Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Through you, Madam Acting Deputy President, I appreciate that that is what they have all been told to say. It sounds really good for the listeners at home who, if they are not pensioners, perhaps would not know what has happened in the course of the last 12 years. But the fact is that that line is simply not true; it is a myth.

This coalition was responsible for probably the most significant lift in the real value of pensions that we have seen since the pension system was introduced decades ago. For example, to mention only one of the initiatives that the coalition took in government, had we not indexed pensions by reference to MTAWE as well as the CPI, pensions today would not be around $273 per week for single pensioners; they would be just on $200 a week. That was the difference that our decision made. Are you telling me that that was not real action? Are you telling me that those pensioners did not benefit from an extra $73 per week? Of course they did. It made a real difference to those people—as did our decisions to change the income test withdrawal rate for pensioners earning money on top of their pension, to introduce a utilities allowance in 2005 and to modify the assets test taper rate in 2007 to allow people to have more assets and still receive a pension. All of those things made a real difference to pensioners. Were they enough? Clearly, in light of the present evidence about the pressures on older Australians, they were not.

I would ask members of this place to look outside the square in which they are operating at the moment and consider what people in this community who are doing it tough might think about the debate we are having today. Would they be impressed with our arguments about the constitutional validity of this motion or the potential for it to confuse the review of some other government program taking place in the bowels of the Treasury? No, I do not think they would be impressed by that at all; they would be impressed by action.

I invite the Labor Party to share the passion that they had last year for doing something about the pressures facing older Australians—the sort of people who are cutting corners in their standard of living, the sort of people who are entering into reverse mortgages to effectively borrow against the value of their homes in order to be able to take advantage of the capital in their homes to spend money on their standard of living today, the sort of people—