Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Franklin, sorry—about the fact that the co-payment might actually go up, in terms of putting out a price signal. When the Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating introduced compulsory superannuation in 1992, as part of the Labor government's cycle of innovative and bold wage records, the immediate concern was to keep a lid on inflation.

The long-term goals of the visionary Prime Minister Keating were threefold. The first goal was to build a mountain of national savings to fund domestic investment at a lower cost. We can check that box. Our savings are now the envy of the world; in fact, they are the target of many of the crooks of the world. That is the reality of Labor getting it right. We now have great national savings. My understanding is we have the third-biggest pool of managed funds in the world.

The second goal was to reduce the cost burden on the tax welfare system of an ageing population so that the pension was a safety net for only the low paid. Obviously it is not ample, but it is adequate. For self-funded retirees, dividend decisions and daily share market fluctuations can cause a lot of anguish. I know that. Many of them are living a life of quiet dignity, not wasting their money overseas on cruises, as Deputy Prime Minister Truss quite unfairly suggested. He is yet to apologise for that. It must have been tough for him going back to his electorate, which has a significant group of seniors.

The third goal of the Keating government was to allow the majority of people to fund their own retirement and to have the control and independence that comes with that. Labor has always been especially focused on improving the lives of our seniors. It was the Labor government that introduced the pension system in 1909. Back then, I think the average life expectancy for a male was only 52. Now life expectancy is up in the 80s. Back then, the ratio of workers to people on the pension was about seven to one. Now it is down to five to one or even four to one. The Whitlam Labor government's introduction of benchmarking the pension to workers' earnings has seen a doubling of the pension in real terms since 1972. Those were Labor government policies. In 1983 the Hawke government's statement of accord agreed to maintain the basic rate of the pension at or above 25 per cent of average earnings, a commitment reaffirmed by the government's statement, Better Incomes: Retirement income policy into the next century, released in 1989. A series of increases achieved this benchmark over the life of the Labor government.

Under the Hawke and Keating governments, the pension increased from 24 per cent of male total average weekly earnings under the Fraser government in 1982 up to 25.8 per cent of MTAWE on leaving office in 1996. In 1990, the Hawke government introduced the bereavement payment, equivalent to 14 weeks pension, payable to the surviving member of a pensioner couple. In 1994, the Keating government introduced the Commonwealth seniors health card. Labor has always been committed to looking after seniors. In 2009, the Rudd Labor government delivered the biggest increase to the pension in a century—something I am sure that MPs on every side of the chamber would acknowledge and still receive thanks for in their electorates.

The Australian age pension has endured through most of the 20th century and well into the 21st century—100 years of profound social and economic change, through world wars, a depression, recessions and booms, and even the global financial crisis of a few years ago that so-savaged world economies. Thankfully, we were able to steer our way through the crisis under Prime Ministers Rudd and Gillard and Treasurer Wayne Swan.

Today the age pension continues its vital role in providing income support on the basis of need to older Australians. It is a helping hand to those in need. We accept that. These changes have been enormous, but Labor's principle of giving older Australians security, support and dignity is the cornerstone of the system. This is the Australian way and it has obviously always been the Labor way. It is what drew me to the Labor party in the first place.

We appreciate and acknowledge the extraordinary contribution that senior Australians have made, and continue to make, to the Australian community through their experience and insight, through the care they provide for partners, friends and relatives and through their mentoring and volunteering. As we move into the centenary of Anzac, I particularly acknowledge that many of our seniors are the children of those Anzacs. They are a generation whose parents had horrors visited upon them, with 60,000 Australians dying overseas and not to mention more than 200,000 coming back injured most horrifically, with limbs lost. We should be particularly helpful to this generation of Australian seniors, whose parents went through that conflict where basically every street in Australia would have had a resident either killed or wounded overseas.

We know that many pensioners are finding it tough to make ends meet. I see that when doing volunteer work for Meals on Wheels dealing with people throughout the electorate. Cost-of-living pressures from groceries, bills and petrol mean it is harder and harder to make ends meet. In the 12 years of the Howard government there was no improvement to the base rate of the age pension. Obviously, that was something that was going to take place in the government's 13th year! The Howard government claimed credit for legislating the 25 per cent of male earnings benchmark in 1997, but that Labor policy had already been delivered consistently over the period of previous Labor governments. We believe that good governments protect the pension for those who need it most: people who have worked hard throughout their lives and who have given so much to our great country. That is why our focus has always been on making it easier for self-funded retirees to have a comfortable lifestyle in their retirement.

The government's recent cruel and nasty budget introduced measures to cut the age pension, the disability support pension, the carer payment, the seniors supplement, the school kids bonus, the income support bonus, the low-income superannuation contribution and many other payments that I could list. It is a horrible visitation upon electorates. I am sure members opposite with a significant number of seniors in their electorates would not be looking forward to the next election when the seniors of Australia will wreak their revenge at the ballot box. Now the government has proposed to spend—

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