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

One of the remarkable things about the opposition’s position on pensions is the fact that they leave so many millions of pensioners out. I say to those opposite that if they were serious in the policy debate on this they would have had a consistent and comprehensive position all along. Secondly, if those opposite were serious about pension reform—and the member who has just asked the question was in cabinet for a long time—when did they argue to reform the pension and why didn’t the Howard government act to reform the pension for 12 years?

My third point is that we are committed to a policy of long-term pension reform. As I said in my answer to the question put to me before, the government believes that the right course of action is to act decisively to continue to support economic growth in the Australian economy in the future. We will do that. This government, despite considerable criticism from various people in the commentariat and from those opposite, put to one side a significant surplus for the budget in May. The reason that we put aside a surplus was to have that surplus to deal with tough times in the future. Those tough times have arrived. We are in a position to deploy the surplus. We will deploy the surplus in the interests of underpinning long-term positive growth in the Australian economy and in the interests of supporting the household economy as well.

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