Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) after almost 12 long years of inaction by the former Australian Coalition Government, the current Australian Labor Government has delivered historic pension reforms that have provided increases of $154 per fortnight for max-rate single pensioners and $156 per fortnight for max-rate pensioner couples;

(b) the NSW Government increased public housing rents for pensioners in 2011, taking away some of the Australian Government’s 2009 pension increase;

(c) the Australian Government is delivering extra assistance to millions of Australian pensioners through the Household Assistance Package;

(d) this new assistance is being delivered as a stand-alone pension supplement, separate from the base pension rate, so that pensioners living in public housing could receive the full benefit of this assistance without it affecting their social housing rents; and

(e) the NSW Government has announced that it will include this assistance when calculating social housing rents from March 2013, meaning pensioners living in public housing will not receive the full benefit of the Australian Government’s assistance.

(2) condemns the NSW Government for increasing rents for about 84,000 NSW pensioners and taking away part of their pension increase; and

(3) calls on the Opposition to guarantee it would not take away the pension increases as part of the Household Assistance Package if in government.

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