Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's been with a degree of wonder that I've been watching the coalition discover their care for the financial wellbeing of older Australians, and then I suddenly realised: when you look at five years of their track record, they've never cared! Look at what they've done to pensions. In their first year, 2014, they cut the pension indexation. Then they cut a billion dollars from pensioner concessions. Then they axed the $900 seniors supplement. And then they tried to reset deeming-rate thresholds. That was the first year. In 2015, they did a deal with the Greens to cut the pension to around 370,000 pensioners, and then they tried to cut the pension to around another 200,000 pensioners as part of a plan to limit overseas travel. Then they spent the bulk of their time trying to cut the energy supplement to pensioners, which would have left over half a million Australians worse off, and they've spent years trying to get us to have a retirement age of 70.

Let's be clear: under the coalition, if you're an older Australian with a pension, you're a target for a cut. But, if you're an older Australian with a bumper share portfolio, you're a target for party fundraising. As the member for Lalor says: they're about big share portfolios, big banks and the big end of town, but they never care for those people who don't have the means to look after themselves.