Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

They are all saying over there that we should just get on with it. Well, you would have to ask: why didn’t they just get on with it a year ago? Almost exactly a year ago, this issue went to the Howard cabinet and it was thrown out by the Howard government. The Leader of the Opposition said no. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition said no. The Leader of the National Party said no. So much for it being urgent! They are not serious about this issue. All they want to do is to play politics with pensions—play low-rent politics. The reason we will not be introducing anything like the bill that they are proposing is that it is extraordinary in the way that it sets pensioner against pensioner. What it does is ignore the needs of two million pensioners. It ignores the needs of those who are on the disability support pension. It ignores those on a carer payment.

Another complication which, of course, the Leader of the Opposition does not understand is that there are actually 13,000 people over the aged-pension age—and if he actually listened to this he might learn something about the pension—13,000 people aged over 65 who are on carer payment or who are on the disability support pension. They are living on exactly the same amount of money as people on the aged pension. And the legislation that he thinks is so urgent to debate today completely ignores their needs. So we will not be introducing that legislation. It ignores the needs of two million pensioners, more than one million of them married couples, who are also doing it tough and who are having trouble making ends meet; disability support pensioners who are having trouble making ends meet; and, of course, carers, who are carrying a very heavy load. And it is the opposition who are saying that we should just adopt this bill, because they have dreamt it up in an effort to save the previous Leader of the Opposition’s skin. Well, we will not be doing that.

What we have done is taken a far more responsible approach. What we have done is made sure that we increased the utilities allowance from $107—

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