple? Why do we need this one-off payment for 2½ million age pensioners, for 770,000 disability support pensioners, for 260,000 parenting payment single recipients and for 235,000 people on veteran payments—for 3.8 million Australians? Why do we need this when we are an energy superpower and when we should, for a host of reasons, have some of the most affordable power in the world? How did it come to this? The answer, in a word, is ideology—the ideology of the members opposite, the ideology of the Labor Party and the ideology of Labor's former left wing, the Greens.

First, let us look at call. Coal is still, by far, the cheapest way available in this country to produce electricity. It has been the mainstay of baseload power generating systems in this country for well over a century, and it still is. Its abundance has been the basis of affordable electricity for domestic and industrial users for generations. The problem in relation to coal is that its combustion releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and, according to members opposite, we therefore have to stop using it to generate power. And by the way, they do not like gas either. Gas has a significant emissions advantage over coal, but it is still, in the end, a fossil fuel, and so the members opposite do not really approve of it either. What members opposite want is to have 50 per cent of power generation in Australia come from renewable energy sources by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2050, which means shutting down coal-fired power generators and severely restricting the use of gas as its replacement. You may be inclined to ask, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, how would members opposite provide that? How would they meet the target of 50 per cent renewable energies and then 100 per cent by 2050? You can ask the question, but you will not get an answer, because they themselves cannot work it out. Instead, they are happy to go on and ideological frolic, embark on their own great leap forward, if you like, without having the faintest idea on how to deliver.

The problem is that their vision of 50 per cent and then 100 per cent renewables is not based on engineering or economics, but on ideology, on a religious zealotry, if you like—one that applies as a black and white article of faith, prophesising that coal is bad, coal is evil and renewables are good, renewables are the answer. But one must be very aware of false gods. Instead of ideology, what we need is engineering and economics. Instead of a religious approach, what we need is an agnostic one. It is the religious ideological approach that has led to baseload power being compromised and entire systems, such as that which we have seen in South Australia, being crippled. It has led to the economics of coal-fired power stations being undermined, to station closures and to tightening supply, which has in turn increased electricity prices. And, of course, let's not forget the cumulative effect of moratoriums on gas, among other things.

There is nothing wrong with renewables. There is nothing wrong with renewables—there is a role for them, an important role. But they are not the answer to baseload power. Who knows? Maybe battery storage will one day change that equation, but we need to make decisions in and for the real world, and that requires pragmatism so that we can have a secure, reliable and affordable system.

While the government has introduced several measures to address these issues, and there is still much to be done, we cannot stand by in the interim and watch older and disadvantaged people bear the brunt of higher utility costs without trying to assist. Thus here, contained in this bill, we seek to provide a one-off energy assistance payment while also reinstating the pensioner concession card.

I can assure you, Mr Deputy Speaker, as the member for Fairfax on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, that this will have a real impact on the ground. Around 54,000 people on the Sunshine Coast will receive this one-off payment, and over 1,500 people on the Sunshine Coast will see their pensioner concession card reinstated. For these people, this is much-welcomed news, and I am proud to be part of a government that will deliver it. However, for the reasons I have outlined, it is with mixed feelings that I support this one-off payment component of the bill.

While I support the bill wholeheartedly, and I am delighted to see this government provide much-needed assistance, I remain incensed by the ideological religious zealotry of the members opposite. It is for that reason that we have got to the place where we are today, where bills such as this are necessary. I cannot believe that the Labor Party here at the federal level and in other jurisdictions are happy to make the problem that has created the need for this bill even worse. Labor, together with the Greens and, indeed, cashed-up left-wing political activists have helped to undermine the energy market, something that used to be a core strength of this country. They made it into a market that suffers from insecurity, unreliability and unaffordability, thereby making life harder for every business and every household across the country.

Thankfully, that unholy left-wing alliance is not running the government! And so we, the coalition, will do what seems to be our lot in life, and that is to fix Labor's mess. And in doing so, we will also provide assistance to those who have been so adversely affected by them. It is for that reason that I commend the bill to the House.

Justine Keay (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That previous contribution was quite extraordinary, celebrating a measure which is now being reinstated when it was something that they took away in the first place. I am quite flabbergasted! And that was coming from a government that has no national energy policy. I am a little lost for words! But I will go to my speech, because I have a lot to say on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017.

This is a bill that this side of the House will support, not because this government has suddenly had a policy masterstroke but because Labor cares about pensioners. This is a government that is planning to take away the energy supplement of $365 a year and instead offering a one-off payment of $75 for a single and $62.50 each for those who are in a couple. In Tasmania, where we have clean, green renewable energy created with our own baseload in hydro dams and supplemented by wind power, a $75 one-off payment for, say, a single mum with a couple of kids will not cover the electricity that that mum has used for a week. It would not make much difference at all.

It is also quite astounding that this bill does not provide any support for people on Newstart, some of the most vulnerable people in our community, who do not live at home where they can be supplemented by their parents and are out there trying every day hopefully to find a job. They are doing what they can to make ends meet, and there is no support for them.

Why is this assistance so important for Tasmanian pensioners? The Australian Energy Regulator report found that, of any state in the national electricity market, low-income Tasmanians pay the highest proportion of their income for electricity. A low-income family in Tasmania without any concession will typically pay about $2,000 a year or 8.5 per cent of their disposable income to Aurora Energy for 6,600 kilowatt hours of electricity. Middle-income households pay about 4.3 per cent of their annual income, and high-income households pay just 1.75 per cent.

In order to reduce one's bill, you have to reduce your consumption—that is quite clear; I think people get that—as Tasmania's average unit cost of electricity is sensitive to consumption levels. So, clearly, in Tasmania a way that you can reduce your electricity bill is by reducing your consumption. So you can imagine that pensioners will reduce their consumption in order to reduce their bills, because the government is planning to take away their supplement. But at what point does this mean pensioners are going to live through winter with no heating at all? Sadly, this is something that I hear all the time, even with the energy supplement in place. Sonia, from Ulverstone, in my electorate, who is in her seventies, recently wrote to me. She said:

I am an aged pensioner and currently renting the premises in which I am residing.

The cost of power has risen significantly.

And she was actually quoting about over 25 years. That is how much she takes notice of her electricity bill.

The cost of heating is a major portion of that cost.

I am sure that many pensioners, even those that own their own homes, are going without adequate heating rather than facing a bill for power that takes up a fortnights income, leaving them with little to cover essentials such as groceries and or medication. I am one of them.

There are thousands of Sonia's in my electorate.

My electorate has a higher proportion of the population on the aged and disability support pensions compared to the state average and obviously a higher proportion than the national average. I have heard of many pensioners living without heating over winter, who sit there pretty much freezing. In some cases in Tasmania it is just as cold as a Canberra winter. So you can imagine what it would be like, in a room putting on as many layers as you can and not even being able to afford to turn on a little heater—not even a heat pump, which is probably the most efficient way of heating a home. You would not even be able to afford to turn that on—and this is with the energy supplement that the government is now planning to take away and replace it with a little one-off payment that would not pay the energy bill for a week.

For those pensioners on a pensioner concession card—which they are reinstating for some and took away from some—the state government provides $56 per year and an annual electricity concession of 132.557c per day for those with a pensioner concession card or a healthcare card. Even with all that support for Tasmanian pensioners, they are still finding it hard to be able to afford to turn on their heaters in a Tasmanian winter. And this government is planning to whack them again by taking away the energy supplement and giving them a little sweetener. That is a diversion if ever I have heard one, and they should be sitting there bowing their heads in shame.

With less support to pay for their bills, I know that this will only get worse. We can see this in disconnections for non-payment. This is a marker of those in our community who are finding it hard to pay their electricity bills. In 2015-16 there was a 12 per cent increase in disconnections for non-payment, from 1,046 to 1,172. Sadly, you have to say that this can only get worse. The average electricity debt was $739. One in five customers of Aurora, the only energy retailer in the state, entered a partnership program and had a debt of more than $2,500. That is extraordinary. And what does this government do? Take away the supplement. Now, with the closure of Hazelwood, the average additional amount Tasmanians will pay for electricity in 2018 and 2019 will be an extra $204—the highest of any state. That is because Tasmania's consumption level is twice that of Victoria and the highest in the country. The government clearly does not care about that.

The government has clearly misled the Australian people when it said in 2013 'no cuts to pensions'. But in every budget since being elected the government has wanted to cut pensions and hurt pensioners. Let's not forget the 2014 budget. How could you forget that? I think every pensioner in the country remembers that one quite clearly. The former member for North Sydney, with his legendary age-of-entitlement-is-over budget, set the scene for the government's attacks on pensioners. They have attempted. Some things they have succeeded at and some they have failed at in their attacks. They tried to cut pension indexation; planned to freeze assets and income tests for three years from this year—that is achieved; planned to increase the deeming thresholds for the income test to $30,000 for single pensioners and $50,000 for pensioner couples combined; abolished the seniors supplement from 1 July 2014; make the seniors health care card harder to qualify for; cut $1.3 billion in support to state and territory based seniors concessions, which goes then to the energy concessions that some of the states put in place, like in Tasmania; abolished the dependent spouse rebate for people aged 60 or older; abolished the mature age worker tax offset; abolished the pensioner education supplement.

What a litany of attacks the 2014 was to pensioners. Let's also not forget the then Treasurer's comments that not one pensioner would lose their pensioner concession card. Now they are restoring it. They got rid of it for some pensioners; now they are bringing it back and now they are celebrating it. It is quite funny—I heard a comment from the member for Gilmore, who said—I think it was yesterday—that she celebrated the return of the pensioner concession card. Woohoo! Great! Where was she when it was removed? Where were those members on the other side when that was removed from those pensioners? In 2015 they stood there, when they did a dirty deal with the Greens party to cut the pension from around 330,000 people in our country by changing the pension assets test. People ask me about that all the time in my electorate: 'Why did you change that?' I am very proud to say, 'It wasn't us!' It was not Labor—it was the government. It was the Liberal coalition government doing a deal with the Greens. Pensioners have long memories, and this is one change they will never forget.

They still want to increase the pension age to 70. Australia will have the oldest pension age in the world. Due to the nature of work for the people in my electorate, many people will be physically unable to work to that age. I am reminded by the words of pensioners Ray and Trudi from Turners Beach in my electorate, who I have previously spoken about in this place. It is worth reminding the House of these comments:

It comes as no surprise to see what the present government is trying to do to people of our age, after telling us for years to save and sacrifice towards retirement, they try and change the game and change the rules. The one thing that gets under our skin is the changing of the retirement age. We think it is disgusting that people who have to work hard all of their lives may now be expected to work until they are 70 years of age. We may have voted them in last time, but it was a first and last time. They have made blunder after blunder, and if what people at that time know, if that's what they are going on, it will be the last time we see this coalition government in.

Despite all the dishonesty, the attacks and the dirty deals, the government is still going ahead with the cuts to the clean energy supplement, and Braddon pensioners are paying the most, as I clearly state, with the amount that they pay out of their income towards electricity. This cut will see them lose $14.10 for a single pensioner a fortnight, or $365 a year. Couples will be worse off by $21.20 a fortnight.

The Prime Minister wants to paint himself as the pensioners' friend—almost like Robin Hood, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. But he is more like the Sheriff of Nottingham, taking from the poor and giving to the rich. This legislation is not before the House because the Prime Minister wants to help pensioners; it is here as a result of a deal the Prime Minister did so he could get part of his company tax plans through the Senate. If the Prime Minister could really be trusted as the pensioners' friend, we would have heard from him and other members on the other side in 2014, 2015, 2016 and the first part of 2017—he would have been there, to be the friend of pensioners. But there was not a word—except, of course, to vote in this place to cut pensions.

Let us look no further at their record. Labor will support this bill. But I can tell you: we will continue to fight for pensioners in Australia, in my electorate, and oppose the abolition of the clean energy supplement. And it will give me great pleasure to stand here in this place and go through all of this again, for every member on the other side, to remind them of why, in Tasmania, this will be a bad, bad thing. This will mean that pensioners in my electorate and my home state will suffer over the cold winters. They will have their power disconnected at higher levels than we have seen. And those on the other side are sitting there and obviously taking no notice of what I am saying, which is just terrible.

You also have to ask yourself: what are the Liberal Tasmanian Senate members saying on this? Nothing! Where are they? If they are there for the people of Tasmania, which has such a disproportionately high number of people on government payments, what are they saying? Nothing!

You just have to look at the budget. It was absolutely deplorable for the state of Tasmania. It was the forgotten state. I have just been in the Federation Chamber and I will make here the same comment as I made there: I need to give every member of the coalition a map of Tassie! It hasn't seceded to Antarctica yet!

But let us look at what they are doing, those Liberal senators: absolutely nothing. Pensioners should not be forced to freeze over the winter months just because this Prime Minister has warped priorities.

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party, Assistant Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a brief contribution. I am very pleased to be speaking in support of the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017, which will help the people in my electorate of Hinkler with the ever-increasing cost of electricity. We should look at just how serious this rise in electricity prices is and what it is doing to a number of businesses, and of course to the residents in my electorate.

Year after year, the cost of electricity has risen. It has become a massive problem in the region, not just for residents but also for businesses and, in particular, for those in our agricultural sector such as canegrowers.

Third-generation Bundaberg canefarmer Dean Cayley says that his electricity prices have increased by 126 per cent since 2008—126 per cent. He is not sure there will be a fourth generation of cane farmers in his family, due to the continued pressure of electricity prices. He says that it is out of control, and it is not just for farmers; it is across all rural production. Mr Cayley's electricity bill for the 90-day period 7 October 2016 to 5 January 2017 was $20,307. He estimates he was only irrigating for around half of that time.

