Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Hansard source

I will not speak at length but I want to make some comments about the Social Security and Veterans’ Affairs Legislation Amendment (One-off Payments and Other 2007 Budget Measures) Bill 2007. This legislation includes a range of measures that are directed at supporting some—and I underline the word ‘some’—of the most disadvantaged people in Australia. In this bill there is an allocation of $500 to seniors who were eligible for the utilities allowance and the senior concession allowance as at budget night. It also includes an allocation of $1,000 as a one-off payment to carer payment recipients, $600 to carer allowance recipients for every eligible care receiver that they provide care for and $1,000 to carer allowance recipients who also receive a wife pension or a DVA partner service pension.

Labor welcome the contribution of funds to these most deserving people. We welcome the one-off payment to seniors in recognition of the financial pressure that age pensioners are under. In the 12 months to March, food costs in Australia have risen 4.6 per cent; in that total, fruit has risen by 15 per cent. Those considerable cost increases impact on the daily lives of older Australians. Petrol, as we all know, has been rising inexorably, it would seem, over the last 12 months. We all know of older people who ration their travel directly because of the cost of fuel. Coming from a rural area of Australia where the cost of fuel is higher and there is a lack of public transport, I know that older people in those regions are under even more pressure in terms of their costs. We also know that the increasing cost of fuel affects volunteers in our society, particularly older people who volunteer for organisations such as Meals on Wheels and who want to continue visiting other older people who are in more need than they are. So in that respect we are very pleased to be supporting the allocation of $500 to seniors who meet the qualifications the government described.

We also welcome the one-off payments to carers, because they too are under financial stress. We know that people caring for a loved one are, on average, $5,600 a year worse off than people with no caring responsibilities. That is, as I said, an average figure; we know there are many people who are carers, especially those caring for people with disabilities, who have had to leave paid employment in order to fulfil that role. I also hope that the government takes some heed of the budget response from Carers Australia in which they expressed disappointment that the government had not recognised the recommendations they had made in their pre-budget submission.

There are also a range of measures in this legislation to support veterans. There is a compensation payment of $25,000 to former prisoners of war in Europe or their widows. There is an increase in the funeral benefit, from $1,000 to $2,000, and for the veterans disability pension there is an increase of $50 a fortnight in the special rate and $25 a fortnight in the intermediate rate. Again, Labor welcome these changes to the financial arrangements for veterans in Australia. But I have to say that some of those measures are a catch-up event, finally recognising some notions of equity for some of those veterans. Labor have been calling on the government to address the erosion of our most severely disabled war veterans pensions over the last 10 years. Because these pensions are only linked to increases in the cost of living, there has been a drop of over $70 a fortnight in the value of the special rate disability pension. As I am sure we all understand, that is a very substantial amount for people dependent on a pension.

In contrast to the government, a Rudd Labor government would make sure that our most severely disabled war veterans will have their pensions adjusted to take account of not just the cost of living but also the standard of living. A Rudd Labor government will make sure that these veterans will no longer have to depend on the government delivering the sorts of ad hoc catch-up payments that we are talking about today. If Labor are successful at the next election, future increases that account for increases both in the cost of living and in the standard of living will be automatic under our government. Indexation is the only long-term solution to maintain the true value of veterans pensions. With those brief comments, I reinforce that Labor are supporting these measures. We know that they will be very well received by those people who receive them. As I have underlined, these measures support some of the most disadvantaged in our community.