Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was just trying to follow the lead of some of the opposition members. The reality is that the opposition are taking a bet each way. They are saying that, yes, pensioners do need support; yes, help is needed. But it is not enough, it is too late, it is of the wrong kind, they knew better or somehow they would have done a better job.

Even worse than that, they are saying that had they still been in government somehow all of this would have been averted because they would have seen it coming and they would have understood the circumstances and, in fact, that the current Leader of the Opposition actually predicted all of this. We just heard that moments ago from the member for Cowan. Nothing could be further from the reality, nothing could be further from the truth and certainly nothing could be further from the government’s commitment to trying to enhance people’s lives and to take some of the sting out of what is happening in the global financial crisis for the ordinary budgets of ordinary people trying to make a go of things.

Let me just detail some of what our package will deliver, and then I will have a look at what I think are just complaints at this stage, rather than comments, by opposition members about our package and the impact it will have. The bills before us will amend the social security law, the family assistance law, the Veterans’ Entitlements Act 1986 and the tax law to provide payments for pensioners, seniors, people with a disability, carers, veterans, and families with dependent children, as was announced by the government on 14 October this year. It is a key part of our $10.4 billion Economic Security Strategy, and I take umbrage at the comments by the opposition that ‘that is all it is’—that it is just $10.4 billion. The reality is that it is much, much more than that. It is not just this $10.4 billion; that is part of a package of more than $55 billion in terms of investing in and stabilising the economy and making sure we can work through what is a global financial problem.

The payments are strategically designed to have a particular impact in relation to the effects of the global financial crisis on ordinary Australians. The payments will be made very shortly, in the fortnight commencing on 8 December. No-one will need to actually put in a claim. The payments will not count as income for social security, family assistance or veterans affairs entitlements purposes, and they will of course be tax free. The bill will also include an administrative scheme to provide the capacity to make payments in circumstances where the regime does not necessarily produce an appropriate result.

Going to the detail of the Economic Security Strategy payment for pensioners, seniors, people with disabilities, carers and veterans, it is a substantial payment of $1,400 for single recipients or holders of one of the stipulated cards. For couples it will be a combined payment of $2,100 under the same conditions. For a couple where one has an entitlement and the other does not, it will be a single payment of just $1,050. The benefits and cards attracting the Economic Security Strategy payment are as follows: age pension, disability support pension, wife pension, widow B pension, service pensions, income support supplement, carer payment, partner allowance, widow allowance, bereavement allowance, parenting payments, special benefits, Austudy payments, Abstudy, Commonwealth seniors health card and veterans affairs gold card. For those on carer allowance there will also be a payment of $1,000, which will generally be made for each person who is cared for.

The reason I have gone to the trouble of listing all of those is, firstly, that it is important for people to understand who is eligible and who is not. I would say that at this stage people do understand whether or not they will be receiving a payment on 8 December. But I also wanted to make the point that it is an extensive package that covers a whole range of people who are in need. I will turn later to some of the comments by the opposition, but if we compare the number of people we cover in our package and what was called for by the opposition—an extra $30 for pensioners—which supposedly led to this package, we can see a huge difference, a massive gap. Under our Economic Security Strategy, more than 5.2 million pensioners, carers and families will receive one-off payments. Under the coalition’s proposal, which I am assuming they still stand by, more than 3.3 million of those pensioners, carers and families would have been given no financial relief whatsoever. I think that is a key point. The opposition tried to make a lot of hay while they believed their sun was shining, taking advantage of what is a global crisis and the impact it is having on ordinary families here to call for increases to pensions and so forth. We understood the hardship, but ours was not a knee-jerk reaction, as the opposition might have you believe. We actually took a considered and measured approach, with a forward strategy. It was not merely a one-off or just about certain pensioners; it included a whole suite of pensioners. We did not want people to be left out, because we understood that the pain was being shared across a whole range of people in receipt of pensions and other benefits and entitlements, unlike the coalition, who thought it was okay for one small slice of people to receive assistance while others completely missed out.

It is also interesting that coalition members have come in here and talked about the package as though it is just a one-off, saying, ‘How dare you as a government use a one-off payment?’ because we have been critical of one-off payments in the past. I would say that they really need to consider the circumstances of one-off payments. I think bonuses and one-off payments simply in the good times, when perhaps they are not so needed and you could be making structural changes and reforms and looking at the basics of the system to see how pensioners are provided for, are wrong in those circumstances. But in the circumstances we find ourselves in today, when there is a need for a boost and for an immediate injection of funds and capital into the economy, there is no better way than a direct one-off payment of a substantial size—as this package is substantial, with $10.4 billion specifically for what I am talking about here, for a broad range of areas. Then it is the right thing to do.

That is the big difference between what we have done—we have done it for the right reasons at the right time—and what the previous government did, which was basically politicking. What they did was give bonuses only before elections and time bonuses for election campaigns. They did not necessarily do it in times of need, because pensioners were certainly in need at that time. The better option at the time the coalition was in government would have been to do the structural reforms, make the necessary baseline changes to pensioner entitlements and measure those out over fortnightly payments to give people a real boost in their income, rather than just doling out cheques. When the coalition members come in here they ought to think a little bit more about just what it is that this package represents, rather than their short-term approach of one-off bonuses which were clearly—to use a better word—just inducements at a time when the money could have been better spent.