Electricity pricing in Queensland, as I am sure you know, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, is controlled by the Queensland state Labor government. And we ask: what are they doing about it? The answer is: absolutely nothing. When it comes to rising electricity costs, they have been absolutely asleep at the wheel.

A Queensland Competition Authority increase of 2.8 per cent for customers on tariff 11 was implemented for bills between 2016 and 2017. The draft determination by the QCA says that energy costs are expected to increase for all customers in 2017-18, primarily driven by increases in wholesale energy costs and the large-scale renewable energy target costs. Based on draft estimates, a typical household on the main residential tariff, tariff 11, is projected to pay $1,515 on its 2017-18 annual bill. This represents a 1.7 per cent increase from the 2016-17 bill of $1,490. For a typical customer, on a combination of tariff 11 and controlled load tariffs 31 and 33, the expected increase will be 2.3 per cent and 1.6 per cent respectively.

Large business customers can expect increases in their annual notified price bills of between 1½ per cent and three per cent as a result of the draft change in notified prices between 2016-17 and 2017-18. The annual notified price bill for a typical customer on the main small business tariff, tariff 20, is expected to increase by $37 or 1½ per cent as a result of the draft change in notified prices between 2016-17 and 2017-18. For a typical customer on the seasonal time-of-use tariff, tariff 22A, the expected increase will be slightly lower, at one per cent. So it is hardly surprising that people, businesses and organisations are looking for a cheaper source of energy due to the Queensland state Labor government's inability to reign in this ever-increasing cost of living.

A local hospital in Bundaberg is looking to install a solar energy system which will save $84,000 per year in hot water bills. What prompted the hospital to take this step? It recently received news of a 30 per cent increase to its $80,000 per month electricity bill, so it had no choice but to start looking for other options. On 1 July 2017 the Queensland state Labor government is set to slug motorists with a 3.25 percent increase on car registration. The residents of Queensland are being treated as a cash cow by the state Labor government—it has to stop.

The coalition government is helping out people with these rising costs of living by providing a one-off energy assistance payment. The payment is for recipients of the age pension, the disability support pension and parenting payment single, as well as for veterans and their partners paid the service pension, the income support supplement and relevant compensation payments who are eligible for payment and are residing in Australia on 20 June 2017—the test date—to assist them with their energy costs. The energy assistance payment will be $75 for singles and $62.50 for each member of a couple, providing additional assistance to around 3.8 million Australians, including 2.5 million age pension recipients, 770,000 disability support pension recipients, 260,000 parenting payment single recipients, and 235,000 recipients of veterans payments. The payment will not be taxed and will not reduce their rate of income support.

The coalition government is also looking at ways to deliver practical actions to help Australians through the next few summers while laying the foundations for long-term reforms to ensure the energy market is better equipped to handle future challenges. This is a challenge that I think both sides of parliament need to address. This should be a bipartisan issue. It affects all people and all businesses in this country, and we need to get on with it.

The government will provide $7.9 million in 2017-18 to the ACCC to review retail power prices. The ACCC will produce a paper within six months on its preliminary insights into the strategies and pricing behaviours of key electricity retailers. The ACCC's inquiry will identify and report on the key cost components of electricity retail pricing and how they affect the retail offers made to customers. The inquiry will examine whether electricity retailers' margins and profitability are in line with their costs and risks. The inquiry will consider any obstructions to consumer choice, such as the transparency and clarity of contracts that energy companies offer to consumers. This is something which has been raised with me on a number of occasions. We have a local baker who is with particular supplier and who had a no-exit or no-return component in their contract. The expectation for the next 12 months for this baker was an increase from some $45,000 a quarter to $120,000 a quarter. They simply did not have that on their bottom line. This has to be addressed. In this instance it was sorted out through an arrangement between other providers. However, this simply cannot continue.

The inquiry will also consider the competitiveness of offers available to larger business customers and will take into account wholesale electricity market conduct, price and cost issues where relevant. The terms of reference provided to the ACCC will direct them to consider the key cost drivers of retail electricity pricing, the existence and extent of any entry barriers in retail markets, the impact of vertical integration, whether there is any behaviour preventing or limiting competition or consumer choice, the profitability of electricity retailers and whether these profits are commensurate with the risk retailers face, and all wholesale-market price, cost and conduct issues relevant to the inquiry.

The Hinkler electorate has one of the highest numbers of retirees in the nation, but I want to make it very clear to those listening, to members in the House and of course to my constituents: seniors are a valued part of our community. The seniors in our community are the people volunteering and making sure sporting and recreational clubs continue to operate and attract new members. These include clubs like the Bundaberg Bowls Club, which I visited recently to see the upgrade to their shade structures. That upgrade was funded through the very successful Stronger Communities Program, which I am pleased has been extended for a third round. Those new shade structures are a huge benefit to the club for both player comfort and SunWise health outcomes. Not only does the bowls club have its own competitions; the club is used by a number of other groups. The Endeavour Foundation, with 12 to 15 players, uses it twice monthly. Students from North Bundaberg High School—about 80 students a week—use it, as lawn bowls is included as a component of their school sport curriculum. A varying number of NAIDOC children, of mixed ages, use it. They both learn and participate in the game, with the club providing junior bowls sets and rubberised bowls sets for their smaller participants. A group of mature-aged ladies, in varying numbers, takes advantage of the playing facilities and equipment every Wednesday. And periodically there are barefoot social bowling events held by various social groups. And I am sure that my colleague the assistant minister has been to many barefoot bowling events in his time in his local electorate!

With an ageing population, the coalition government is committed to providing a sustainable aged-care system that meets the needs of our older Australians. Just last week, the successful applicants in the 2016-17 Aged Care Approvals Round were announced. More senior residents in Hinkler will benefit from an additional $11.4 million for 174 new places in Bundaberg in the north of my electorate—144 residential care places at The Lakes Aged Care and 30 additional residential care places at Kalkie Residential Care Service. This funding will provide new aged care services or enable them to expand their current facilities. This is in addition to funding announced last year for new services in the southern end of the electorate, which are under construction and nearing completion—and can I say they look magnificent.

The new residential aged care places followed the announcement of 475 short-term restorative care places, which help older people remain in their homes longer after an injury or illness. It aims to slow functional decline in older people and improve their health and wellbeing so they can remain independent for as long as possible and avoid prematurely entering permanent residential aged care. Older Australians want and need flexible services that will help them when they need it and encourage independence for as long as possible. These places will help people age well and access care as needed.

Under this bill, the pensioner concession card will be reinstated for around 92,300 former pension recipients. Of course, this has been well received by those people in my electorate. Former pensioners who lost entitlement to the pensioner concession card when they ceased being eligible for the pension on 1 January 2017 due to the rebalancing of the pension asset test will once again be eligible for this card. The pension changes were designed to ensure the pension remains sustainable into the future by making it fairer and better targeted. Australians are healthier and living longer than ever before. By 2054-55, one Australian in five will be aged over 65. I think that is something we as a nation should celebrate. By 2054-55, there will be 2.7 people of working age for every person aged over 65. That means fewer people of working age will be paying tax to support those in retirement. The changes only impact people with significant assets outside of their home who have greater capacity to support themselves.

From 1 January 2017 these people were all issued with a health care card and those over age pension qualification age were also issued with a Commonwealth seniors health card. These cards provided the same benefits to the card holder in terms of access to cheaper medicines through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and lower extended Medicare safety net. These cards did not, however, provide access to free hearing services provided by the Department of Health for a range of concessions and benefits provided by states and territories and/or private providers which are available to pensioner concession card holders. The coalition government has decided to reinstate the pensioner concession card for those individuals to maximise concessions to this cohort. Reassuring the pensioner concession card will help overcome this anomaly and help facilitate people to again access these discounts and concessions. Consistent with the health care card and Commonwealth seniors health card they have now, the pensioner concession card will be automatically reissued from 9 October 2017 with an ongoing income and asset test exemption. This amendment will help out those who need assistance with climbing electricity bills. It will go a long way to assist pensioners in managing their daily budgets. I commend the bill to the House.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017. This government's record when it comes to Australian pensioners is a national disgrace. Australian pensioners helped build this country. Their reward under this government has been an all-out assault on their living standards. For four years, this government has tried to cut the incomes of Australian pensioners. Every step of the way, Labor has been there standing guard to shield Australian pensioners from this government's assaults on their cost of living. Labor opposed this government's attempt to change indexation that would have seen pensioners lose $80 in income over 10 years. Labor opposed this government's attempt to reset the deeming rate thresholds that would have seen 500,000 pensioners worse off. Labor opposed this government's reduction in assets tests that cut the pension for 330,000 pensioners today and will cut pensions for a million retirees within a decade. Labor opposed and opposes this government's attempt to increase the pension age to 70. And Labor opposes this government's continuing attempt to abolish the annual $365 energy supplement for single pensioners—a supplement introduced by a Labor government. Every time this government has assaulted the incomes and conditions of Australian pensioners, Labor has been there to defend them.

Labor is not opposing the bill before the House today. We will not deny pensioners this very modest one-off payment that they will receive as a result of the passage of this bill through the parliament. This one-off Energy Assistance Payment is supposed to assist pensioners with the rapidly and steeply rising cost of electricity across Australia. But let's put it in perspective. It is a $75 one-off payment. That equates to $1.44 a week or 20c a day. The pensioners of Australia who are battling crippling increases in power prices and other costs of living will no doubt be delirious with gratitude. Compare that one-off payment to the $30-a week increase in the pension that occurred under the last Labor government: a one-off $75 payment under the Liberals, a $1,560 pension increase under Labor; 20c a day under the Liberals, $4.27 a day under Labor.

But let's go further. The government expects Australian pensioners to be grateful for this $75 one-off payment when, in July, millionaires will be getting a $16,000 a year tax cut. That is 20c a day for pensioners and $44 a day for millionaires. What about those other battlers—the corporations and the banks? This government wants to give them $65 billion in tax cuts over the next 10 years—20c a day for pensioners, $44 a day for millionaires and $18 million a day for corporations and banks. What a stark illustration of this government's priorities when it comes to the public purse: spend less on pensioners, less on school children, less on apprentices, less on university students but more on millionaires and multinationals.

What is worse is that the government had to have its arm twisted into making even this modest payment. This $75 payment is not a Liberal idea and not a Nationals idea for that matter either. It is part of a deal that the government did with the crossbenchers to get their company tax handout through the Senate. This government's preference would have been to see corporations and banks get a $65 billion tax cut and pensioners get a big fat zero. And a big fat zero is what awaits the more than half a million Australians surviving on Newstart. For some reason that escapes me, they do not receive even this modest $75 one-off payment. Excuse me, but do people looking for work not struggle with power bills? What reason beyond meanness or political expediency can there be to deny people on Newstart this payment? The meanness, the miserliness of this government when it comes to the poor in this nation knows no bounds. Similarly, the largesse knows no bounds when it comes to rewarding the wealthy and the powerful.

Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It doesn't grow on trees.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will take the interjection from the member. Money does not grow on trees. Apparently $65 billion grows on trees. You are happy to hand that back to the banks and the corporations. We need to address a fundamental mistruth that this government peddles—that terrible lie of lifters and leaners from this government, that awful labelling of pensioners as a 'burden' on society. Pensioners are not a burden on society. They have helped build our society. Whether in a lifetime of paid work or looking after a home or volunteering for a charity or a school, pensioners are valuable members of our society and they deserve to be treated with respect, and they deserve society's support when times get tough.

No-one in Australia should have to choose between affording food and affording electricity, between affording a pet and affording a car, between affording a gift for a grandchild and affording a day out with friends. We are an extraordinarily wealthy country—a wealth that our pensioners helped create. And we can—and we should and we must—do better. Pensioners are hardly living the high life. The current rate of a full age pension, including pension supplements and the energy supplement, is $888.30 per fortnight for singles and $669.60 for each eligible member of a couple—for singles, $444 a week for rent, petrol, bills, food and everything else. And all of us in this chamber receive close to $300 a night for staying here. So, $444 a week for pensioners to meet every expense they have, when we get $300 a night to cover our motel and a bit of transport maybe—well, no; the Comcars are free—when you talk about money not growing on trees—

Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Are you going to give it away?

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, you [inaudible] the bill and we will have a look at it. According to a 2016 report by ACOSS, Poverty in Australia, 36.1 per cent of people receiving social security payments were living below the poverty line—

Mr Broad interjecting—

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Lyons has the call and will be heard in silence.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

including 55 per cent of those receiving Newstart allowance, 51.5 per cent of those receiving parenting payment, 36.2 per cent of those receiving disability support pension, 24.3 per cent of those receiving carer payment and 13.9 per cent of those on the age pension. People are doing it tough when they have to depend on social security.

In my electorate, pensioners Kaye and Barry Smith live in Buckland, and they told the local newspaper that even a 15 per cent hike in power bills—and they are going up more than that, generally, across the nation—will cost—

Mr Taylor interjecting—

Well, you talk to some of the people who came to my office today: 250 per cent gas bill increases under your government's mismanagement. A 15 per cent hike in their power bill will cost Barry and Kaye Smith an extra $300 a year, an extra cost that they say they cannot afford. In their words:

We would be struggling to have to take a huge increase in power at this time of our lives …

We have to put away nearly 300 [dollars] a fortnight and that's to cover our gas, our power, our water and our rates and that doesn't cover our private health fund or ordinary living expenses. …

We own our own home, we don't have huge debts but even so we can't take huge power increase considering the pension has only gone up $5 a fortnight each.

