Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Energy and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister and the Treasurer must explain the government’s decision and provide the required detailed analysis of how those decisions were actually reached. It is little wonder that they have been described as bungling the management of the Australian economy—and they are trying to hide this bungled management. When the government took office the economic indicators were heading in the right direction; now they are heading in absolutely the wrong direction. The continued mishandling of the economic crisis has damaged the Australian economy, and the worst thing is that it is now affecting jobs. The unemployment rate is expected to rise to 5.75 per cent by June 2010, but there is a suggestion that this figure is probably an underestimate. Unemployment is expected to reach five per cent by next June.

I digress for a moment to say that in Western Australia last week it was announced that the unemployment level in that state is 2.2 per cent, a marvellous achievement. So, to those who are in New South Wales, in that rust belt state, and doing it hard, I suggest that if you really do want a better future you might want to go to Western Australia, where 2.2 per cent is probably under full employment at this stage. We are a state that really is looking for skilled workers to fill a whole range of jobs. For example, we are still having trouble getting cleaners for offices and commercial premises in Perth. So that describes the unemployment level in Western Australia. In fact, by providing over 30 per cent of the nation’s income, you could really say that in Western Australia we are carrying the rest of Australia on our back, and that needs to be acknowledged when funds are handed out through government initiatives—for example, the upcoming infrastructure fund. Since we are producing so much of the nation’s wealth, we would like a little bit of it back in moneys for infrastructure such as roads, ports and schools, and additional hospital expenditure. It is the golden state in Australia at the moment, and it needs to be acknowledged for that.

We know that the government are into the blame game and that they will blame the global financial crisis for every event that occurs hereafter. However incompetent and however bungled the government’s management of the economy, they will be blaming the global crisis. You can hear it every question time, when the Prime Minister when asked about economic data stands up and says, ‘Oh, yes, but it is the global crisis.’ As I have already said, if they had inherited the debt and the economic conditions that John Howard did when he came to office in 1996, just imagine what the state of the Australian economy would be now.

This package includes $4.8 billion for pensioners, carers, senior health card holders and veterans. On 8 December, not only pensioners and other people across Australia but also Canning pensioners will finally get some relief from sky-high housing costs, grocery bills and petrol prices. Those eligible will include age pensioners, disability support pensioners, wife pensioners, widow B pensioners and service pensioners; those on income support supplement, carer’s payment, partner’s allowance, widow allowance, bereavement allowance, parenting payment if a person is of age, special benefit if a person is of age, Austudy if a person is of age and ABSTUDY if a person is of age; and Commonwealth seniors health card holders.

I will look at the Canning figures at a glance because I would like to provide this information to the electorate. There are 5,000 single age pensioners and almost 9,000 partnered pensioners in Canning. There are 4,500 disability support pensioners, 600 people receiving carer payments, 2,000 Commonwealth seniors health card holders and almost 1,000 service pensioners. That demonstrates how many people in an electorate of something like 95,000 people are going to be beneficiaries and are going to rely on this support. The bonus will provide a one-off $1,400 lump sum payment for single pensioners and $2,100 for coupled pensioners as long as both partners hold an eligible card. Alternatively, a payment of $1,050 will be made if only one member of a couple has an eligible card.

I know Canning pensioners have welcomed these one-off payments, given rising grocery prices, rising fuel prices and the current climate of global economic instability, but the bonus for pensioners is long overdue. Now the Prime Minister and Mr Swan must address raising the base rate of pensions. It is not good enough to give a one-off bonus, because this will be chewed up pre-Christmas and post-Christmas. The underlying problem of pensions keeping pace needs to be addressed in structural reform for pensions and we are asking this government to do that, as we did when we were the government under the Howard coalition. As people know, instead of doing what Keating did—just giving a throwaway before an election—we actually put the pension on a sound footing of twice-yearly increases based on the CPI or the MTAWE, whichever was higher. So it was very transparent. People knew when it was going to be delivered, they knew the reasons for any increase and they received the higher of the two increases. This was a genuine reform in the Howard years. Now the Rudd government must make similar reforms to put pensions and entitlements on a sound footing so that people know exactly when they are getting it, how they are getting it and why they are getting it. People on entitlements are the most vulnerable in our communities and they deserve the consideration and the respect of being told how and when they will be given such a considered increase.