I am more than proud to be standing here saying that we are doing the right thing on a whole range of fronts, not only to deal with the impact the global financial crisis is having on ordinary people in Australia—pensioners and families—but with the timing of our bonus, the way it is delivered and the fact that it is a one-off strategic bonus. The Economic Security Strategy we are legislating today does not end here. It is not just about the one-off; it is actually about the reform. That is why we have the pension review on right now, because we believe that we need to do more. We cannot sustain a system by merely topping it up with one-offs. We have to do it properly and structurally, and that is what we have embarked on doing.

Strangely enough, we embarked on doing that very early on. Almost immediately on being elected we began the process of reform while coming under considerable pressure from the opposition, who thought they were very clever by putting pressure on us and whipping up a furore among pensioners about getting some more dollars. They never dealt with the issues at hand about how that would play out strategically in the long term, the structural reforms required or the proper way to deliver income for pensioners. Instead, they just whipped up a bit of a furore and fury out there with pensioners while at the same time ignoring the vast bulk, about 80 per cent, of them. The irony of what they were trying to do was to get in there, whip up the hysteria, promise them an extra $30 but then forget to tell them that 80 per cent of them would not get it.

That is not what we have done. We have actually tackled it on both those fronts: the long-term strategic review—how we improve the retirement incomes of ordinary Australians and how we improve the lot of families—while at the same time delivering an immediate cash bonus to deal with the global financial crisis that we find ourselves in. These payments are intended to provide additional support in the nine months between now and when long-term reforms are introduced from the beginning of the next financial year. We have taken that into consideration. The global financial crisis is placing increasing pressure on budgets already stretched by rising costs of living, and we will be delivering these specific payments to 5.2 million pensioners, carers and families.

We have not just stopped there, and I want to make particular mention of veterans because they are an important group of people. They are an important group of people in my electorate as they are in other electorates as well. I have talked to my veterans and they are certainly very pleased about what we as a government are doing and the way that we have been able to deal with those two interplaying issues of the long term and the immediate circumstances we find ourselves in. They will also benefit from the package that the Rudd Labor government has put forward. From 8 December, payments will be made to all service pensioners, including partner service pensioners; all war widows receiving income support supplement, all gold card holders, including war widows receiving seniors concessions; all those who are above the veteran age, males of 60 years and females of 58.5 years; all disability pensioners at 100 per cent or above who are over veteran pension age; Commonwealth seniors card holders; and a range of others I have already mentioned. We have taken into consideration that they are important people in this as well and we ought to be doing everything that we can for them.

I said at the beginning of my speech that the global financial crisis is probably the most significant upheaval in living memory. The government is taking very decisive action. Not only are we introducing the $10.4 billion Economic Security Strategy to at least tide us over—to bring people through this crisis and to keep the economy going—but we are doing much more than that. We have understood that you need to invest and to ensure that the economy continues to grow or that it slows at a slower rate. We are investing in infrastructure and jobs, and we are making sure that the infrastructure agenda does not fall off the table because times have gotten harder. That is the right course of action. At a time when we know unemployment will rise—it is happening around the world in every Western and developed economy—we cannot for a moment think that somehow we will be isolated from those circumstances. It is important for us to understand that we need to build the drivers of employment, we need to continue our massive infrastructure agenda and we need to work quickly, and that is what we are doing.

We are taking further steps. We recognised that, given the current global circumstances and uncertainty in markets, there was a range of other things that needed to be acted on, and acted on very quickly. One of these was guaranteeing people’s bank deposits. We do not shirk our responsibility in that area or walk away in any way from what we have done, because it was absolutely necessary. If you have a look at the banking sector, all those involved—even those who have not been advantaged as much as others in the measures that we have taken—are supportive because they understand the absolute necessity of what had to be done at that point. This is not a time for dilly-dallying around and waiting to see what happens. It might be okay for the all-seeing, all-prescient Leader of the Opposition who, as we heard from opposition members, knows all. We have one member of the opposition on the Hansard record as saying that the Leader of the Opposition knows all, saw everything, had a crystal ball where he saw everything and then it happened. Those were the words of one of the members of the opposition—it was a beautiful thing to listen to and absolutely incredible.

I have to take some umbrage with words that were spoken by members of the opposition, particularly the last speaker—that is, that in one way it was okay for pensioners to get this extra bonus but only if they spend it on good and legal things. He lectured that pensioners are not to spend it on Lotto, not to spend it on gambling and, particularly, not to spend it on ‘evil drugs’. It is an unbelievable circumstance to hear a member of the opposition coming in here—speaking on behalf of his leader, of course—and saying, ‘You pensioners are going to get some money from the government but don’t go spending it on those evil drugs.’ People would be well served by reading the Hansard to see the words that were said.

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