There is a $16,000 tax cut coming for millionaires, and five bucks for pensioners. Woo-hoo; you blokes are great! Mr Smith said that the couple already had to stick to a tight budget, and:

If you're careful with your money you can survive but … you can't afford to waste it …

Is that really the best we can do for our pensioners—to give them enough to scrape by on, to pay them just enough to keep them from going hungry? I think we can do better.

But what is this bill all about? It is broken into two parts, a once-off Energy Assistance Payment to 1.7 million age pensioners and people on the disability support pension, parenting payment single and veterans payments—notably, not Newstart recipients—and the reinstatement of pensioner concession cards to more than 92,000 pensioners. First the EAP—well, let's be clear: this bill is a shallow attempt to distract Australians from the fact that this government still wants to axe Labor's $365-a-year energy supplement to new pensioners. We are not going to stop payments to people who need them, and we all know that energy costs are skyrocketing and that this government is simply failing to act.

In Tasmania, residential energy pricing rose by 46.5 per cent from the end of 2007 to July 2016, far outpacing other household economic indicators, like wage growth. Even the Tasmanian Liberal government—not well known for its insight—has listened to the state Labor opposition on skyrocketing power prices that are crippling families and small businesses. Unfortunately, the state liberal government solution is not a long-term policy but, like this $75 one-off payment, it is a politically motivated 12-month freeze on power prices. Tasmanian Labor leader, Rebecca White, says that long-term certainty is needed and I agree wholeheartedly with her. These one-off short-term proposals are not the future solution that we need. Rebecca White could be talking about this government—cynical, short-term decision making on the run that is designed to get passed an election.

Labor will vote for this bill because at the least—and it is the very least—it will put $75 into the hands of pensioners. But if anyone here seriously thinks it is going to be regarded as manna from heaven, they are sorely mistaken. Power prices are doubling and tripling and this payment will barely scratch the surface. It is $1.44 a week, or 20c a day—it is better than nothing, but only just.

The real story of this bill is the government's determination to try to axe Labor's $365 energy supplement to new pensioners. The government will no doubt point to this one-off payment to say, 'See! It's not needed. We're doing something—we're looking after pensioners.' But axing the energy supplement to new pensioners will both create a red-tape nightmare and, worse, entrench inequality. ACOSS notes in its submission to the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017 inquiry, where the $365 cut was first touted:

… rather than applying only to new income support claimants, it would apply to anyone who started receiving a payment from 20 September 2016. These people would therefore experience a loss in income. Cessation of the supplement would also create two levels of payment because most existing recipients would continue to receive the supplement. This would create inequity as two people in the same circumstances would receive different rates of payment and would add further complexity to an already complicated income support system.

It is a one-off payment that will not help with the ongoing rises in energy pricing for our communities' most vulnerable.

As for the pensioner concession card, I am very happy to see it come back. It should never have gone out in the first place! On 1 January this year more than 92,300 former pension recipients and 3,600 veterans who received payments lost their pensioner concession cards and their eligibility for payments. In my electorate of Lyons, 1,460 pensioners were made worse off by these cuts, and for two years Labor has highlighted this issue. This government has come late to the party.

It is Labor, boosted by the hard work of Australian pensioners and their advocates, that has forced the coalition into this backflip. So it is a victory, and we welcome it. But it is another embarrassing backflip for this government. The 1 January date was not just about pensioners and veterans losing some or all of their payments, the biggest impact was the loss of the pension card. Without the pension card you cannot access discounted medicines, discounted dental treatment, discounted council rates, discounted water bills, discounted electricity bills, discounted registration, discounted public transport, reduced driver's license fees or a $52 a year subsidy to assist with heating costs. Those all went out the window for people on low incomes because of this government's abject stupidity and meanness. In some cases—in many cases—those changes whacked a couple of thousand dollars in bills onto people who were already on very tight and stretched budgets.

In the 2015 budget speech, then Treasurer Joe Hockey said that anyone who currently had a pensioner concession card would continue to receive a concession card that provides the same benefits, such as subsidised utilities and transport. He said that in his 2015 budget speech. But it turns out that Mr Hockey misled pensioners, and now the government has had to scramble to fix the problem.

We should not be surprised; this is the same government born from the lie that said no cuts to pensions, no cuts to health and no cuts to schools. And yet here we are, four years later, with this disgrace of a government. We are backing this bill—we will welcome any increase in payments to pensioners—but it really is nothing to be proud of.

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I came in here early, because I thought I had better come here for the previous member's speech, to see if they finished early, so I could stand up. All I can say is, that is 15 minutes I am never going to get back. Before I come to the point, I will say: that ideological diatribe—where are we at? Very sadly, where is the Australian Labor Party at? I mean, the diatribe that comes out of their mouths—I think Bob Hawke and Paul Keating would be asking, 'Where are these guys coming from?' The Bob Hawkes and the Paul Keatings were the people who started company tax cuts. Do you know why they did that? They started company tax cuts because they understood—

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Page has the call.

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They understood that when you cut company tax rates, as has been well proven—I will send the data to you on what they did—it increases the private sector's pie. We used to collect more company tax. When Keating started slashing company tax rates—slashing; he did not cut it—within two or three years we were collecting more money in company tax than we were before. And not only were we collecting more money but it was a bigger contribution to the economy, because you cannot tax your way to prosperity. I am sorry, but some people have to do well in a community. Some companies have to make a lot of money, and some people have to make a lot of money, for a community to do well. Shock, horror, gasp, God forgive us all! Do you know what else happens? Do you know who funds every pension? Do you know who funds every welfare recipient? Do you know who funds every school? Do know who funds every hospital? Do you know who funds every defence dollar we spend? Do you know who funds all that? It is the companies and the private individuals that do well.

I will draw a distinction for you here, too—and it might be a shock. It is the people in the private sector, the workers in the private sector—not the ones in the public sector; they take money from the people in the private sector. And do you know what? We need the private sector to do well. Let me give you some examples. I did not know how I was going to get to 15 minutes on this, but I think I am going to be fine now. Let me give you a few history lessons, too. About 100-odd years ago—I cannot remember exactly—Marx came up with this idea: let's have everyone be equal. It is not okay that the rich, bourgeois set have more than the others. So, they tried that. They tried it for a few decades in a few places. The Chinese thought that maybe it was not a very good idea. The Russians decided as well that it was not working too well, because when you go to work and the guy who sits next to you does nothing and you do a lot and you both get the same—it did not seem to work.

I actually asked a friend of mine the other day to give me a good example, because I think that friend thinks a lot like those opposite—but I like the person anyway! I said, give me a good example on the globe right now of what you think works well. This person is also a university professor—which makes me worry about our education system! Do you know what example they gave? Cuba. They said that Cuba is a good example of this; that is our shining light. God help us! God help us, with the corruption in Cuba. I said, it is funny, because I do not see people trying to get to Cuba. I see a lot of people trying to get out of the joint, but not a lot trying to get into the joint. Anyway, that is 15 minutes that I will not get back, but the politics of envy is working well for you, and I encourage you if you believe that. So be it, but it is not a great contribution to the growth of our country.

Let me get back to the bill. I have spoken for five minutes, and that is good, because I was not sure I was going to get to 15. The Energy Assistance Payment is important, as has previously been said. And I do want to talk a bit later about the energy market and the national grid, because we face great challenges with our energy market. Some of the state RET targets are really distorting our grid. It is interesting: whenever I talk to some members of the Greens, the answer to every question—'How did you get to work today?'—is 'renewable energy'. What time is it? Renewable energy. Renewable energy is a good and admirable thing that we need to encourage. We certainly need to grow that industry, because it is a transition. We are in a transition from fossil fuels, coal and other sources like nuclear and renewable energy. We are in a transition from fossil fuels, coal and other sources like nuclear to renewable energy. I think one day, when we have the battery storage technology—the world is obviously trying to solve this issue of battery storage capabilities with renewable energy—that will then transform it.

The danger we have at the moment is we are placing ourselves in a very delicate situation where we are mandating targets of an energy source that is intermittent, and that is causing distortions. I think the greatest distortion we have seen examples of is in South Australia, because they have a pretty gung-ho approach with this. They now have nearly 50 per cent of their energy sources coming from renewables. That seemed very admirable. They thought that was a lovely thing to do because of other reasons. But, as we saw a number of times in the last summer, when we rely so much on an intermittent energy source—that is the problem; it is an intermittent energy source because we do not have the technology yet to store energy from these intermittent sources like wind and solar—we are placing ourselves in great vulnerability. We have seen a couple of times lately the consequences in South Australia. It has also obviously meant that the cost of energy in certain places has gone up.

Let me go back to the assistance payment. This is going to be available to recipients of the aged pension, the disability support pension and the parenting payment single, and to veterans and their partners paid the service pension, the income support supplement and relevant compensation payments who are eligible for payment residing in Australia on 20 June 2017, the test date, to assist them with their energy costs. We are very conscious that we need to assist people who do have tight budgets to cover rising energy costs. The assistance will be paid at $75 for singles and $62.50 for each member of a couple, providing additional assistance to around 3.8 million Australians, including 2½ million aged pension recipients, 770,000 disability support pension recipients, 260,000 parenting payment single recipients and 235,000 recipients of veterans' payments.

To be eligible, one has to be a recipient of one of the qualifying payments and residing in Australia on the test date of 20 June. Those qualified will automatically receive a payment through Centrelink or the Department of Veterans' Affairs and they will not need to take any action; no claim is necessary. The payment will not be taxed and will not reduce their rate of income support. For those people who have made a claim for payment on or before the test date and have subsequently had that claim granted, it will also be paid as the one-off payment. Legislation ensures that a person cannot receive more than one entitlement. People who are not in receipt of a payment because they are suspended on the test date will not be eligible. Qualifying veterans will include those receiving disability pension; the war widower's pension under the Veterans' Entitlements Act; the permanent impairment compensation, the special rate disability pension or highly dependent partner payments under the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act; or permanent impairment compensation under the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act on the test date.

The second schedule of this bill is the pensioner concession card. This bill is going to reinstate the card to around 92,300 former pension recipients who ceased being eligible for the pension on 1 January 2017 due to the rebalancing of the pension assets test. They will once again be eligible for this card. This consists of 88,000 former pensioners paid by the Department of Social Services and 3,600 former pensioners paid by the Department of Veterans' Affairs. From 1 January these people were all issued with a health care card. Those over the aged pension qualification age were also issued the Commonwealth seniors health card. From the Commonwealth perspective, these cards provide the same benefits to the cardholder in terms of access to cheaper medicines through the PBS scheme and the lower extent of the Medicare safety net.

These cards do not, however, provide access to free hearing services provided by the Department of Health or a range of concessions and benefits provided by states, territories and private providers which are available to pension concession card holders. The government has decided to reinstate the pension concession cards to maximise concessions to these people. Whilst eligibility criteria for concession cards are set by the Commonwealth government, the decision to use certain Commonwealth government concession cards as the trigger or as a vehicle for targeting state and territory concessions is a choice made by the state and territory governments and other private providers. State concessions on rates, utilities, motor vehicle registrations and public transport are all determined by the type of card you hold. Due to the decisions of the state and territory governments and/or the private providers, some concessions available to pensioner concession card holders are not available to holders of other types of concession cards, including a health care card and Commonwealth seniors card. Re-issuing the pensioner concession card will help overcome this anomaly and help facilitate people gaining access to these discounts and concessions. This is going to cost $3.1 million over two years to reinstate the pensioner concession cards to these people, former pension recipients whose pension is cancelled. This is an expense that obviously we as government think we should make, to go a long way to assist them in managing their budgets. Consistent with the health care card and Commonwealth seniors card they have now, the pensioner concession card will be automatically reissued from 9 October 2017, with an ongoing income and assets test exemption.

To maintain their current Commonwealth benefits, those former pensioners issued with a Commonwealth seniors health card will also retain that card. As the pensioner concession card provides all the benefits the health care card, the health care card will become redundant and will be deactivated for those former pensioners issued with a health care card on 1 January 2017. The eligibility requirements will ensure that these former pensioners will maintain ongoing eligibility to the standalone pensioner concession card, but still have to meet some of the conditions in place for usual pensioner concession card holders. The conditions include portability requirements, where cardholders would have their card suspended after being overseas for six weeks. The card will be reactivated on return to Australia. The pensioner concession card will also be cancelled if the cardholder is in jail. I commend the bill to the House.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in relation to the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017. In doing so, I say that we support the second reading amendment and we condemn those opposite for a history of neglect and indifference towards pensioners.

While so many people have been doing it tough and feeling the pressure, it is hard to argue that anyone in Australian society has been feeling it more than pensioners. I have spoken to many pensioners in the mobile offices I have been doing as I do the country show runs—the Ipswich show, Kilcoy show, Esk show, Marburg show; and I have Toogooloowah, Lowood and Rosewood to go. I have spoken to hundreds of people during those times. Pensioners tell me how hard they are doing it. They are anxious and concerned. Energy prices have gone up, inflation exceeds wage growth and they are doing it harder. It is hard to argue that we have not gone backwards in the last four or five years under this government, both nationally and in the household budgets of the country.

There are people who are being disappointed and let down by this government. I think pensioners are among those who have been let down by this government. A segment of our society who need to be venerated and thanked for the contribution they have made to our economy and society has been let down badly by a government which seems afflicted by a desire to inflict cuts on pensioners' household incomes.