We know that the Henry review will not report until mid next year. That will be after the next federal budget in May, which means that there will be little opportunity in the May budget. You can rest assured that the Rudd government will be saying, ‘We cannot do anything until the Henry review is delivered because we will be pre-empting anything from the Henry review’. So that will put pensioners and all other people expecting entitlements further back in being considered. The expected relief will be a longer time coming, so the response to increasing cost-of-living pressures will not flow in any sort of timely way. Once this one-off bonus has been spent pre-Christmas and post-Christmas, pensioners and other entitlement holders will be back to the same problem of not having enough to live on, with increasing rents and increasing grocery prices.

Petrol prices are coming down, but we know that they are not coming down to the extent that they should be. Crude oil prices have come down by 40 per cent since July last year, yet petrol prices have only come down by 27 per cent. Fuelwatch has not gotten up and the Fuel Commissioner should be doing his job. Where is the 17 per cent that should be delivered to the Australian people, particularly those most vulnerable: pensioners and other people receiving an entitlement? It would be of real benefit to them if they got the full flow-on of the 40 per cent reduction in world oil prices. The Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, campaigned on this issue leading up to the 2007 election, and he must address this structural reform as a matter of urgency—not after the budget next year; not after waiting for Mr Henry of the Treasury to deliver his report and using that as a later measure.

Let us not forget that this one-off measure was designed to stimulate the economy. It is not a compassionate response by the Rudd government to the ongoing plight of pensioners struggling to meet the increasing costs of living. We know that they were dragged kicking and screaming into this response. They even voted down the opposition’s opportunity to address this with a $30 increase months and months ago. This is part of a stimulus package, not a compassionate consideration of the plight of pensioners. The coalition has long called for a rise in the base rate of the pension and, after months of posturing and refusing to even look at it, the majority of the government front bench admitted that they could not even live on $273 per week so they have tried to be a saviour with this payment.

The government did not even blink an eye before shelving the coalition’s Urgent Relief for Single Age Pensioners Bill 2008 before it hit the floor of the House of Representatives. It was almost pilloried and ridiculed. But now I do believe that the pressure that the opposition and other minor parties put on the government did have some targeted effect benefiting pensioners.

This bill also provides for $3.9 billion in bonus payments to families with dependent children. Payments of $1,000 will be made for each child who attracts family tax benefit A or, alternatively, for children who attract youth allowance, ABSTUDY living allowance or an education allowance under veterans’ entitlements. These bonuses will be a great help to many Canning families. There are 15,000 recipients of family tax benefit A in the Canning electorate. However, I have received a lot of calls from families in the area who are doing it tough and were again overlooked. The Prime Minister’s working families—the focus group tag that he uses—are the ones that are actually being left out. Middle Australia has been sidelined by this issue. Many local families work hard, pay taxes and do not receive any family tax benefits and do not qualify for any lump sum payments. People say to me all the time: ‘Low income people get the support and those on high incomes have an opportunity to minimise their obligations, but how about the good, honest, working, middle-class Australians who pay their taxes and work hard? They get little or no relief from this government.’ These are the families struggling with rising household costs, petrol bills, school fees, health insurance and day-to-day expenses that just keep mounting. As I have said, general structural reform is needed, not lip service.

