Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

That is entirely correct. As I was saying, of course we welcome last month’s announcements of one-off payments to be made to pensioners. We have been demanding action on that for months, but the payments should not be seen as some sort of a gift as the government seems to believe. A reasonable lifestyle with a pension that is sufficient to survive on is a right for people who grew up with the understanding that their tax contributions would be returned in part in their retirement. The fact that we have more recently moved increasingly toward self-funded retirement is irrelevant. We owe today’s pensioners much and we must provide a reasonable pension. When we have older Australians skipping medication because they cannot afford it and subsisting on jam or baked beans because a reasonable diet is beyond their reach then something is very wrong.

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