We will support the measures in this bill. Why wouldn't we? It helps disability support pensioners; it helps aged pensioners; it helps those on parenting payment single, and veterans as well. Labor always wants to look after pensioners, so we will not for a minute let those opposite forget and let pensioners forget what the member for Warringah and the member for Wentworth have done under their governments in the last four years in relation to pensioners. We will not forget their repeated attempts to cut the pension by any means possible, whether it is a change in indexation, a change in the assets test or freezing payments for pensioners wanting to travel overseas. We will not forget that they are as eager as ever to ditch the energy supplement for some of the neediest Australians. We will not forget that they still, to this day, believe that Australians should be made to work until they are 70—longer than in any other country in the developed world. This government has time and time again shown that they are more than willing to make pensioners the very first to lose out whenever they need to save a few dollars; all at a time when they feel they can afford to give away $65.3 billion in taxpayers' money that was expected to be paid in years to come by big corporates in this country. So they can afford to give away that sort of income when they could have been funding schools and pensions better, could have been funding hospitals and infrastructure better. This government's priorities seem very much out of kilter with Australia's expectations and certainly the expectations of Australian pensioners. Australian pensioners know that this government and this Prime Minister cannot be trusted. I think their knowing that is afflicting this government, and you can tell by their tone and by the opinion polls.

If anyone at all still needs an example of how detached the government's claims of fairness are, that example is what they have delivered and what they have done with the energy assistance payment. It is proof to all of what they are doing. We will not oppose a one-off $75 payment to pensioners, or $62.50 to each individual of a couple. We will not object to that—every little bit helps those who are trying to put food on the table, pay for their electricity, and meet their car registration and utility payments. We will not begrudge them that, but that is not nearly enough to compensate for the $365 a year—not just a one-off payment; a year—cut this government wants to perpetrate and inflict upon Australian pensioners by getting ready rid of the energy supplement. Never forget that under the Howard government pensioners might have got a small supplement at budget time, but the age pension really was far too low—and not just the age pension; payments for those on disability support, the carers payment, veterans' service pensions and other pensions were far too low, and that is what the Harmer review said.

It came to pass that when we were in government, back on 20 September 2009, a government decided for the first time in many years to assist single pensioners and pensioner couples. Labor decided to assist pensioner couples, and singles, with a $32.49 a week single pension increase and a $10.14 a week increase for pensioner couples combined who were on the full rate. We did that because the Harmer review recommended that that was what should happen. Those opposite seem determined to cut pensions. We know they still want to cut the energy supplement for over 1.7 million Australians, pensioners included. Why do we know that? Because it is written in the budget. Those opposite seem during question time and on other occasions oblivious to what is actually written in the budget. For example, they seem to deny the $22 billion in the education cuts for primary and high schools in this country which are clearly stated in the government's own documentation. We know it is in the budget. Just last week the independent Parliamentary Budget Office confirmed during Senate estimates that getting rid of the energy supplement is still one of the government's yet to be legislated zombie cuts.

It is clear that the Prime Minister is giving with one warm hand but taking away, coldly, with the other. The energy supplement is relied upon by some of the most vulnerable Australians to cope with the sadly and tragically increasing energy costs we are seeing around the country. Getting rid of it represents over $1 billion in cuts to pensioners, Newstart recipients and other vulnerable Australians. Single pensioners will lose $365 a year, or $14.10 a fortnight. Couples will lose $550 a year, or $21.20 a fortnight. These are cuts locked into the budget—it is in black and white for all to see—which the government will push through as soon as it gets the chance. Labor will oppose these cuts. This might not sound like much to those opposite, who feel they can afford to give away $65.3 billion in corporate tax cuts, but for pensioners living in Ipswich and the Somerset region, struggling to get through the week, it will be a hard-felt hit to their financial capacity to meet their household needs.

The government seems to be trying to rob the pensioners of this payment at the same time as many advocacy services, including ACOSS, have written to the Prime Minister about the matter. ACOSS said in their letter:

A clear message from the reaction to the 2014 Budget and the 2016 Election was that the community expects budget measures to be fair and equitable. People are deeply concerned about growing inequality in Australia. It is therefore alarming that the Government is cutting social security payments to those on the lowest incomes by removing the Energy Supplement, including people struggling on Newstart, and at the same time proposing to cut taxes for those on higher incomes.

That includes giving millionaires a $16,400-a-year benefit by the removal of the deficit levy from 1 July. They are doing that at a time when the gross debt in this country is $493 billion. The deficit—which they promised in their first year and every year thereafter to eliminate with a surplus—is about 10 times bigger than they projected it would be this year. That is an abject failure of economic management and responsibility for those opposite.

Despite the hurt that getting rid of the energy supplement will do, the Prime Minister still has the arrogance to claim that what he is delivering is fair for all Australians and particularly for seniors. Fairness seems to be a word that has penetrated somehow the lexicon and nomenclature of those opposite in their speeches and everything they do, including their press releases. I think it is a desperate attempt by the government to try and distract pensioners from the government's consistent and repeated attacks on their income. But, if the Prime Minister thinks people will not notice the difference between this one-off payment and the ongoing, yearly substantial assistance that the energy supplement he proposes to cut will impact, he is kidding himself. The fact that he thinks he can get away with such a significant cut straight out of the pockets of seniors shows just how out of touch the Prime Minister and this government is.

Schedule 2 of the bill, which restores the pensioner concession card, is a much overdue backflip by the government. I smile because I find it extraordinary. Many of us were here when the member for North Sydney said this would not happen: 'Those on the pension concession card will continue to receive the concession card, the same benefits, such as subsidised utilities and transport'. We knew it was not true. It was not true for about 92,000 Australians, who attended our electorate offices and I dare say those opposite. They instead lost their usual benefits—concessions in terms of registration, utilities and a whole range of other concessions. They were stuck on the low-income healthcare card or the Commonwealth seniors health card. As a result they lost so many essential government funded hearing tests as well as other vital concessions. It varied from state to state, but I dare say pensioners contacted electorate offices all around the country. It was a shamble of a reform. The government got it wrong, and as a result of this they are backflipping in this budget.

As recently as last December, the Minister for Human Services was still trying to avoid taking any action; he was looking to shift the burden of fixing this government's mistakes back to the states, territories and local governments. But they saw the light, and a sort of Damascus-road-conversion experience was had in May 2017, and all of a sudden they decided to change it. I commend groups like National Seniors and others who have been keeping up the fight for years in relation to senseless change. Thanks to them—and those opposite can even thank us, because we have been campaigning on this issue for a while—thousands and thousands of pensioners, and many who have come into my electorate offices, are sick of being treated as second-class citizens. I am pleased the government has undertaken this change. It is about time and long overdue.

But this is not the first time the government tried something like this. Who can ever forget what this government did to 330,000 age pensioners who had their age pension entitlements cut—and about 100,000 of those lost their entitlements entirely? It was a $2.43 billion cut in income support for pensioners. This was as a result of a deal that the government did with those opposite in the corner over there—there is one of them, the member for Melbourne. The government attacked the Greens relentlessly and yet were quite happy to do deals in relation to a whole range of issues: the Malaysian solution, cutting incomes for pensioners, raising the debt ceiling. I could go on and on. There are so many other deals they were prepared to cut with the Greens, yet they criticised them mightily in relation to issues. Again, pensioners lost out entirely as a result of that.

We opposed those cuts to pensions. And that was part of the 92,000 people who lost the pension concession card as well. This is a government that does all kinds of things in relation to pensioners. The age pension change saw 236,000 people worse off by an average of $130 per fortnight or $3,380 per year—an extraordinary thing. There was $2.43 billion in income support ripped away from pensioners. In that context I really do not understand why the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, had the gall to get up before the 2013 election and promise no changes to pensions. That act of deception is something that pensioners will not forgive or forget in a hurry. Who could ever forget the 2014 budget, when they tried to change the indexation of the pension to bring it back down to CPI? We opposed that and managed to block it. Instead of the pension being indexed by the higher rate of PBLCI or a percentage of male total average weekly earnings, the government decided to use the CPI as the only means by which pensions could increase, which would have resulted in pensioners being $80 a week worse off within a decade. We fought and opposed that.

The government seem to be lacking in focus and lacking in their understanding of fairness to pensioners. They do not understand how they attempted to hurt pensioners through their absurd zombie cuts. I think the most stupid thing they have tried to do is to raise the retirement age, expecting labourers in the construction industry, nurses and police officers—a whole range of professions—to work to 70 years of age. I cannot believe this government wants to raise the pension age to 70.

We will never stand between low-income pensioners and extra assistance. That is why we will support this legislation. It is about time the government looked at their attitude to pensioners in this country.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Listening to the member for Blair's contribution reminds me of the parallel universe that members of the Labor Party live in. They seem to think that money just grows on trees or that the government has a big printing press and that we can just keep borrowing money. They fail to realise that the gross incompetence of the glory years of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments left the incoming government with an interest bill of over $1 billion every month. We are trying to pay it down. The bill that those opposite left us means that we have to find $1 billion every month. The Labor Party do not have the foggiest clue about this. They think you can just spend, spend, spend and that the coalition government will come in and clean up their mess. We cannot continue to borrow and spend in the way that the Labor Party want to.

Time after time we have heard the member for Blair perpetuating the myth about the cuts to education. I call on all Labor members of good conscience not to do what the member for Blair has just done in this debate and spread the myth that funding to schools is being cut. If the Labor Party want to borrow more money to give more money to schools, thereby increasing the debt, that is a fair enough argument. But do not go around to schools in your electorate and tell them the untruth that their funding is being cut. You are scaring children and their parents by telling complete untruths. Tell them the truth: the funds they are getting are going up. The coalition is increasing the money that they get. If you want to, say that you will borrow money and spend more, but for goodness sake do not tell them the untruth that their funding is being cut.

I turn to the specifics of the bill. It will provide a one-off energy assistance payment to recipients of the age pension, disability support pension and parenting payment single, together with recipients of various veterans' payments, who are payable and residing in Australia on 20 June 2017. Approximately 3.8 million people will receive a one-off energy assistance payment, including approximately 2.5 million age pensioners, 770,000 disability support pensioners, 260,000 parenting payment single recipients and 235,000 Veterans' Affairs clients. The total cost is $269 million. The rate of payments will be $75 for singles and $62.50 for a member of a couple. It is anticipated that most of those 3.8 million people will receive the payments by 30 June 2017.

Why is this necessary? Let us have a look at the increasing cost of electricity and where that has come from over recent years. We are having a transformation in our electricity sector. It is a transformation from one of the lowest cost and most reliable electricity sectors in the world to one of the highest cost and most unreliable energy sectors in the world—especially in South Australia. Let us have a look at what has happened over the last 20 years, and why this is necessary. Firstly, the data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics—the catalogue number is 6401.05—tells us that in the Howard government period, almost 12 years from March 1996 to December 2007, we had an increase of 34 per cent in electricity prices. That is less than three per cent a year.

Then we come to those glory years of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments. What happened to electricity prices during those six sorry years? From December 2007 to September 2013 the increase was 118 per cent. How does any government, no matter how incompetent they are, allow electricity prices to increase by 118 per cent over a period of six years? This must be some type of record. If we look at the trophy cabinet of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments, one of their greatest achievements must have been to increase electricity prices by 118 per cent over that period. That is some mean feat. The member for Blair talked about sad and tragic increases in electricity prices. It all happened under the government that he was part of.

What has happened since then? Again, from the official Australian Bureau of Statistics figures we see that from September 2013 to the latest figures of March 2017, in that four years there has been a 2.6 per cent increase. The coalition has been here for four years, and we have had a 2.6 per cent increase. The Labor Party, in the six years before that, had a 118 per cent increase. And Labor members come in here and whinge about increasing electricity prices. We had the largest increase in electricity prices in the nation's history under their watch, and possibly, I would say that you would be hard pressed to find any other country, during any other period of time in history, when electricity prices have increased as much as that.

Where are we going from here? I would like to think that we have capped electricity prices and we have been able to stop these terrible increases that we saw under the previous Labor government. But the sad reality is that, although we have succeeded for the last four years, there are very large and substantial electricity price increases coming down the track. Delta Energy has highlighted them. They estimate over the next 12 months increases in costs for consumers in South Australia of $1 billion; in Victoria $2.8 billion additional costs for electricity; in New South Wales they will be paying $4 billion.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why did Mike Baird resist the drop in prices? The Australian Energy Regulator wanted to drop energy prices.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Chifley interjects. In the state that I the member for Chifley come from people will be paying $4 billion in additional electricity costs. In Queensland it is an extra $2 billion in extra electricity costs. These are the costs estimated to come through in the next couple of months.

Mr Taylor interjecting—

The member for Hume asks why this is happening. Well, I will tell him. It is because of the renewable energy target. It increases costs in three ways. I will go through the three ways in which it increase costs. Firstly, there are the direct subsidies. The direct subsidies under the renewable energy target are $3 billion a year. And what about the subsidies to solar? The Grattan Institute report from May 2015 says:

… lavish government subsidies plus the structure of electricity network tariffs means that the cost of solar PV take-up has outweighed the benefits by almost $10 billion.

Not $10 million but $10 billion. It continues:

… purchasing, installing and maintaining the solar PV systems—

most of which are imported from China—

until 2030 will cost $18.7 billion, outweighing the benefits by more than double.

The subsidies are particularly unfair when many renters, apartment dwellers and low-income households are unable to gain the benefits of solar PV. That is the cost. This has to be paid.

We have this fantasy belief that anything seen as renewable energy is somehow wonderful. We have this renewable energy target, but what we really need is an affordable energy target. We in this nation need to say what is an affordable price for Australian consumers to pay for their electricity. That should be the thing we look at first and foremost before we build another wind turbine—which often are completely and utterly useless.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Bird killers! Bird catchers!

