Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose the Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Amendment (Commonwealth Seniors Health Card) Bill 2009. It is indeed a mean-spirited measure. It is a measure that penalises prudence. It is a measure that again emphasises the gulf between the government’s rhetoric and its actions. The coalition has proposed immediate help for pensioners in a way that offered them security and confidence about their income. But, while pensioners struggle to make ends meet and seek long-term security, the government has fobbed them off with its review of tax and pensions and a one-off, headline-grabbing bonus. Meanwhile it is whittling away the benefits this deserving sector should rightly receive. It was interesting that the member for Warringah made the observation that this government hit the ground reviewing. That is exactly what it has been doing since it came to office—review after review after review. When you finally get action it is very confused action indeed.

Let us look at who is affected by this mean-spirited measure to restrict access to the Commonwealth seniors health card. There are currently just over 270,000 holders of this card, people who are over the age pension age and do not receive any income support payments. They are self-funded retirees and some are service veterans. In the first year of this measure, some 22,000 will lose their eligibility for this card as a result of the government including superannuation income and income salary sacrificed to superannuation in its eligibility assessment.

We hear a lot in this House about the current financial crisis, but if there is one sector of the community that is suffering a financial crisis at present it is our senior Australians, particularly self-funded retirees. I represent an electorate with a high proportion of pensioners and self-funded retirees, including around 2,000 senior health care card holders, and they have left me in no doubt that they are doing it tough. Those relying on benefits are seeing the value of their benefits eroded while they wait for their income to be reindexed. When it is reindexed they face the reality that the cost of essential items—and many of them buy only essential items—such as groceries and transport is rising faster than the indexation they receive.

I remind members that at the last election the coalition proposed changing the method of indexation to better reflect pensioners’ true cost of living. This practical and effective measure, along with a basic increase, is one the government should implement. Self-funded retirees are subject to exactly the same pressures as far as their costs are concerned but with no prospect of any increase in their income. In fact, many have seen a reduction in income as the stock market crash has reduced the value of their investments and the value of their superannuation.

The government may say that as their level of income drops they become eligible for benefits. But that only puts self-funded retirees in the same position as existing age pensioners, and, as I have said, those very pensioners are doing it tough indeed. No-one welcomes the prospect of going backwards, and this poorly thought-through measure proposed by the government will cause many self-funded retirees and some veterans to do precisely that. To live on the age pension is not at all easy.

Many of my constituents were clients of locally based company LKM Capital Ltd, which went into receivership as a result of the financial crisis. Investors lost a valuable source of income when the fund went bust. But, instead of being able to access Centrelink benefits straight away, investors were forced to wait for many months until the receivers could estimate the outcome of the fund’s liquidation. While these investors were waiting, Centrelink was still deeming them to be receiving interest from the fund. Through a very difficult situation and through no fault of their own, a range of self-funded retirees were substantially disadvantaged.

Self-funded retirees have done what governments of all persuasions have encouraged responsible citizens to do—they have made provision for their retirement by saving and investing when they had the opportunity to do so. When times were good, they prudently set aside some of their income for retirement, rather than spend it, so that they would not be a burden on future generations and on the government. Now they are being penalised for their prudence. Many will feel that they are being treated like mugs, that they should have enjoyed their money while they could have, that they should have spent it rather than saved it and relied on the government to look after them. Rather than making the government pick up the tab, they saved so that they would not be a burden on the public purse. They prepared for their own retirement, and what are they getting for their efforts? They are getting ignored by this government. When the government is prepared to run up billions of dollars of debt for headline-grabbing handouts more aimed at winning votes than at economic security, we have a valuable benefit being withdrawn from a very deserving sector of our community.

We see the stimulus package being paid to overseas pensioners and to the deceased. One could quite rightly argue that self-funded retirees are more deserving of support than pensioners overseas and that we should be spending that money in Australia rather than overseas. It could quite rightly be argued that the deceased no longer have a need for such funds and that the funds should be directed to self-funded retirees.

In the face of mounting job losses, the government has failed with its various vote-grabbing packages. It has failed with its cash splashes. We see unemployment continuing to rise. We see an accelerating in-crease in the unemployment rate. The workers at Pa-cific Brands have hardly benefited from the various packages! The Treasurer said that the funds from the stimulus package of December last year were going to be spent on socks and jocks—precisely what Pacific Brands produce. Did that manage to stop the 1,850 redundancies at Pacific Brands? No, it did not. There are further job losses: 150 at Robert Bosch in Mel-bourne, 650 at Anglo Coal in Queensland and New South Wales, 100 at Ernst and Young across Australia, 95 at Carl Zeiss, 150 at the Bank of Queensland in Brisbane, 85 at BHP in South Australia, 41 at Jetstar in Hobart, 150 at Harvey Beef in Western Australia and, recently, 500 at ANZ. That is almost 2,000 job losses and we have not even reached the end of the month.

It is an absolute outrage that this government’s mismanagement is failing to address the increase in unemployment and that this government’s mean-spiritedness is taking away benefits from self-funded retirees. The government calls on Australians to save, save, save for their retirement but they also call on Australians to spend, spend, spend to stimulate the economy. It is quite an interesting dichotomy.

Of course, for many self-funded retirees these days saving is not an option. Nor is it an option for another group affected by this measure—the veterans community. Once again, we see the difference between Rudd’s rhetoric and Rudd’s reality. We all know of his eagerness to wrap himself in the flag and a service uniform, pretending to be one of the lads, on a five-minute visit to Afghanistan, but when it comes to the crunch he is quite happy to see benefits removed from some service pensions. It is absolutely outrageous. Taking a seniors health card away from some of our veterans and stopping the pay of those who risk their lives on the front line is Rudd’s reality rather than Rudd’s rhetoric.

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