Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think 'the member for Hayes' has a very good ring to it, and perhaps we may see that one day; it would be great recognition of the present member for Fowler's contribution to this parliament. Turning to the motion, I think it is extraordinary that the member for Parramatta talks about this increase as being somehow unique to a coalition New South Wales state government when in fact the previous state government in New South Wales, a Labor government, did the same thing for 16 years and the present South Australian Labor government has been doing the same sort of thing for 10 years. That is why the Howard government on many occasions used lump sums and special allocations—to avoid state governments taking their share of any increases in pensions. So this is nothing new. This has been around for a long time, and if you look at the New South Wales government, they are saying that they are actually $5 billion worse off in GST payments in the latest budget figures, and of course they are not getting compensation for the carbon tax. If we did not have a carbon tax, none of this would arise anyway.

Let's look at 1(a) of the member for Parramatta's motion, talking about how, supposedly, the Howard government ignored pensioners for nearly 12 years. It was, in fact, the Howard government that changed the pension system to 25 per cent of the MTAWE, the male total average weekly earnings, instead of the old CPI increases. The MTAWE rate was a much higher rate. That built up, and, by the time the Howard coalition government lost power, that would have meant in real terms over the period of those increases $80 a week more than if we had stuck to the old Labor Party system. We had increases twice a year at higher than the CPI and so in real terms we increased pensions continually. Politically, it might have been smarter to do that every six months and say, 'Here we are, we are giving you a bit extra,' but we put it into the system so that pensioners always got that increase.

If you want to look at how Labor has acted, in 2008 the coalition proposed a private members' bill to provide a $30 a week increase in the single age pension, and guess what—the Labor government with all its numbers opposed this bill and used its numbers in parliament to defeat it. The coalition's ongoing pressure eventually forced this government to award pensioners an increase in the 2009 budget, leading to the permanent increase in the pension to 27.7 per cent of MTAWE. It was only under our pressure that they actually folded, because we remember the present Prime Minister saying in cabinet that we should not give increases to the pensioners because they were going to vote for the coalition anyway. That is the sheer hypocrisy of this government. It talks about giving pensioners increases when the present Prime Minister said, in a dirty political attitude, 'We shouldn't give them increases,' because they were only going to vote for the coalition. So let us not get too high-handed or uppity about who is doing the best job for pensioners. I believe that every member of parliament wants to look after pensioners. Sometimes you can afford it and sometimes you cannot, but that does not seem to worry this present government.

The coalition certainly has huge concerns with the proposed carbon tax for pensioners and self-funded retirees, because they will be the hardest hit as they are on fixed incomes. There will be a huge hike in electricity bills; we know that. In New South Wales there will be an increase of 18 per cent, and 18 per cent is forecast for South Australia. The problem with this situation is that self-funded retirees on over $50,000, which is not a huge amount of money, will not get any increase whatsoever. (Time expired)

See this speech in context