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Kennedy is exactly right; they are bird choppers. Several times this month the total electricity being generated by the 1,000 wind turbines that we have around this country, spread from South Australia—I see the member for Port Adelaide is here—to Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales was zero. That is not enough to run one 20-watt light bulb, yet we have spent billions and billions of dollars in subsidies. This is why we must have enough base-load generating capacity in this country. This is why the renewable energy target costs us so much. It undermines base-load generators and they leave the market. That creates uncertainty, along with the policies of the Greens and the Labor Party, so no-one will invest in base-load electricity generation capacity in this nation. That pushes wholesale prices up, and that is what we are about to see in this nation.

We also need a competitive energy target. If we are going to afford all the things that we continually hear being whinged about by the Labor Party, if we want to afford more money for pensions and social security, more money for people who need help, you have to have an economic base that creates the wealth. But what we have done by privatising useless wind turbines and the renewable energy target is make electricity generation in this nation internationally uncompetitive. If we do that, we simply cannot afford all the things that we need. This morning we had another warning, from Glencore, in The Australian Financial Review:

Given the current electricity prices and uncertainty around future supply, we need to consider options for shutting our smelter and refinery [and] ship copper anodes direct to market and/or refine at one of our other plants offshore.

Offshore means outside of Australia. They said:

… the investment environment in Australia has materially changed. The current uncertainty and escalating costs do not support further investment in these assets at this time.

Mr Keogh interjecting—

And the member over there laughs. You, sir, are a joke! You do not know the damage that you are causing to your nation. You do not understand the damage that you are causing to your constituents. You are an absolute embarrassment to this parliament; you are an embarrassment to this nation. We have people this winter that will not be able to afford turning their heaters on because of the policies of you and the Labor Party. You come into this parliament and you laugh and joke about it. You are an absolute disgrace. I am sick to death of people in the Labor Party coming in here with this whingeing and this whining, and being happy to see electricity prices increase in this nation. It is about time we say how important electricity prices are rather than sit in here and make these smart comments. It is an absolute disgrace.

If we going to get this economy firing, if we are going to provide jobs for the young people of this country, if we are going to create the prosperity and wealth that we need, we must have affordable and low-cost energy prices. And that means we must have affordable coal and gas baseload power. We can build as many wind turbines as we like to feel good about ourselves and we can get all warm and fuzzy about it, but unless we have the baseload capacity in this nation our nation is going to go backwards and we are going to be unable to afford all of the things that we want to pay for in this nation.

I call on all members of good conscience in this parliament to put aside their ideological biases, to put aside their almost religious belief in wind turbines and to think about the constituents in their electorate that will struggle this winter to afford their electricity bills. Under the previous Labor government, we saw a 100 per cent increase. We have to take strong measures to get electricity prices under control. And if you want to see what happens with the policies of a 50 per cent renewable energy target that the Labor side are promoting, just go and have a look at the disaster that is in South Australia. That gives us a window into the future, and that is not what I want to see from my country.

With that, I commend this bill to the House.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would remind the honourable member who we have just listened to that he is, in fact, in the government. He has been in the government for the last four years, so perhaps he has more opportunity than us to do something about the issues that he is raising. Anyway, for those of us who listen to his speeches day in and day out, it is, in fact, the same speech, but perhaps with a different lens. I was sitting here chatting to the whips office outside thinking there is a cruel form of karma in that every time I have been on chamber duty the last few weeks and for just about every piece of legislation that I have spoken on the member for Hughes has proceeded me. If I was someone who had found a way to believe in—

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You should think yourself very lucky. I hope you learn something.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

thank you—a directive form of God then I think that I would need to reflect on what I had done wrong with my life. But I will take it as an unfortunate accident of scheduling.

One of the things that all of us have the privilege to do when we are in this place as new members—this is a funny way to start, but I was reflecting on it today—is select a few pieces from the parliamentary art collection for our offices. Being a junior backbencher at the end of the corridor, the books came to me quite near the end when, what some may say, the more famous pieces had already been nabbed by ministers and senior officers. The upside of that was they were quite generous in allowing me to pick three small pieces and count them as one to hang in my foyer. I gave some thought to those three pieces and determined that I would choose three pieces that reminded me of particular groups in my electorate for whom, above all else, I must do my utmost to remember in my service here.

Of the three pictures I chose, one was of a young person—you might say somewhere between 16 and 20—entering adulthood, drifting into the prime of life with everything before them, embodying the hopes of their families. Another, given my electorate, was a very famous photograph of migrants arriving in Sydney, because my electorate has the highest proportion of migrants of any in this parliament. The third one I chose was a beautiful, evocative picture of an older couple. It reminded me of my grandma and grandpa sitting in the corner of their lounge room in front of the piano with all the kind of knick-knacks of a life, as they were in their twilight years. The expressions on their faces are somewhat inscrutable but betray, I think, a degree of pride and resilience at whatever they have done with their lives. They look like working-class people—humble people.

So the need to look after pensioners and older Australians has always been something in the short time that I have been here that I have been determined to remember. Pensioners are amongst the most aggrieved of any group of people who come into my office or who I see in the community—and they do have strong competition. We could talk about the young, we could talk about those who are about to lose penalty rates or we could talk about any Victorian who is looking for a fair share of infrastructure. Certainly pensioners in this country have voiced to me the fact that they feel disrespected and that they feel blatantly lied to. I think former Prime Minister Abbott was elected on a promise of 'no cuts to pensions at all'. There is also a profound lack of recognition of the circumstances and understanding of the sacrifices that pensioners have made. This government's record with pensioners is truly appalling.

The 2014 budget was profoundly unfair. People who have lived a few years are smart. They spot scams when they see them. They understand and have seen before attacks on the vulnerable and what it means to give tax breaks to the top end when they are being asked to bear more burden. But the 2013 promise of no cuts to pensions has been well and truly broken in every single budget that those opposite have handed down. In 2014 they tried to cut indexation, which would have meant that, over 10 years, pensioners would have $80 per week less to live on. That is a cut. In 2014 those opposite also tried to change the deeming rates, which would have hurt 500,000 part-pensioners. They tried to cut $1 billion out of the pensioner concessions. In 2015, there was the shameful deal that the government, the Liberals, did with the Greens political party to hit 330,000 pensioners by changing the assets test—again, breaking a very clear promise not to do these things. That has generated an enormous number of complaints—bitter complaints. People still feel betrayed. Whenever I do a street stall, whenever I am at a railway station or whenever I am out in the community, I can be absolutely sure that not a time will go by without someone coming up to me to explain the impact that these part-pension changes have had on them and how they feel.

There are things worse than that—worse often than the dollars. I have had people say to me, 'It's tough but I can do without the $5, $10, $20 or $30, whatever I have lost that week, but please don't take the pensioner concession card off me.' This card provides discounts on a range of things, including, importantly in Victoria, discounts on local council rates and the cost to anyone needing to access Commonwealth hearing services. The discounts will vary from state to state. That was the biggest lie of all, because the government cannot even claim that it was one of those core and non-core promises: 'Oh well, we said a whole lot of stuff before the election, didn't we, Mr Abbott? Some of it we meant, because that was a core promise; but some of it we didn't really mean. We just kind of shot our mouth off. Or it was a case of nudge-nudge, wink-wink, so you can't really believe that.' I do not know how you are ever supposed to tell the difference. But this was not one of those promises. This was a promise made by the Treasurer when those opposite were in government. It was a very clear statement. You would think after all the heat of an election campaign—even if you take the core and non-core promise thesis—and you are in government that you could rely on the word of the Commonwealth Treasurer. Then Treasurer Joe Hockey said:

… anyone who currently has a Pensioner Concession Card will continue to receive a concession card that provides the same benefits …

But that was not true. People got a Commonwealth seniors health card, but there was no discussion about it with the states and territories whatsoever. Was this sloppy or deliberate? In the great game, we always have to guess: is it conspiracy theory or stuff-up? I usually back stuff-up. But with this, who knows?

The anger has got through to the government. They have heard through their backbench, no doubt, about the profound anger of pensioners when, on 18 January, they had to front up and pay their rates and pay more for getting hearing services and so on. So the government slunk back in here and, in the budget, finally fixed their damage and patched it up. However, it does not help the people who, in the last six months, have not had the card and who have had to pay more. There is no recompense for them. Nevertheless, it is a welcome though belated move, and we will vote for it to help the government fix its stuff-up. As a result of the changes to the asset measures, more people in the coming months and years, as re-evaluations and so on kick in, will lose the pensioner concession card. They are not going to be helped by this measure, and so the anger will continue.

In relation to the one-off payment, the member for Hughes had a little rift going through some of his remarks—why is this necessary?—until we tuned out. The fundamental reason it is necessary is that it was a deal dreamed up to get the company tax cuts through the Senate. It does not really have anything to do with energy, despite the rant. We have heard that rant before. If you could plagiarise against yourself and be accused of it, I am sure we could compare the Hansard of today to the Hansard with most of the other speeches and find very similar sentences.

This $75 is a one-off payment. So you get one $75 cheque in the mail—I do not know what that is going to do for many people—but what you lose every year if the government gets its way is $365 as the energy supplement disappears. The member for Lalor was the principal of a school. I do not know whether maths was your discipline. I would pretty sure that she would attest to the fact that $75 does not equal $365.

Opposition members: No?

No, it does not. Seventy-five dollars does not equal $365. So we have this pathetic little pea and thimble trick. I would love to go and negotiate or play poker with Senator Xenophon. I was in the parliament for his very first speech many years ago, because my friend Senator Pratt was speaking after him. I have watched him over the years and he seems like quite an amiable and reasonable kind of chap. Sometimes he even makes a bit of sense—rarely, but he does. But you would love to negotiate with him, wouldn't you? There are $25 billion of company tax cuts through—the first tranche of a $65 billion company tax cut plan—and, in return, $75. If the government gets its way, that $75 will go no way to making up for $365 every single year. The government must think people are stupid. Seventy-five dollars, when you give companies a tax cut of $65 billion—with $25 billion being the first down payment—is insulting. I bet they hope that the pensioners will forget the last four years of attacks, cuts and lies.

At this point, I really think that the government should thank Labor for saving them from themselves in the Senate in the last few years, because just imagine how angry people would be now if they had passed their legislation and had actually got their way. If they had had their hopes and dreams and their groundhog day and the full bore of the attacks which they had made on pensioners had actually got through this parliament, people would be well on the way to being $80 a week poorer in real terms. That is what the change in indexation means. Of course, it was Labor when in government that finally changed that indexation rate and did the right thing, but the government tried to take it away.

Ms Ryan interjecting—

You are right: Labor did give a pay rise to pensioners. On the deeming rates, 500,000 part-pensioners would be worse off if the government had its way. We are on track—this is one of the zombie measures that will not go away—to raising the pension age to the age of 70, which would be the world's oldest. This would of course particularly hurt blue-collar labourers, those who toiled all their lives in hard industries and whose bodies may simply not be able to work until 70. It is those people, who we represent, who would be most hurt if the government got its way with these changes.

Retirees going overseas for six weeks would not be very happy, because, if they went away for more than six weeks, their payments would be impacted. But, particularly for my electorate, it would be migrants who would be most picked on. But I think that proposal was one of the zombies that they finally found a way to kill in the budget. I do not think we will have to talk about that again—or at least until comes back at another time. But it would be the migrants who would be most picked on if the changes that the government wanted got through the parliament, because their payments would be impacted for the simple sin of spending time overseas with their families.

Imagine being an older person and wanting to spend time with your family in your twilight years, after having worked in the country and contributed. Or imagine caring for a dying relative who might be so rude as not to die within six weeks but actually linger around for three months or six months and you might want to spend those last days with them. Well, if the government had its way, they would be docked on their pension. Fortunately, we have saved the government from themselves on this by convincing enough of the crossbench to do the right thing, hold the line and not let these cuts go through.

But the biggest irony of all, from my experience of spending time in the community and talking with pensioners and people affected by all this, is that, overwhelmingly, these are good people. This is a generation that worked hard, whether they were born in Australia or whether they perhaps came here in the post-World War II migration—particularly the Greeks, Italians and East Europeans, who worked every day, who worked multiple jobs, who sacrificed everything for their kids, who saved a bit, who might have bought an extra house, as many of them saved and scrimped, so their kids would have a house as well and they would have something else to pass on. They made sure that their kids got an education and a better life while they went without. These are people who understand the importance of saving. They understand, more than any generation, I would venture—particularly the current lucky generation who have been born in an Australia that has never known a recession, with 25 or 26 years of uninterrupted economic growth. But this generation that the government is so determined to pick on with these changes is the generation that really understands the importance of saving. Many people have said to me, 'You know, I'd be prepared to do my bit.' It is not easy. We have heard what the member for Hughes said about electricity bills. We understand the pressures of rising health costs. We understand, for people who do not own their own home, the difficulties in the rental market and in simply staying in the community where your family is or where you know people, as rents rise. We understand those difficulties. But, they say, 'I would be prepared to sacrifice a few dollars in the national interest. I understand the need for budget repair, post the global financial crisis.' People might even be smart enough to thank the member for Lilley for helping shepherd Australia through in fine shape, using the strength of our balance sheet. So they might be prepared to sacrifice a few dollars—but only if they felt they were treated fairly; if they were not lied to by the government; if the government did not say one thing then do another; if only they felt that the top end of town were also asked to kick in; if they did not see this government, day after day, month after month, year after year, determined to fight to the death to protect the tax breaks for the top end.

Remember superannuation? We were evil socialists, picking on people who had saved for their own retirement—I mean, they only had $10 million in the bank; how outrageous it was to say that they should be made to pay just a little bit of tax on their retirement savings because they had $10 million! Meanwhile, the government's priority was to pick on pensioners.

