Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

How interesting it is to see Senator Abetz so earnestly try to rewrite history. We know the coalition have taken an ill-informed, quite appalling step in exploiting the concerns of pensioners by putting forward a bill that was ill thought out policy on the run. What we know about the coalition’s stunt this week is that over 1.1 million pensioners who are couples, over 700 disability support pensioners and over 100,000 carers payment recipients were completely ignored by the coalition. In fact, the opposition, as Senator Abetz kindly reminded us, did nothing over the 12 long years of their government, with cabinet even voting against a proposal, as we now know, from the former minister Mr Brough to increase the base rate of the age pension. I know I heard Senator Abetz say in this place that they knew something had to give with pensions, and yet they did not do anything until they found themselves in opposition, where they have cooked up a slipshod media stunt to try and get on the front foot with the growing consternation amongst pensioners about their needs.

What we know about the coalition’s bill is that it ignores over two million pensioners. It is not indexed. Remember, we just heard Senator Abetz say how much focus the coalition put on indexation, and yet this feature is lacking from the bill they brought forward to this place this week. What is going on? To me, that says ‘stunt’ all over.

A quick and dirty rewrite of history is not going to save the coalition’s face in their handling of this issue. We know that they are embarrassed by their own performance this week. They tried to allude in a snide way to the plight of pensioners in the first question time of this week with some surreptitious supplementary questions—not even having the political fortitude to ask these questions upfront. It was only when we as government senators drew that to their attention that they thought they had better put the issue on the front foot when the opportunity arose in this chamber during the latter part of the week, such as today.

When we debated the bill, I might remind senators and those listening, they could only stump up with one speaker. Such is the poor form of the coalition.