Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Twelve months ago, what did the now Prime Minister say? At Rooty Hill, he said:

No cuts to health, no cuts to education, no cuts or changes to pensions …

To pick up the member for Pearce, it is very much like that child he was talking about, standing in the doorway, focused on how much he was going to grow. Twelve months ago the Prime Minister, in effect, just stood there and said: 'I'm already three centimetres taller. I'm already bigger than I said and it doesn't matter what happens after that.' That is the point.

The very advice that the member for Pearce has given today is the very advice that the Prime Minister should have been following before the last election—but he did not. What he did was indulge in the sort of activity he has been known for over the years. In fact, he has admitted it himself. He said: 'Don't believe what I say; only believe it if it's written down.' The fact is that he knows, as we do, that much of what he says means nothing.

When we go to that question of there being no cuts to health, no cuts to education and no cuts or changes to pensions, I particularly want to focus on the pensions issue. It happened again today, from a number of speakers, including again from the Prime Minister himself. They say: 'What do you mean cuts to pensions? Pensions will increase every six months, as they do now. The difference is only the indexation method.' Again, that does not make sense because it misses the point about what a pension actually is. A pension is an income support payment. It is an income support payment in the context of what we mean what we talk about social security pensions—the age pension et cetera. It is a payment designed to try and give people a chance to live. Of course, we all know, we all accept and we all understand that the cost of living increases over time. When it increases, therefore the cost to live increases. In those circumstances, the situation is that benefits alter accordingly.

The thing about that is that now, all of a sudden, the coalition have discovered CPI—that is the actual way you measure this. That is the way you know what the change is. Funnily enough, only a matter of a few months ago, you passed legislation about fairer indexation of military pensions, where the whole basic premise to it was that CPI was not sufficient. The whole basic premise was that it was not fair. The whole basic premise was that the cost of living was not taken care of by CPI changes on a six-monthly basis. You needed to make it more, and that is what you did. You sat there—in fact, many of you did not sit there; many of you got up and railed about what an unreasonable bunch of so-and-sos we were because we had not done this when we were in government.

The fact is that the very system that you legislated for some military pensioners only a matter of weeks ago is the very system you are now legislating to remove. What it will lead to is a significant cut in what would have been the pension people would have been trying to live on in the years ahead. If you do not get that, maybe have a bit of a think about it; because, when you go out there and say, 'There will be no cuts to pensions,' you are relying on grammatical fallacies. You are relying on untruths and mistruths. You are relying on trying to con and confuse people with regard to the actual changes you are legislating. You need to understand that.

When you go to those senior citizens groups, you need to tell them that the pension value under this system that you will implement is going to be significantly lower in the years ahead. If the same system were in place over the last four years, you are talking about a situation where pensioners would have been something like $1,500 worse off every year. ACOSS has estimated that in about 10 years time a pensioner will be worse off under this system by some $80 a week. That is a lot of money if that is all you have. That is a lot of money if that is what you are relying on to live. As we also know, the Parliamentary Budget Office has come out with figures which have shown that, in terms of the estimated cost of pension benefits into the future, there will be massive loss—billions of dollars gone over time. In fact, as I recall, there will be a cut in 2024-25 from $74.8 billion to $67.9 billion—a cut of $6.9 billion in just that one year. Over the next 10 years you are talking about something like $23 billion out of the hands of those who rely on benefits to live.

The fact is this is unfair. It is completely unfair to the people who really need assistance within this community.

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