Maybe we could take the current example—because Labor broadly pushed the government there. Maybe if we were prepared to just trim or change some of the negative gearing loopholes that overwhelmingly go to the top end of society, or maybe if we could change capital gains tax, where 70 per cent of the benefit goes to the top 10 per cent of society, then maybe we would believe that the government, the Liberal Party, was not still fulfilling its traditional, historical purpose of protecting those who have wealth, at all costs.

But, unfortunately for the government, pensioners see through this. They understand that they are first in line to have a few bucks ripped off them, while the government continues on its way, giving money away to those who need it least and protecting those who have wealth. Nevertheless, we will vote for this, because it is the right thing to do.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Wow! Another 15 minutes of the culture of complaint from those opposite, who had nothing constructive to add to the debate but were just complaining, whingeing and whining. While the member for Bruce is carrying on about supporting those at the top end of town, he might want to explain to his constituents why he is so against the 0.06 per cent levy on the big banks. Why are they spending so much time in this chamber defending the big banks?

Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The big end of town!

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why are they defending the big end of town, as my good colleague to my right has suggested? So he might want to explain that. He might also want to explain why, when 10 per cent of taxpayers pay approximately 60 per cent of all income taxes, they are not carrying their fair share of the burden. So, once again, we have listened to 15 minutes of those opposite, with nothing constructive to say, whingeing, whining and complaining.

It is my pleasure to rise in the chamber today to support the coalition government's plan to reinstate the much-needed assistance to pensioners and low-income earners through the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017. This move is testament to the government's commitment to helping those in the Australian community who most need it and are incredibly deserving of all the support we can potentially give them.

That is what is so important about what we are trying to do as a government in repairing the budget. We are seeking to ensure that we have the resources and the finances to help those most in need.

It might be instructive to remind the member for Bruce, before he leaves the chamber, that it was those opposite who voted against the multinational tax avoidance bills that this government put through this parliament 18 months or so ago. Some $2-billion-odd of additional revenue is being generated so far, and another $4-billion-odd is in the budget that we have just handed down.

So those opposite can wax lyrical all they like about support for the big end of town, but they are the ones actually defending the big end of town. They are the ones that have done the deals with unions that have ripped wages and conditions from low-paid workers around the country, whether it is Cleanevent, whether it is Coles or Woolies employees, where they have traded off their penalty rates and conditions and got paid by the union for the privilege. There is KFC and many other workers around this country. Those opposite on many, many occasions have demonstrated very clearly that what they say and what they do are two completely different things. They say they support the workers, but in the end they stab them in the back and allow their wages and conditions to be traded away.

This government, through this bill and many other things that we are doing, is looking to ensure that it supports Australians right across the country. This bill will support some 24,000 people in my electorate who have the ability to earn additional income and will become eligible through these changes. They are made up of some 15,000 people on the age pension, some 6,000 people on the disability support pension and a number of others.

These payments are not huge, I acknowledge that. But they are a contribution towards the cost of living for people in circumstances who are finding it difficult to make ends meet—in particular, because of the cost of electricity. As the member for Hughes rightly pointed out in his contribution, under those opposite, in their six years of government, we saw electricity prices rise by some 118 per cent, in large part due to the carbon tax that they introduced. We know that their policy is to introduce a 50 per cent renewable energy target, which is only going to do one thing: push electricity prices up further. They say that they increased pensions and other things during the time when they introduced the carbon tax. Well, they did, but that was compensation for the introduction of the carbon tax. When we came into government and abolished the carbon tax, we left those increases in place, including the increase in the tax-free threshold. So again it is a demonstration on this side of the House that we have the runs on the board for supporting those who need that help and support. In abolishing the carbon tax we allowed the tax-free threshold to stay and we maintained those increases in the pension. Australians actually got a real benefit from the changes we made in abolishing the carbon tax.

This bill, along with many others that we are introducing through this budget, provides that support and assistance to people across the country. It is important that we continue to work on these changes to help facilitate people accessing the discounts and concessions that were offered by the state and territory governments and private providers. Interestingly, all of these organisations could actually provide these discounts and concessions of their own free will. There was no need for them to abolish those concessions and discounts just because people lost their pension concession card. In some cases, some councils—I give due credit to Logan City Council—did maintain the pensioner discount for a period after the abolition of the pension concession card. But everybody else could still do exactly the same thing today for people who are over age 65 or whatever limit those organisations decide to make as their cut-off. But, as I have said, the purpose of this bill is to reintroduce that so we create clarity and these organisations can once again introduce those discounts and concessions and allow people to get those concessions back.

Consistent with the health care card and the Commonwealth seniors health card, the pension concession card will automatically be reissued over time, with the ongoing income and asset test exemption. The reissuing of these cards will come at a cost of some $3.1 million to the budget, but overall this is a small price to pay for ensuring that these people, who need it most, have the support and assistance they need with their daily budgets to ensure they have a reasonable standard of living in retirement.

I spend a lot of time visiting and speaking with pensioners and seniors across my electorate of Forde, particularly with my regular seniors' village visits, which are a highlight across the electorate. I always enjoy getting out to meet them. We enjoy some great coffee and some scones with jam and cream. There is always an interesting, broad discussion over a wide range of topics. Our seniors are very important to our community. Many of them get out into the community and volunteer for many community organisations. I talk to many of them and many of them tell me they almost work harder in retirement than they did when they were working. It is a wonderful contribution we see from these people who have already spent so much of their lives contributing to and building our great country. They continue to make our communities what they are today.

Access to financial as well as social support is a big issue for many of these citizens in our community. I am pleased to say that we as a government are seeking to find ways to continue to support these people, to provide that encouragement for them and to help minimise in some respects the impact of cost of living pressures, particularly with rising electricity prices. As we have seen in other parts of the budget, we have made it very clear that we are looking to do things in the energy space to try to put downward pressure on energy prices. Again, as the member for Hughes has outlined, in our time in government, as a comparison to the time of those opposite, the increases in electricity prices have been somewhere around 2½ per cent. I know from talking to people in my electorate that they do not necessarily feel that that is a lived reality. It is important that we provide support to them through these measures and other aspects of the budget to ensure that they feel as if they can have an enjoyable retirement. I commend this bill to the House.

Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017. I speak in support of this bill because it is the very least this government can do for pensioners, given their ongoing campaign against our most vulnerable. This government continues to give with one hand and take away with the other. This is not a win for pensioners, but with this government in power pensioners must take whatever crumbs they are thrown.

Schedule 1 of this bill provides a one-off energy assistance payment to recipients of the aged pension, disability support pension, single parenting payments and veterans' payments. It provides $75 for singles and $62.50 for each member of a couple. Labor will of course support the one-off energy assistance payment, but it beggars belief as to why the government would be proposing this when it still wants to cut the energy supplement.

The energy supplement is worth far more to pensioners, and yet the government want to cut it. Maybe they think pensioners will not notice they are losing the energy supplement and just feel grateful that they are getting this one-off energy assistance payment. I do not believe pensioners in my electorate of Paterson believe that, and they will not be fooled. Yes, they will happily take the one-off energy assistance payment to compensate for the rising cost of energy—which, again, is this government's fault. Clearly, there is no definite energy policy to guide investment certainty, and we have seen the fallout of that again and again. Pensioners are well aware that they are likely to lose the energy supplement and they are really hopping mad about that.

I had 250 pensioners at the Maitland Town Hall recently, and at the top of their list was the cost of living. They asked: 'How are we going to make ends meet? How are we expected to live?' They said, 'They keep eating away at our pensions.' Every single person who filled in a survey in the Maitland Town Hall for me that day ticked the cost of living as a concern for them.

And there's the rub: that word 'fair' has entered the government's vocabulary again, since the recent budget. Well, no-one is convinced that this government knows the meaning of the word 'fair', and no-one is convinced that this budget is fair, least of all pensioners and least of all pensioners in my electorate of Paterson. Let's be clear on this Energy Assistance Payment, because the pensioners in Paterson certainly are. This is a shallow, pathetic and not very convincing attempt to distract Australians from the fact that this government still wants to cut the energy supplement, and it does not have a cohesive energy policy—not for the manufacturers, not for consumers and not for our pensioners.

Australian pensioners particularly deserve better than this. Australian pensioners are doing it tough. They tell us all, every day. Australians who receive income support are doing it particularly tough. What kind of heartless government wants to give with one hand and take with the other? It really is quite insulting, and people know it is. They know that their standard of living has slipped. This once-off Energy Assistance Payment will be worth $75 to single pensioners—that is it. Yet the government wants to take $365 a year by removing the energy supplement to new pensioners. A once-off $75 is not the same as $365 every year to keep the lights on, to keep the heater on, to keep the hot water on.

Pensioners in my electorate of Paterson have already told me that they are holding off putting on the heater. They get out the knee rug, they put on an extra jumper, just trying to keep warm as the weather starts to cool, because they know it is going to take so much of the little pension that they have. What choice do they have? Sit there and be cold? What sort of country are we living in? Do we expect our pensioners to huddle in the cold instead of turning on the heater because they cannot afford to? I am disgusted. It should not be this hard for people. This is an outrageous affront to pensioners—our most vulnerable, often. This budget confirms that the government still wants to cut the energy supplement, and Labor will continue to oppose it. Our pensioners would expect nothing else, and good on them for the fight they have put up over it.

Moving to schedule 2 of this bill, the reinstatement of the pension concession cards: well, what a backstep this has been for the government. Once again, the efforts of Labor and the Australian pensioners have prevailed. It is a small victory, but we will take it, and I am sure Australian pensioners will happily take it. They have to take every little bit they can. Eligibility for the pension concession card is tied to eligibility for certain income support payments, such as the age pension and the disability support pension. When the changes to the pension assets test came in on 1 January this year, a number of pensioners who ceased to be eligible for their payment also lost their pension concession card. In fact, around 92,000 pensioners lost their pensioner card overnight on 1 January—happy new year! In Paterson, my electorate, 3,410 pensioners lost their concession card and were worse off as a result of these assets test changes. Nearly a third of them—1,040 pensioners—had their pensions cancelled entirely, leaving them an average of $191 worse off—here one day, gone the next; happy new year indeed.

This assets test change has really distressed pensioners in my electorate. Another 2,370 pensioners in Paterson had their pensions reduced, leaving them worse off by an average of $135 a fortnight. These are not insignificant numbers, equating to weekly income cuts of between $62.50 and $95.50 a week. Those who lost their pension concession card as a result of the assets test changes were issued with a Low Income Health Care Card. Those who were of pension age or older were issued with a Commonwealth Seniors Health Card. But these cards did not guarantee the same concessions; they are simply not as good.

When the government first announced these changes to the assets test the then Treasurer, Joe Hockey, promised that nobody—nobody—would lose their concession entitlements. That was the promise that was made. Well, surprise, surprise: the government did not keep that promise. The government did not negotiate with the states and territories to guarantee concessions to pensioners, to guarantee that pensioners and those who lost their pensions would not be worse off. So, of course, when the assets test changes came in on New Year's Day, many people—in fact, 92,000 Australians—were worse off.

As I mentioned, in my electorate of Paterson, 3,410 people—not a small number—were worse off. For example, without a pensioner concession card, people who had lost their pensions were not able to access vital government-funded hearing services. From state to state, different concessions were applied. It was a great big mess and a mess of the government's doing. It is only because of pressure from Labor and from pensioner groups, who have taken the fight up to this government, that the pensioner concession card has been reinstated. It is a big backdown from the government. You can be sure it is not because they are worried about pensioners and worried that it might not be fair; it is only because there was such a backlash and they knew they had no choice but to back down.

Pensioner concession cards will automatically be reissued from 9 October—and not a moment too soon. Thank goodness for that and thank goodness for the efforts of Australian pensioners and Labor. This is a victory—some would say a minor one, considering the government's campaign against our most vulnerable, but it is a victory all the same. The loss of the pensioner concession card was a cruel double blow to many people who had lost their pensions and were on very modest incomes. Certainly many pensioners in my electorate of Paterson felt the pinch. It just goes to show where the government's priorities are. They are not particularly concerned about our most vulnerable. They do not care about those on income support. They do not even really care about middle-income Australians.

Earlier I heard a member say earlier that someone has to do well and that companies have to make a lot of money so that other people can make money. It is not that we do not want people to do well; we would just like it shared more fairly. We do not believe in looking after the big end of town at the cost of our most vulnerable, because that is not the way successful societies work. In everything we do, in everything we think of, we think of fairness. In everything the government do, the message that they propose is that, if we look after the big end of town, somehow miraculously everyone will do well. We propose that if we look after everyone a little better, then our whole country does much better. It is only when the government get caught out and get dragged to the table that they will negotiate for a better deal for pensioners, tossing some crumbs to those people who are seeing their modest standard of living being further eroded.

This government's attack on pensioners is not new; it is not even particularly subtle, but it is sustained—it is a bit like a broken record. In 2014 the Liberals tried to cut pension indexation, leaving pensioners poorer to the tune of $80 a week over 10 years. The Liberals tried to reset the deeming rate thresholds and changes, which would have hit hard half a million Australians. The Liberals shifted the goalposts of the assets test so that hundreds of thousands of pensioners who had carefully planned for retirement were caught out. Almost 100,000 retirees lost their pensions—this was just in 2014—and many more had their payments reduced. If pensioners do manage to scrimp and save enough for an overseas trip to see their family, for example, if the government had its way their pension would be cut after only six weeks away. If you are a pensioner who was born in another country, it would be even worse.

