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

The measure which is being reviewed at the moment, comes out of the Senate inquiry which was backed as a course of action by those opposite, except when they ran into a problem with their own internal leadership politics last week and decided to change tack. That is what all that was about.

Secondly, in terms of the budget and providing assistance to pensioners now, again, I draw the attention of the honourable member for Warringah to what actually happened in the budget whereby we came up with not just a $500 annual bonus but on top of that an increase, from $107 a year to $500 a year, in the utilities allowance for pensioners, something which those opposite had never done in their 12 years in office. On top of that, we also increased the telephone allowance for pensioners. We put those three measures together. The member for Warringah’s question goes to providing assistance to pensioners now. What I am saying in response to that is that the measures contained in the budget add up to an additional payment for pensioners of something approaching $20 per week. That is what was put forward in the budget. That is nearly double that which was put forward by those opposite. That, therefore, provided us with a basis to continue with this particular course of action, which the Liberal Party and the National Party agreed to until they ran into leadership politics problems last week.

I conclude on this: again, for the benefit of those opposite, the reason that we on this side of the House are looking carefully at the total impact which this has on the budget and on all categories of pensioners is that every $10 a week increase in the pension results, across the system, in a further $2 billion per year to the budget bottom line right into the future. Therefore, it is important to get this reform right—a reform we have been working on in our first nine months in office that those opposite spent the previous 12 years not working on at all.

But on the 2.2 million carers, 2.2 million widows, 2.2 million veterans, 2.2 million sufferers of one disability or another, who are omitted from the proposal put forward by the Leader of the Opposition last week, I draw his attention to public statements, including one by People with Disability Australia, dated 11 September, entitled ‘Disability pension rise needed now’—

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