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

Madam Deputy Speaker Livermore, I congratulate you and acknowledge that this is your first time in the chair. I am sure you will do a splendid job, as you have done for your constituents in Capricornia, in Queensland. I promise that I will behave and not make your job very difficult. I will make it as easy as possible.

I also want to place on the record my thanks and congratulations to the member for Lyons for placing this very important motion on the agenda for people to debate, because I think that the issue of people’s retirement is very important and that this parliament should work very, very hard and diligently to ensure that we protect people’s pensions and retirement incomes and work on all of those very complex matters about people’s financial security in their later years. I am also pleased to speak on this motion because it gives me the opportunity to acknowledge the very good work that has been done by this Labor government since it was first elected in 2007 in terms of the very broad pension reform that has taken place.

These are not easy matters to deal with. When we start looking at pension reform and the underlying cost to the federal budget, it is quite substantial. I can understand why governments in the past have always been very reluctant to move in these particular areas. I am sure this was the case in the Howard government years, where there would have been some will. I acknowledge that all governments of all persuasions would have truly wanted to make those big changes and reforms. But I think that, faced with the costs, and when they realised just how significant that cost of reform was, they got cold feet. It is probably the nicest way I could say it, rather than say that there was inaction or that the previous government in its 12 years in office did not want to do that. I do not believe that for a moment; I think they did want to do some reform.

I think it was a missed opportunity because they were good years. They were the years when the rivers of gold flowing into Canberra were quite commonly spoken about. The economy was thriving and there was all that opportunity—the best time to make those significant reforms. It did not happen, but that is okay. When we were elected in 2007 we made it a first order of priority for us, as a Labor government, to actually make these changes happen. I note that the member for Lyons said that these are the biggest reforms in 100 years. I have not done my research back that far, but I will take it on his word.

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