The government say these cuts are gone for good, but we know that they cannot be trusted. The only reason these cuts are not in the budget is that the government know they will not pass the Senate. It is not because the government have suddenly realised the cuts are not fair. The Prime Minister has said so, the Treasurer has said so, the Minister for Finance has said so and the Minister for Social Services has said so. These budget cuts are not gone; they are just lying in wait. The government are waiting for the chance to resurrect them—there is no doubt about that. They have form. In 2013 the member for Warringah promised no changes to the pension. So much for that promise. The Prime Minister is holding to the member for Warringah's plan to increase the pension age to 70. Australians would have to work longer than anyone else in the world before they were eligible for a pension. The Lucky Country? Hardly. Tell that to miners, farmers, manufacturers, nurses, people working in aluminium smelters on potlines and the tradies in my electorate of Paterson.

Now we hear that this government is turning its robo-debt monster on pensioners as well. It wants to claw back $1 billion. What is this government thinking? Australians know that this government has no concept of what it is really like to work at all your life, pay your taxes, do what is asked of you and then be tossed a few crumbs and be told, 'Be grateful; feel lucky. Feel that this government cares about pensioners.' They know that there is something amiss. Then they are hounded by a robo-debt monster!

Labor will support this bill to provide a one-off energy payment to pensioners and to reinstate the pensioner concession card. But we are not fooled, and Australian pensioners are not fooled either. They know that this government does not really understand what our pensioners need. This government uses the word 'fair', but it does not have the will, and I believe it does not really have the wherewithal, to legislate effectively for fairness.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The number of people on welfare in Australia is such that, to quote Minister Porter, welfare will go from 25 per cent to 50 per cent of the budget over the next 10 years. It is all very well for our friends from the ALP on the left-hand side of the House to say, 'Horrific—we can't cut back on pensions.' That is something that I would agree with them on. But it would be nice if they pointed out where we are going to get the extra money from. Is there some sort of tree that money grows on that we can grab this money from? Not only are they shrinking the budget, but the government is quite rightly pointing out that they have contributed greatly to the cost of electricity in this country. That has risen from $700 12 years ago. Let us say $700 every decade, so it would have gone from $700 to nearly $3,000, say a rise of $2,000, so in the next 10 years they will be finding $5,000 for electricity.

This is really very simple. For 25 years in Queensland, and I suspect in Australia, we had a nice gentle growth in electricity charges. It was about three per cent for the 10 years before the marker point, which was deregulation and privatisation. Both sides of this parliament agree 100 per cent—every ALP government in Australia privatised the electricity industry and—I exaggerate slightly there—every LNP government Australia privatised and corporatised. All of them deregulated the industry completely and shifted ownership over to an arms-length corporation. So what we have now is a corporatised industry, no longer a government department charging the cost of electricity to the people. We now have a privatised entity, which some governments are milking and some owners of these corporations are using as a milking cow.

We knew exactly what was going to happen under privatisation and deregulation. The model is California. The central player in the Californian electricity industry was Enron. When it was privatised they kicked the charges up by some 600 to 700 per cent and did not deliver the electricity. Why? They do not have any responsibility to deliver electricity. They are just a person out there in the marketplace, saying, 'We sell electricity. We do not have to deliver a reliable service to the people. We do not have to do that.'

Exactly the same has happened in Australia. Quite frankly, what the Labor Party has said in this place about the government is 100 per cent true. They really have no solution to the current situation. But it could well be said that the government is 100 per cent right in attributing 30 per cent of the increase to the imposition of the environmental charges.

Let me go back. I speak with conviction, because when I handed over the electricity industry to the incoming Labor government in Queensland, we had the cheapest electricity charges in the world. That enabled us to get the aluminium industry going. We have one of the biggest aluminium industries in the world in Queensland and we got that because we had the cheapest electricity in the world. In sharp contrast to the so-called socialists in this place—I am beginning to think that the one thing that I do agree with Mr Keating on is that I am the last socialist left in this parliament! He always said that the member for Kennedy was the last socialist. Having spent most of my life using that as a term of abuse, I was rather fascinated. But if you define that as whether the people own the assets then surely the Country Party government of Queensland must have been one of the most socialist governments on the planet. We owned all the railways and all the electricity. If you said to Bjelke-Petersen, 'We should sell the electricity industry,' I think he would have had you certified and thrown into a lunatic asylum. And it would have been quite ridiculous for anyone to make that suggestion in the years that we were in office.

So what was the result for the people? The people enjoyed the cheapest electricity charges in the world, and that was true for 25 years. What happened at the end of that 25 years? A thing called the National Competition Policy was introduced. Electricity charges went from $600 a year for a household to $700 over a period of about 12 years. Let us say they went up $100, from $600 to $700, in 10 years. At this point, we introduced deregulation and privatisation and, in nine years, they went from $700 to $2,400. When the government says it is the fault of the environment, it sure would be nice if they did some homework and did not come into this place and be deceitful, because it is an entirely deceitful thing to say that electricity charges went up as a result of the environment. Yes, they did, and I think the ALP can take most of the blame for that—not all of it, but most of it—and I think that is valid. But that is 30 per cent! It is not 300 per cent. The 300 per cent is attributable to privatisation. And what did you expect?

As I have said 100 times in this place, the real problem is that your mummies and daddies never had you playing Monopoly. If you had played Monopoly, you would know that when you own half the utilities you can charge four times more than if you only own one utility and, if you own all of the utilities, you can charge seven times more. So the real problem is that your mummies and daddies did not have you playing Monopoly. I did and I know that, when you privatise it, it ends up with Origin and AGL virtually owning, or at least controlling, the electricity industry of Australia. And what are they there for? Do you think they are there to be Santa Claus? Did you think Woolworths and Coles were there to be Santa Claus when you deregulated the dairy industry? How illogical and irresponsible is this parliament. When I say this parliament, I mean the parliament that I have been in for 25 years. Just how irresponsible are they? If you had said to the Queensland government that we were going to privatise it, we would have said: 'No. Eventually there will be a monopoly and they will be able to charge whatever they like.'

I am not going to go into the details of the DoRCR—a dork is an idiot, an imbecile. We call people dorks. Well, it is a very appropriate name for this. Depreciation on Real Cost Replacement—that is what DoRCR stands for. It is simply advice by which they jacked up the price from $700 a year to $2,400 a year. The graph in Queensland—I have not seen every state—and the graph in Victoria are almost identical and the graph in South Australia is almost identical. You just hit that point where you privatised and you corporatised, if you like, and deregulated—it went straight through the roof. And, for anyone who follows international affairs, even a little tiny bit like I do, that was exactly what happened in California. Read the federal government reports, the congressional reports in the United States. We just followed that model.

Look at a pensioner couple. They might be on $30,000 a year maybe. By the time they pay their housing—and one way or another the cost of housing even if you own your own house and have paid it off—the cost of maintenance, to be able to live in a house—in the climate in which I live, we need air conditioning; in the climate down south you need heating. So I do not think—no matter how you cut the cake—that you are going to come out of housing much under $15,000.

We live in a society that requires a motor car. Public transport even in our big cities is not very good. If you well on in years, you cannot walk down to the railway stop or the tram stop in any event. So a car is really an essential item in our society. So put down $6,000 for the car and $15,000 for the housing; that is $21,000. Now, if we toss in electricity rates and insurance, we have got another $10,000. That only leaves $10,000 for food, toiletries, clothing and a little bit of other things, like travelling to see your grandkids or something of that nature. If you can provide food and toiletries for two people for $10,000 a year, I wish you well. So I simply do not understand how our pensioners are surviving.

We have the people in the opposition saying: 'Oh, how dreadful that you are taking pensions away!' And we have the people on that side of the House saying: 'Your irresponsibility has resulted in a huge increase in charges for our poor pensioners!' Well, of course both of them, I am afraid, are deceiving the public. It was not the environmental charges that put the electricity up. Yes, it did by 30 per cent; it did not put it up 300 per cent as has occurred—from $700 to $2,400 for the average household, the last time I looked.

I come to this place and I say: for heaven's sake, if you want more money for pensioners, then go out and build a railway line into the Galilee, where we will produce $30 billion or $40 billion a year of revenue for the country of Australia, from nothing, and we will give you back $15 billion of that in taxation. Go out there and build a Hells Gate dam and the Herbert River dam, on the Herbert River just north of Hells Gate. Every place has probably heard of Hells Gate. It is the only serious water development scheme that is on the drawing board for Australia, except of course for the Ord, which we gave to the Chinese. I do not see how Australia is going to get very much out of that new project; they can bring their own people in to man that project; that is part of the free trade agreement we have with China.

If you simply decide that, instead of sending $25 billion a year to the Middle East to buy oil, you will send it into rural Australia to buy ethanol, you can hand yourself another $7 billion a year to give to pensioners. If you got off the back of the prawn farmers and had exactly the same rules as the rest of the world has that would give you another $10 billion! You could build a little tiny canal and extended waterway up in my homeland, from northern Mount Isa up to Burketown so we could get our phosphate and fertiliser out cheaply and that would give you another $10 billion!

I speak with authority, because that is exactly what we did in Queensland. We built railway lines to open up the mining. We built the infrastructure that permitted people to make the money to pay the pensioners the money that they should be getting, which in my opinion should be at least another $10,000 a year. (Time expired)

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I might not have quite the energy that the previous speaker brought to this, but I am very pleased to be supporting the amendment to the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Pavement and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017.

Charles Dickens wrote a recipe for happiness, as explained by Mr Micawber from David Copperfield. He wrote:

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.

That is the way that Terry Preeo, a pensioner from Blackheath described his experience of facing the government's cuts to his pension as a result of the changes to the pensions assets test.

Terry came to see me at a mobile office in Blackheath one sunny Saturday morning. He had attended my community forum in Springwood a few weeks earlier, where around 40 pensioners had explained the impacts to them of the pension cut they were facing. He had thought he would be okay. But, in fact, as it turned out he says that the effect of the cut to his pension on his life was much more profound than he had imagined. And that is when the David Copperfield quote sprang to his mind.

It is not easy being on some form of income support, on the lowest income level. It is not easy admitting that the work you did for probably 40-plus years did not allow you to provide comfortably for retirement, let alone then having a fragile financial structure crumble thanks to an unexpected government change from a government which had said 'no changes to pensions'. In supporting the amendment to this bill I want to talk about the attempts this government has made to deny pensioners and part-pensioners a dignified retirement and show why this government cannot be trusted to treat people fairly.

Let's talk first about schedule 1, which is a one-off payment for energy assistance to people on veterans payments, single parenting payment, disability support pension and the aged pension. The payment is $75 for singles and $62.50 each for each member of a couple. There is no doubt that this payment is needed and will help a little when people go to pay their power bill. But it is a one-off payment at the same time as the Prime Minister is taking $365 each and every year from single pensioners by removing the energy supplement for new pensioners.

I know that those opposite are not necessarily great at maths, but $75 does not come anywhere close to $365; it is $75 once versus $365 annually. The 2017 budget confirms that those opposite still want to cut the energy supplement. The Prime Minister can say what he likes about fairness, but he does not have a clue. If he really cared about how pensioners made ends meet he would not be trying to abolish the energy supplement. This energy assistance payment does not go far enough.

Now to pensioner concession cards. I have to say that the government's changes to the pension assets test on 1 July were difficult for many retirees in my electorate of Macquarie. In Macquarie there were 1,720 who each lost an average of $140 a fortnight, and 730 others lost their pension entirely. So in total 2,450 people faced a cut and had to find a different way to live.

When those changes were first announced, then Treasurer Hockey promised that those who lost their pension as a result of the change to the assets test would be able to keep their pensioner concession card. He said that anyone who currently had a pensioner concession card would continue to receive a concession card that provided the same benefits. That was his promise in his budget announcement. In fact, he was wrong—about a lot of things, but, particularly, about that. Instead, former prisoners were issued with healthcare cards and Commonwealth seniors health cards which did not provide the same benefits. For instance, without a pensioner concession card people who had formerly been pensioners were not able to access things like Australian Hearing services. And, of course, in different states different concessions were applied. As one pensioner from Springwood wrote to me, 'Concession cards are extremely valuable, giving discounts on utilities, council rates, rego and disability parking permits, just to name a few.' But pensioners lost access to that concession card—90,000 of them, all up, and it really rubbed salt into the wound for those who had also lost a significant part of their income so unexpectedly. It is hard to know whether this was deliberate on the part of the government or simply laziness by a shocker of a Treasurer. It seems the government did not even talk to the states and territories about maintaining the concessions. Either then Treasurer Hockey did not understand the detail and the difference between the two cards, or he just forgot to include the maintenance of eligibility for those concessions. Either way, it shows how much those opposite care. The loss of the pensioner concession card was a cruel double blow to many former pensioners with modest incomes.

At my forum in Springwood, people talked to me about the practicalities of losing income but also of losing concessions. Pensioners in the mountains, including Fay, were even asked to pay extra on their rates that they had paid in advance, because their status had changed. I want to thank all the pensioners and former pensioners who have spoken to me about these issues. They are deeply personal financial issues, and it is not something that people are always comfortable discussing, but, thank goodness, they did—because it is thanks to us being able to tell their stories and to the people who were willing to speak out on their own behalf that this government has been forced to see the heartlessness of those actions. It rarely does that, so, to those who spoke out: you did well.

This latest decision by the government is obviously an attempt to soften the blow of the pension shake-up— which, by the way, reduces the payments to pensioners by $2.4 billion over 2½ years—by reinstating these concession cards. The cost of reinstating them is just a smidgen of that—$3 million. It is not a lot of money, but pensioners will be grateful. It is thanks to their efforts that this has occurred, not the government's. While it helps a little, and while the one-off energy supplement helps a little, it does not undo the fact that there are many couples and individuals in my electorate whose retirement is much more difficult than they thought it might be.

