Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation and Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to support the parts of the motion which deal with the indexation of British pensions but also express my disappointment that the member for Kingston has chosen to make a party political point on something which any honest observer of this would know has been a bipartisan position—that governments of both colours, of both stripes, have long been pushing Her Majesty’s government for indexation of British pensions. You only have to look to how it was reported when Jocelyn Newman made the announcement that we would be terminating this agreement. It was reported like this on The 7.30 Report:

After demands by successive governments that Britain index pensions to its former citizens living in Australia, the UK’s practice with almost every other country in the world, Community Services Minister Jocelyn Newman today decided enough was enough and cancelled the agreement.

Those were the words of Maxine McKew, now the member for Bennelong, a Labor member. That is how she reported it. The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties also looked at this and they said:

There is no doubt that the continuing refusal of the UK government to meet its indexation obligations has resulted in an unfair burden being placed on Australian taxpayers. The UK government has acknowledged the inequity of its policy but, despite extensive lobbying by successive Australian governments, the UK government has shown no signs of being prepared to change its policy. The only options left available to the Australian government are to continue to accept the UK government’s burden or to terminate the agreement. In principle, termination is the better option.

The committee made a recommendation supporting the termination of the agreement. There was no minority report; there was no dissenting report. That was supported by all Labor members of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties in 1999, including Senator Joe Ludwig, the Minister for Human Services, and including former senator Chris Schacht as well, who I think would be familiar to some of the members in the chamber.

This is a serious issue. Of the British pensioners living overseas, there are about 330,000 who are indexed, in countries like the United States and many other European countries, but there are 608,000 whose pensions are not indexed. Most of those are in Commonwealth countries, 220,000 of them in Australia. As the member for Isaacs correctly said, there is at the moment the Carson case, which has been launched by a British pensioner from South Africa. This is awaiting a hearing before the European Court of Human Rights. At the moment the position of Her Majesty’s government is to await the findings of the Carson case.

In the time remaining I wanted to say that this is something that has had bipartisan support, and on a recent visit to the United Kingdom I took the opportunity to lobby a minister from the Department of Work and Pensions for indexation of the British pensions. This is not a Liberal position; it is not a Labor position. It is something we all agree on on behalf of our constituents.

Of this motion, paragraphs (2)(b), (2)(c) and (3) are elements that should be supported. Unfortunately, paragraphs (1) and (2)(a), I think, are incorrect and misguided. The problem was not the termination of the agreement; the problem was the agreement. It was an old-style host country social security agreement which does not provide for indexation of pensions. What we want is a newer agreement like the ones that we have negotiated with a whole range of countries, including most recently Greece, which does provide indexation of pensions.

In conclusion, this is an important issue, but I should also make the point that we have a whole range of Australian pensioners who are on $273 a week. The opposition have said that we want to see an increase in the base rate of the age pension and we want to see a look at the indexation that is used for Australian pensioners. We believe that the Rudd government should act in making a $500, one-off payment before Christmas.

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