Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Social Security and Veterans’ Affairs Legislation Amendment (Enhanced Allowances) Bill 2008, which addresses the utilities allowance, the seniors concession allowance, the telephone allowance and a number of changes that the previous member mentioned in relation to the indexation processes. These measures will benefit a large number of people and are obviously intended to do so. In my electorate of New England, the issue of the age pension is one that is raised in my office and the public arena quite often. Only in recent days, the Northern Daily Leader, the major daily paper that comes out of Tamworth, ran a series of stories on old age pensioners and how they are struggling to make ends meet.

I have made the point before, and I would like to take the opportunity with this legislation to raise the issue once again, that a nation which in recent years has been able to establish massive surpluses in terms of budgetary processes should be able to give a bit more back, even more than this particular package, to those who are of the generation that created the circumstances out of which those surpluses are now being generated. If we reflect on that group of people, we realise that they are mostly people who were not involved in superannuation schemes as people younger than them would be. There is greater opportunity these days to have some participation in superannuation arrangements and hence do a bit more for one’s own retirement. But a lot of the people who are struggling now—and a lot of members have spoken about these people—are of a generation that did not have that opportunity. In some circumstances they did not have the expectations that younger people of today would have in terms of their spending power and the activities that they derive from the economy.

I would suggest to the government that, if there are going to be surplus budgets in future, our older people should benefit. Our older people—our pensioners and our veterans, and I know there are self-funded retirees as well—are the ones who created the circumstances for the economy to develop so that we could have surpluses in the budgetary processes. The veterans made many sacrifices to make sure that this land remained a free land and that we can have the democratic processes that we enjoy today. This bill encapsulates two groups who have made an enormous contribution to the society in which we live today. In my view, neither group is recognised to the extent that it should be. As I have said, if there are surpluses available, these are the first people that we should look to—not in some sort of vote-buying exercise but in an attempt to equalise the playing field so that, as members, we do not constantly hear of some of the hardships that pensioners are going through in their daily lives.

The other issue I would like to raise is directly in relation to veterans of the Second World War. We still have an absurd situation where veterans who gave up their time to serve Australia in the Second World War but do not have what is called ‘qualifying service’, which means having an angry shot fired at them in combat, still do not receive gold card health benefits. They are dying at the rate of 1,200 a month, and most of those people are well into their 80s. Particularly given the economic circumstances where there have been surpluses derived, I would have thought that, given their age, these people should be treated exactly the same as other World War II veterans, irrespective of whether they served overseas but did not have an angry shot fired at them. These people are not going to be with us forever, so it is not a projection of funding for 100 years once the gates have opened.

Many members in this House would have people in their electorates who gave up five years of their lives to serve their country, to be here to defend it while others went overseas. My father went overseas and he would have been a great lot of help if the Japanese had come to Werris Creek! He was in Egypt and it probably would have taken him a while to get home to defend my mother. The people who enlisted and stayed in Australia were available to go wherever they were sent by the government of the day. We are treating those two groups of people very differently. The people who went to Egypt qualified because they went to war. Those who stayed here just hung about. They did not do anything. But in terms of having the capacity and the training to defend the nation if called upon, if the Japanese had advanced through New Guinea and invaded Australia, they were the people who were going to defend our land, not other people’s lands. I call on Prime Minister Rudd to show some compassion for these people. It is time that we overcame this ridiculous notion of qualifying service.

A man in my electorate trained for five years. On a couple of occasions he was going to be sent overseas and then they retrained him to stay here. Then he went into the paratroopers just in case something went wrong. In five years he had a number of accidents out of aircraft and suffered injuries. Now he is in his 80s and is suffering the consequences of those injuries. When he goes into a surgery for a consultation or any medical assistance, he can be with another 85-year-old man who happened to go to Egypt and they will be treated differently by the system. I think that is a disgrace.

In my electorate a man called Ken Colton, who only died last year, had obviously been affected by this notion of qualifying service and felt he was regarded as a second-class soldier. It was not because he was not prepared to go overseas and fight but because the government of the day determined that his unit was to stay here. His unit was to go from Darwin back to wherever to defend the nation in case it was invaded.

I make that plea once again. It has fallen on deaf ears for about six years. As I said, those people are dying at a massive rate. I make the plea that we recognise those who are left and provide those veterans with that little bit of extra help in terms of access to the gold card.

