Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

We are in March; the budget is not due until May. The previous government’s practice, if we are applying the same standards, would be to shut up and say nothing until budget night in May. The Treasurer stood up in the past and said, ‘Here is the one-off announcement.’ What we are doing in March is standing up and providing this guarantee to carers and pensioners now. That represents a significant departure from previous practice. Of course, on top of that there are a range of other measures which we have embraced as well. They go to what we can do for utilities payments for carers and pensioners. We are committed to a $4.1 billion program that will benefit over three million Australians. This will go to 2.6 million aged income support recipients, 277,000 Commonwealth seniors health card holders, 700,000 disability support pensioners and 160,000 carer payment recipients. To over three million Australians there will be a $4.1 billion payment and in each case there will be a quarterly payment of $125 in a utilities allowance. This is of real and measurable benefit not just to pensioners but also to those who are providing services as carers and are recipients of the carer payments.

What we have, therefore, is not only a guarantee when it comes to these bonuses but also a guarantee from us when it comes to these utilities allowances: four by $125 in allowances. The reason we have done that is that the bills for electricity and rates and the rest come in regularly for people. This is not just an annual payment and not a biannual payment, because a lot of these bills come in quarterly. The reason we designed these payments on a quarterly basis was to ensure that carers and pensioners and others would have access to these payments to assist them as the bills rolled in the door. In fact, we were attacked for doing it on a quarterly basis, I seem to recall, by the former Treasurer, the current member for Higgins, who did not think it was the right way to go. Unlike our predecessors, who treated this as a budget night one-off announcement, you have from us in March, two months before the budget, a clear-cut guarantee. Beyond that you have a clear-cut guarantee on the question of utilities allowance payments, which go to more than three million Australians. Both of those measures are radically in excess of any such undertakings on the part of those opposite in the lead-up to the last election. Of course, the question which arises is: why are we having this debate in the first place, when it goes to the other part of the censure motion on the question of the economy?

The reason we are having a very difficult budget process at the moment is that we have been left with a very difficult economic challenge. I know that those opposite find it very difficult to confront some facts but I think it is important that they actually go one by one through the facts that present themselves to the nation right now in terms of the economy we have been left with.

Mr Hockey interjecting—

There is a suggestion by the Manager of Opposition Business that it is not relevant to the censure motion. The censure motion deals with the government’s management of the economy. I would suggest that the Manager of Opposition Business actually read the censure motion before he interjects to say that these remarks are somehow not relevant to the censure. They are. They are directly relevant to the censure. I read the censure motion when it was handed to me. Why are we having a difficult debate about budget priorities and about expenditure? We have inherited a very difficult set of economic circumstances from our predecessors and from the circumstances which now arise from the international economy. Fact No. 1: when our government was elected inflation was running at a 16-year high. It is now projected by the RBA to remain high until 2010. Is that incorrect?

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