The Prime Minister announced an uncapped guarantee for all deposits in Australian banks, building societies and credit unions, Australian subsidiaries of foreign banks and wholesale term funding. Once again the policy-on-the-run decision was made without any direct advice from the regulator—in other words, the Governor of the Reserve Bank. The resulting mayhem means that Australians have had billions of dollars in savings frozen in investment funds. These are Australians who have saved hard for their future. It is estimated that over one-quarter of a million people have had their savings and their entitlements in these funds frozen. Westpac CEO Gail Kelly has called on the government to place a cap of $100,000 on the deposit guarantee, which is, coincidently, the same as initially suggested by the Leader of the Opposition.

Regarding superannuants, the unintended consequence of the government’s haphazard reaction to the global financial meltdown and the unlimited bank guarantee has been the freezing of funds. This has put people who rely on this superannuation drawdown in a predicament and under increasing financial strain. Those with superannuation arrangements face a challenging future, with financial institutions being forced to freeze payments. This was ill considered. Superannuation funds are being severely curtailed in their dividend payment, as asset values collapse.

And what was the government’s reaction to those thousands of Australians relying on their superannuation incomes? The Treasurer said, ‘Go and get some help from Centrelink.’ What a terse and insulting thing to say, to tell these people to go and get help from Centrelink. These are their life savings and they cannot access them. It is slightly more complicated and distressing than joining the Centrelink line and in most cases people are not eligible for benefits because they have savings—they just cannot access them. The Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Association said that the government pointing superannuants in the direction of Centrelink was of little comfort and only caused additional distress. Centrelink staff are under immense pressure. In fact, I am aware that the head of Centrelink said that, should these people come to Centrelink, it would not have a mechanism to pay them. They would have to wait 28 days to even consider it. The Treasurer continues to show that he is out of touch with the Australian people and cannot be trusted to manage the Australian economy.

Changes to the deeming rate will come into effect on 17 November 2008. The rate will be reduced from four per cent to three per cent for the first $41,000 of a single pensioner’s financial investment and the first $68,200 for couples and then fall from six per cent to five per cent for the balance of the investment. Simply, the deeming rate reduction is designed to reflect the fall in investment returns. This one per cent reduction in the deeming rate is aimed at helping people on means tested pensions—such as the age pension, the disability support pension and carer payments—and income support allowances and supplements, such as the parenting payment and Newstart paid by Centrelink. This is just another cynical move by a cynical government. Actually the rate is only 2.4 per cent, which makes the deeming rate changes just another photo-opportunity policy from the government with little practical comfort for those people who need it most. In other words, bringing the rate down by one per cent does not reflect the actual fall in that period of time. The actual fall is 2.4 per cent. So the full relief from the pain is not being passed on.

In the time I have left I would like to talk about grandparent carers, another group that has been long neglected. Grandparent carers are those Australians who give up their time and retirement to care for their grandchildren because of the circumstances of their own children. Grandparent carers have long been fighting for the same recognition, support and status as foster carers but it continues to be an uphill battle. Last year was a small win, with the coalition leading changes to social security legislation and extending participation requirement exemptions to principal carers who are relatives but not parents of the children. That is, they extended to grandparent carers the same status as foster parents. This is what over 50,000 grandparent carers in Australia have been calling for for a long time—that as a minimum they receive the same consideration and entitlement as foster parents when they look after their grandchildren.

The case of Margaret Saunders in my electorate, who I have spoken about before, is just another unintended consequence of the government’s assistance package. Margaret was forced to leave her full-time job in her 50s when, because of a severe drug habit, her daughter became unable to look after her children. Margaret now cares full time for her two grandchildren, taking them to school and to activities after school and generally taking on the role of a full-time parent. I mentioned this case in the parliament recently; however, I thought it important to raise it again in reference to this bill. Margaret emailed me following the government’s announcement of the bonuses. She said:

What really hurts is that Grandparents looking after grandchildren were overlooked again. Yes some of us will receive the bonus for the kids but a lot won’t.

Regarding the bonuses, Margaret makes an extremely valid point. The mother of her grandchildren will receive a bonus as a disability pensioner. In other words, the mother who cannot look after the children is actually going to get a bonus because she is on a disability pension, being a hopeless drug addict—(Time expired)

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