The other issue that the legislation covers is disability. I take the opportunity, with a little bit of licence in relation to the bill, to raise this issue. I am glad the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services is here, because it is an issue that he may well have some regard for. It is the issue of young people with disabilities who are currently housed in nursing homes. It is an issue of quite inappropriate housing—not that I am being critical of nursing homes. There are something like 6,000 young people who are currently housed in nursing homes which are essentially built for old people. A lot of those young people have a lot of life in front of them and really need different resources provided to them. A number of groups in my electorate have been working on a regional model so that services can be delivered to those young people with disabilities.

A few years ago I travelled down to Hobart. I was in Tasmania on committee business, but I took the time to go to look at a model in Hobart called ADARDS. It was not an issue of young people in nursing homes; it was an issue of people with dementia. But the style and the model of the building and the way in which the services were delivered was something that we should all look at. It tailored the resources to the specific needs of the people. In that case they had dementia. In this case there are young people with disabilities that need to be housed in more appropriate circumstances than they are now. I look forward to working with the new parliamentary secretary on this particular issue and other issues in relation to people with disabilities. I have been a member of that voluntary committee within the parliament and have had a number of interests in that particular area. Deputy Speaker Burke, I do congratulate you on your appointment.

One of the things the legislation is trying to do is make it easier for pensioners. There is something that we should look very closely at. I know petrol and grocery pricing is the political flavour of the day, to go across the chamber to what the government are going to do. I wish them well in their attempts. There are going to be a number of difficulties in looking at grocery prices. There are things that the government can do, and that the former government could have done, in terms of petrol pricing. A long time ago I did economics at university. I remember very little of it, and I have never practised in terms of being an economist, so do not denigrate my statements. One thing I do remember is that if a country has a comparative advantage in a trade area it should actually take advantage of it. That applies in a number of areas. In the petroleum field it applies.

We have an absurd situation in this country. I know it was introduced for very good reasons, which were probably lies at the time, but the politicians of the day got away with it. I speak of the excise on fuel. If we really want to do something about fuel, we have the capacity to do something about it: we have a taxation regime. With the excise of 38c a litre plus the GST of 12c or 13c, you are looking at 51c a litre in tax. I know this new fellow that is going to fix up all the bowsers so we will all get cheaper fuel will do a tremendous job, but he will probably have an influence of about 2c. If you are living in the country, with the sales volumes that go through some of the bowsers at petrol stations and other places, that 2c will be more than subsumed in the margins of the operators.

If the government are serious about putting Australia in a position where business activity can have some degree of comparative advantage, let us start looking at the taxation system that we have developed in this nation. I hope I am not verballing the man, but I think Tim Fischer was one person who, when the GST arrangements were being discussed through the late nineties, actually wanted to do something about the inclusion of the excise regime on fuel. I think he was overruled because the mathematics, in terms of the percentage of the GST to recoup the required income, would have meant that the GST may well have been about 13 per cent on sales. The boffins of the day assumed that 10 per cent was as high as you could go without revolt from the people. It just shows how some of our taxation system is derived.

If the government are serious about looking at taxation—and I do not agree with the surplus that is being put back to the people; I think it will be inflationary and the government will pay a penalty for that; but they believe they are doing the right thing—and if they are serious about really taking the lid off taxation and the impacts that taxation has in terms of economic activity, they have to look at fuel taxation as one of those things that particularly impact on country people. It is not so bad in the city, where there is an option of public transport and other things, but in the country it is something that you just cannot get away from. As members of parliament we have our fuel provided by those hardworking taxpayers, so we do not necessarily feel it. But it is something that small business and other people are affected by.

I will now get back to the bill. The other day, the Northern Daily Leader reported a story about a pensioner who had moved to a smaller village because of the lower cost of housing, but they still needed a vehicle to access services because there was no public transport there. This happens a lot in country communities. Obviously, the cost of a vehicle and the cost of fuel have an impact on the way in which people can survive on a pension. Many would say, ‘If you are a pensioner and you can’t afford a car, you shouldn’t have one,’ but in some cases that means a pensioner cannot get to a doctor or to a service. Pensioners cannot afford to pay the price of rental accommodation even in a town like Tamworth, for instance, so they go to the smaller communities where that cost is cheaper.

There are a number of things that the government should do about the old age pension, but probably the most important one in my view is the indexation arrangement. This has been a farce for many years. It has not kept pace with the real cost of living for these people. I make the plea once again, which must be for about the 50th time. There is a new government. The old government was not prepared to have a serious look at this issue. It sort of dummied the pass to the veterans on many occasions—that might be a good election slogan; I must remember it! The veterans of the Second World War, whether they served overseas or stayed in this country to defend the nation from attack, are the very people who created the circumstances where we could have an age pension and a parliamentary system where issues such as this could be debated. It is time that we treated all these veterans the same in terms of their access to healthcare arrangements.

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