Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC) Share this | Hansard source

I'll miss you, too, Senator! But what I think I know is: we will be sticking up for those veterans, and we will be saying to them: 'We don't think you should have a reduction in your pension in the way in which Mr Hockey is proposing. Fair indexation was a fair system; it was a good system. We should continue with that.' So the veterans of Australia will have a choice at the next election: do they vote themselves a reduction in the increase, or do they stick with what I think is a fair system—the current one? Right across the community, Australians are talking about the co-payments, or the cuts to Newstart or whatever. And Australians reject them, just as they did——and you might remember this, Acting Deputy President Bernardi—Work Choices. Do you remember that concept? You are shaking your head. Well, let me tell you about it. It was a scheme that the former Prime Minister, Mr Howard, dreamed up to cut the wages of working Australians. He managed to do it because, for a very brief period of time, the government had a majority in its own right in the Senate. I do not think the Australian people will make that mistake again—certainly not with a Liberal government. Australians rejected that concept because they instinctively knew that it was not fair. What you are doing with this piece of legislation is making exactly the same mistake.

It is not fair for the rich to make a temporary contribution to fixing your so-called debt crisis but for pensioners and other groups in the community to make a permanent contribution. When people think about this over the next two years, in the lead-up to the next election, they are going to say: 'No, you're right—this isn't fair; we are not being treated fairly in this country, and we don't accept the changes that are being made.'

The other thing that I am being told at these meetings I am attending is: 'We're concerned that if the federal government is going to take away the fair indexation principles that the Labor Party introduced when it was in government then what does this mean for the Defence Force superannuation scheme?' You might recall that a very strong campaign was run by veterans' groups in the lead-up to the last election. What was their argument? They said: 'You've provided fair indexation for veterans' pensions, but the beneficiaries of the Defence Force superannuation scheme are stuck with the CPI.' They ran a very successful campaign, and the current minister said, 'That is a good argument; we're going to introduce that.' And, sure enough, they did. As the minister points out, we had opposed it in government. I took the argument to shadow cabinet and we supported it.

What are these veterans' groups now saying? They are saying this: 'You've just given us this fair indexation on our Defence Force superannuation. You've done it on the basis that the rest of the pension community is in receipt of this system. You've now taken that away from veterans' pensions and pensions for the rest of the community.' But it is not just veterans you are taking it away from. You are also taking it away from TPI recipients. It does not take much of a leap of logic to say, 'If you have taken it away from all of these other groups, and this was the basis upon which you gave it to the Defence Force recipients, then it's not going to be very long before you take it away from us.' I see the Minister for Defence, Minister Johnston, coming into the chamber. I think he may wish to explain to veterans why it is that this government has introduced a temporary levy on high-income earners but a permanent change to the rate of increase for pensioners. I think those questions need to be answered. We have not had a satisfactory answer to them. We are prepared to support this legislation, but we need some answers about why this budget is so unfair to and so inequitable for the Australian people.