Patrick Dodson (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Reconciliation) | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Overseas Welfare Recipients Integrity Program) Bill 2019. The Liberals still have cuts to the pension in the budget. They want to completely take away the pension supplement from pensioners who go overseas for more than six weeks. This will see around $120 million ripped from the pockets of pensioners. They still want to make pensioners born overseas wait longer as well before qualifying for the age pensioner by increasing the residency requirement from 10 years to 15 years.

Labor has fought these cuts tooth and nail, and this is the only reason that the Liberals and the Nationals have flip-flopped and given in. No-one spends five years, including three years as Treasurer, trying to cut the pension and increase the pension age to 70 unless they really believe it. This is why pensioners know they can't trust the Prime Minister. There is one simple fact: no matter who the leader of the Liberals is, cutting pensions is in the Liberals' DNA.

This week we saw again a glimpse of the Prime Minister's disdain for older Australians. On the weekend, we read reports that the number of over-55s who receive Newstart has increased by over 45 per cent under the Liberals and Nationals, a staggering 58,313 since the Liberals took office. One in four Australians on Newstart are aged over 55, the single largest cohort of recipients of the allowance. Older Australians experience particular difficulties in re-entering the workforce due to structural barriers and age discrimination. Older Australians who are desperately trying to re-enter the workforce are asking themselves, 'How is the cashless card or a drug test going to help me get a job?'

What are the Prime Minister's plans for jobs? What are this Prime Minister's plans for the economy? The reason why this Prime Minister is reheating old ideas is because he has run out of ideas. Rather than stimulating our stagnant economy and easing the situation for older Australians who have fallen on hard times, the Prime Minister is more interested in subjecting them to humiliating urine tests. How is it that the Prime Minister spends so much time obsessing and devising ways to humiliate and prod older Australians who are trying to re-enter the workforce and yet he has no plan for jobs and no plan to boost an economy that is getting weaker every day that he is Prime Minister?