Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the senator for the question. It is pretty similar to questions that I have been asked in previous weeks when, on behalf of the government, I made clear our position that we have committed to reform of the pension system and that we would do that with a report which will come down by February of next year and feed into the broader taxation reform inquiry. As the Senate would know, a bipartisan Senate inquiry report recommended the review of the pension system. We have acted on that with the Harmer review, and its report—the final report—will be with us by no later than February next year.

We do understand that pensioners have been doing it tough. We therefore, in our first budget in May, made a significant down payment on providing extra financial support for pensioners. That budget contained $7.5 billion in additional payments for seniors, carers and the disabled. So we have made a significant financial commitment—an injection of payments to seniors, carers and the disabled. It may well be that the opposition have now discovered the plight of pensioners and are saying that it is not enough, but the bottom line is that they had 11 years—they had 11 budgets—to do something about this, and they did not. For them, having gone into opposition, to suddenly be all care and no responsibility is, I think, fairly cynical. The opposition may now wander around Australia saying, ‘We ought to subsidise petrol; we ought to increase pensions; we ought not to worry about having a decent sized surplus,’ and lose any credibility they once had for economic management. But we know that we are in very difficult financial times. There is a great deal of uncertainty in the global economy. Pressure is being placed on the Australian economy like it is on all other economies. We are particularly well placed compared to many other economies, but we are under pressure. We do know that these events will impact upon us. That is why this government is providing strong leadership and prudent management to ensure the financial security of all Australians.

We made a range of announcements which seek to reassure Australians about the financial position of Australia. We argue that we are very well placed comparatively. We argue that our banks are strong. But we have also taken very large measures to try and provide confidence in the market and confidence in the Australian public with a guarantee on deposits, which is part of a range of measures we have taken. So we are taking what we regard as strong, prudent measures to protect all Australians, and that includes pensioners. Pensioners also benefit from having their savings protected under the measures we announced on the weekend.