Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

This bill is an important but uncontroversial one. It is uncontroversial largely because it is a slightly modified form of the previous government’s election commitment. Once again, it is an example of the Rudd government’s ‘me too’ policy strategy. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then the Howard government indeed has a great deal to be proud of.

This bill increases the utilities allowance for pensioners to $500 per year. It extends the utilities allowance to other beneficiaries of pensionable age and also to disability support pensioners and people of any age on carer payments. The bill also increases the telephone allowance for pensioners, carers and disability support pensioners with an internet connection and provides an increased seniors concession allowance to $500 per person. At the cost of around $4 billion over the forward estimates period, some three million people will benefit from the passage of this bill.

We support these measures as, in the main, they were our policies and the government should be supported in implementing them. But I make a few observations. This bill recognises that carers and pensioners deserve our support—certainly they had it during the 11½ years of the former government—and that they are amongst the most vulnerable in our country to cost of living increases and limited external resources. This made the recent attempt by the Rudd Labor government to axe the lump sum bonuses to carers and pensioners even more heartless. So it is reassuring that due to the pressure applied by the coalition Mr Rudd has agreed, indeed copied, the coalition policy and last night further committed to maintaining these lump sum bonuses.

Of course there are some questions still to be answered but, notwithstanding this, the contemplation of axing the bonuses exposed the dark heart that lies at the very centre of this government. For days the government applied all sorts of linguistic trickery to avoid giving a straight answer on the bonus payments. The spin doctors tried to confuse the issue, but the public will no longer accept weasel words instead of firm policy. For a government that was committed to symbolism, this government’s message of the last five days has been very clear: ‘Let’s see what we can get away with and hope that the pensioners and the carers simply won’t notice’.

But they did notice, and the message will not be lost on them. The message I can take, on behalf of the coalition, to carers and pensioners across our country is this: they know the levels of support we gave them during 11½ years; they know we will not tire or resile from our support for them as some of the most vulnerable in our community. We will not let this government get away with trickery and we will support measures that support carers and disabled pensioners—anyone in receipt of a pension—to live a full and meaningful life. The opposition supports this bill and we commend the government for its rapid action and acknowledge the fact that these things can only be enacted so speedily due to the strong economy, but that anything that affects our strong economy will reflect on the level of benefits that we can supply. That is a caution for the government not to destroy the Australian economy because of the effects it will have on our most vulnerable and marginal.