When that assets test changed, the same one that led to part pensioners becoming non-pensioners and losing access to concession cards, it really undermined people's confidence in their own ability to manage their finances. I think what was really telling, for me, was the way people who had previously been entitled to a pension or part pension often insisted to me that they felt they were probably better off than many others, especially if they owned their own home. Retired people know who they can suggest goes out to dinner with them at a local restaurant, and who simply cannot afford the extra $25 or $30. They know who can afford to meet them in a cafe for a cuppa, and they know who they should suggest they have a cup of tea at home with. They have a sense about how they are faring, and they all know that the big fear of a huge electricity bill, an expected mechanical problem or a health issue would throw a spanner in the works for most older people. So they would say to me, 'We know there are people doing it tougher than us, but these changes are going to make it really hard to us, too.' It might have been a cut of $220 a fortnight or $180 a fortnight. That might not be a lot to those opposite, but it is a big chunk for someone living on a lower income.

People have shared with me the sacrifices they have been forced to make as a result of unexpectedly having less money each week to live on. The biggest area they have looked at—in places like the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury, where public transport between villages and suburbs is limited—is how they can reduce the costs of their car. Several people have explained the volunteer work they do often involves getting from their home to a local neighbourhood centre or a church or someone else's home. They have had to ask themselves, 'Is this what I cut?' One of my constituents from the Upper Mountains has asked herself many of those questions. She is in her 70s, a former teacher who retired in 2003 and opted for a state super pension. She thought that if she lived frugally and budgeted carefully she would be able to have a reasonable lifestyle and some degree of independence in her old age. She was also appointed legal guardian for one of her ex-students, who has special needs.

In 2007, she tells me, she satisfied the income and asset tests and qualified for a part-pension to supplement her super. The only income she had was her super, and her only assets were her home and a 12-year-old Magna. When she wrote to me in January this year she said that nothing has changed; the modest increase in her income, thanks to her part-pension, had allowed her to plan ahead and look to her needs and future living arrangements, to maintain private health cover and to continue her guardianship duties. She also was able to provide support for her Sydney and Brisbane and grandchildren in school holidays, which was an expense but one she was able to budget for.

But in January she went from a part-pension of $360 per fortnight to $140 per fortnight. That reduction was significant in her life and caused her to seriously consider the changes she needed to make. Would she continue her private health insurance? Would she continue her role as a legal guardian? Travelling to see him fortnightly and taking him on outings; attending regular planning meetings, which now included NDIS implementation; and being able to offer him time out at home when his carers were facing difficulties with his challenging behaviour were just part of the support that she had been able to offer. Should she tell her 88-year-old pensioner friend who lives some distance away in The Hills, for whom she has enduring guardianship, that travelling there each week and then visiting her 92-year-old husband in an aged-care facility in a different area was becoming financially difficult? These are the sorts of heartbreaking questions that somebody in her 70s is asking herself. She also wondered whether she could continue to support her family in Sydney and Brisbane with the care of her grandchildren in school holidays as the cost of travel was becoming a burden.

In her letter, she laughed at one suggestion. She said: 'Christian Porter condescendingly suggests that I rearrange my share portfolio to make up for my income loss! Well, I do not have a share portfolio and my assets and income have not changed since I passed that test in 2007. It seems that pensioners like me have been conveniently lumped in with the wealthy half-liers who can indeed afford to make adjustments to their income and assets'—and she goes on to say other things that are probably not parliamentary!

This is what the government has done. The Liberals really must think Australia has a short memory. It was only three years ago that they tried to cut pension indexation and leave pensioners $80 a week poorer over a decade. They have attempted to penalise retirees who take an overseas trip for more than six weeks by cutting their payments, with even harsher penalties for migrant pensioners. Supposedly, these cuts are gone for good, but I find that hard to swallow. The one they will not let go of is the plan to increase the pension age to 70, making retirement age in Australia higher than anywhere else in the world. And even if they cannot push these changes through, they want to make them at the same time as they are happy to throw around $55 billion of tax cuts to big business. It makes you wonder.

One thing I want to add is that, throughout all this concession card and assets tests business, the feedback I had from pensioners was that they wanted to pay tribute to all the staff at Centrelink. One pensioner wrote: 'I have nothing but praise for the Centrelink staff, who, under difficult circumstances, always did their best to help. I was under the distinct impression that they themselves were finding this process very difficult and were learning as they went along. However, they always assisted with good humour, courteousness and, I dare say, in many cases quite a degree of sympathy.' And I think we owe those Centrelink staff, who are under increasing pressure through a whole lot of moves by this government, a debt of gratitude for the work they do day in, day out.

But as always with this government, even when they are trying to make things slightly better, their legislation reminds us that they really do not understand what life is like for many people. Terry Preo, from Blackheath, uses Charles Dickens to make his point: 'The difference between happiness and misery may only be a few dollars.' Sadly, pensioners made worse off by this government but living in hope and expectation of better fortune will wait a long time for relief from the Turnbull government. The government do not realise that people do not have options to play with their income and that their choices are limited, and that people rely on knowing what the rules will be without them being changed mid-game. It might not mean much to the Prime Minister, but it is impossible to start playing a game of football—and in the spirit of State of Origin tomorrow night, let's call it League—and then halfway through find that the game has become rugby! He might not understand the difference, but that just proves how out of touch he is with the rest of Australia.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight as the member for Lalor very pleased to join the debate on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017, with an opportunity to talk about the pensioners in the electorate of Lalor. I would assert that like most pensioners across Australia, these people have worked hard all of their lives and have made their significant contribution to our country. Many have raised families, many have gone without to ensure that their children had a better start in life than they did. Many have worked long and tireless hours. It is my opinion—and I know it is the opinion of those on this side of the House—that our pensioners deserve the deepest respect. They also deserve to have a dignified retirement.

I rise tonight to mention how, critically, the hallmark of this government since it came into power in this country, and the thing that has been the most insulting they have done, has been to put aged pensioners into their bucket of what they describe as welfare recipients. In my view, and in the view of those on this side of the chamber, the aged pension is not welfare. It is a hard-earned entitlement in this country. Pensioners across this country deserve our respect. That is why this legislation is so disappointing.

We all remember the 2013 promise by the then Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, saying there would be no cuts to pensions. And we know what followed that. Time and time again, this government has attacked pensioners and has tried to claw back funds to fund its largesse to the big end of town through the pockets of our pensioners. Tonight's legislation is about this government cleaning up a mess that it created itself by making a promise—former Treasurer Joe Hockey made a promise—that pensioners would not lose the pensioner concession card. Then, of course, what we found was that they actually did. Either he was too lazy or, as usual, the legislative agenda of those opposite was a complete mess, and his promise fell off the workings of the legislation that they brought into this House. We are here cleaning that mess up tonight. How long has that taken? That is the question that the pensioners in Lalor are asking. They are asking me, they are asking members opposite. How long has it taken for you to clean up this mess after you ripped away their rights to the pensioner concession card without negotiations with the states and the territories, and without even really understanding what that meant in their lives on the ground. It meant that they would not get the concessions that they had been getting in different states for different things at different values, which make the complexity of it difficult to go into the detail of. But you can bet your bottom dollar that every pensioner knows exactly what they missed out on when they lost their pensioner concession card. They know to the letter, they know to the cent and to the dollar what that cost them. Of course, they live frugally. So we are here to clean up that mess.

Also, with this piece of legislation, we are being asked to embrace a one-off energy assistant payment of $75 for a single pensioner. It is a once-in-a-lifetime offer, while, at the same time, we know that this government wants to cut the energy supplement of $365 every year for every pensioner. For the last four years, I have sat here and listened to those opposite rail about the increase in electricity prices. Their hypocrisy stands exposed before us tonight because we know their intention is to cut that energy supplement of $365 a year to pensioners. They know the cost of electricity, but they want to take away pensioners' assistance to meet those costs and pay those bills.

We will support these changes, because the measures in this bill will help to relieve some of the pressure that this government has placed on elderly Australians, but it does not mean that we do not see through this government. It does not mean that we will drop our guard and believe that they suddenly believe in a fair society. It is clear that this government does not understand fairness. There is no lens through which you can see that more clearly than being here tonight and listening to this debate. We know that because, although they were here a few weeks ago crawling backwards out of the chamber as they repealed their zombie cuts, they left two. For a thousand days they argued for those, many of which were attacks on pensioners. For a thousand days they walked into this chamber and argued for these measures, and then they had to take them back. And when they did, they did not take them back because they had changed their minds. They told us themselves that they removed those measures from the legislative agenda because they could not get them through the Senate, not because they had changed what they believe, not because they suddenly saw the light and saw that pensioners needed more support. No—they did it because they could not get it through the Senate. But they have left two, and the worst of those two is the notion that people will not be eligible for the age pension until they are 70.

In the electorate of Lalor the median weekly rent is $280. We only have to say that, in one of the most affordable communities in Victoria, to know that that means a single aged pensioner renting is paying 60 per cent of their pension on accommodation. You only need to look at that one statistic to understand what this means in terms of their level of being able to access things in our community. Time and time again this government has brought into this House measures that would be real cuts to pensioners.

I am reminded that it was a Labor government that last gave pensioners a pay rise. It was a Labor government who saw the need and did those things, and it is a Liberal-National government that is intent on putting their hand into pensioners' pockets to take things from them. In 2014 the Liberals tried to cut the pension indexation and leave pensioners $80 a week poorer over 10 years. That should not be a surprise, when we know that they also support a $77 a week pay cut to people who will lose that through penalty rate cuts. We remember when the Liberals tried to reset the deeming rate thresholds, changes that would have negatively impacted half a million part pensioners. Who could forget when the assets test changed and the goalposts were shifted for hundreds of thousands of pensioners who had carefully planned for retirement. Almost 100,000 retirees lost their pension and many more had their payments reduced.

This government comes in here tonight and asks us to support them to clean up their mess. On this side of the chamber we will do that, but we will not be foxed. We know what is coming. We know that they will bring back the clean energy supplement to have it cut and taken away from pensioners. When electricity bills are rising, the irony is almost too much. We know that as a government they are set on reducing the cost of providing for pensioners across this country, pensioners who deserve our respect, who deserve a dignified retirement, who deserve not to be scrimping week to week in fear that there will be changes come through this parliament that will once again reduce their capacity to live at any level of acceptability.

It is almost unbelievable that this government is persisting with the second of those zombie measures—raising the age pension age to 70. It is unbelievable, until you cast your mind back to this week in question time, when Minister Porter stood at that dispatch box and talked about unemployed people over 55 and the fact that he felt that they were not looking for work hard enough.

In my community, I have met lots of people who have lost their jobs post 50. I see the pressure on them and the stress on them. Many of them are suffering from mental health issues, as a result of the loss of self-esteem and the loss of security from the loss of their job.

This government persists in wanting to punish those who need our help the most. Tonight, it is pensioners. And it is the government trying to clean up their own mess. It is a shame, and this government should hang its head in shame.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will not take the House's time for long tonight to talk about this bill, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017. I am very pleased to support this bill.

I do note, though, that Australia is facing a surging energy crisis. South Australia is on the crest of that wave. As you know, Deputy Speaker Coulton, we have had numerous blackouts in South Australia. We have had load-shedding, which means planned blackouts. We have the highest electricity prices in Australia, and we have the highest spot-price volatility in the National Electricity Market.

However, the rest of the country is not far behind South Australia, and the challenge of rising electricity costs is affecting households and businesses across our country. The energy markets are failing to deliver. If Australia is to remain internationally competitive, we need to make energy affordability a top priority in our country. Without energy affordability, our economy will grind to a halt and we will continue to impoverish our families and our households through rising energy costs.

I am particularly concerned about households who are on low and fixed incomes, and those for whom full-time or even part-time work is not a realistic option. These are people who are receiving the age pension, disability support pension, parenting payment single and various veterans' payments.

Whilst the Nick Xenophon Team continues to negotiate with the government to enhance longer-term energy security for both households and businesses, support is needed for our most impoverished Australians. They need this relief, and it is necessary right now. Future promises will not keep the heater on during the coming winter. So it is for this reason that the Nick Xenophon Team champions the payments contained in this bill, alongside our negotiations on a range of other energy policy measures that will help to put downward pressure on energy prices.

An estimated 3.8 million Australians will obtain relief for their energy bills with a one-off payment of $75 for singles and $125 for pensioner couples. Age pensioners, disability support pensioners, recipients of the parenting payment single and recipients of veterans' payments will all benefit from this.

On the surface, this may seem like an insignificant amount. However, I want to tell you one of the many stories I have heard from members of my community of Mayo. One elderly lady told me of her rising energy bills and that what that had meant to her last winter was that she could not afford to live beyond one room of her home until the middle of spring; during the coldest days, she would shut off that room and barely leave it, just to keep the heat on. Many elderly members of our community have spoken to me about how they stay in bed for most of the day because it is cheaper to put on the electric blanket than to run the heater, or of how they go to bed at 5 pm so that they do not have to turn on the heater in their living room. So I know firsthand that these payments will be put to good use by those in need. They are Australians who are incredibly vulnerable because of their age and have no capacity to increase their income or find employment.

We must remember, though, that it is imperative for the government to fix this. This is, for one year, one one-off payment. This is not a sustainable situation.

I am also pleased, though, that the government has decided to reinstate the pensioner concession card for those who are affected by changes in the age pension test that came into effect on 1 January this year. This will be of great benefit to retired Australians because it will provide them with access to state and council based concessions such as reduced council rates and reduced car registrations that will require the possession of a pensioner card, and this will also encourage many doctors who had stopped bulk-billing these retired Australians to resume bulk-billing them again.

So I am pleased with these measures. However, it is important for the government to look at the cost of living to make it easier for pensioners and our older Australians. They deserve that much from us.