Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

In rising to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 6) Bill 2014 I can advise the people of Australia of good news and bad news. Let me turn to the good news first of all.

Nearly five months ago in my budget reply on behalf of the Labor Party and the people of Australia, I gave a solemn pledge to Australia's pensioners at this very dispatch box I said:

Labor will not surrender the security of your retirement.

We will fight for a fair pension.

And Labor will prevail.

Today we have most certainly prevailed. Labor has kept the faith with 3.7 million pensioners. We have kept our promise to Australians who have worked hard all their lives, who have paid their taxes all their lives and who have made a contribution to our communities, to our nation and to their own families.

In the five months since the Hockey-Abbott budget my colleagues and I have travelled the nation talking with older Australians, and they are worried. They are deeply worried about the effect of this government's plan to cut up to $80 a week from their pension. They know this government lied to them before the last election. They promised, right up to the very end of the election period, that there would be no cuts to pensions. Now they are worried that because of Prime Minister Abbott, Treasurer Hockey and the gang who sit in government that they will not be able to afford to cool their home in summer and to heat their home in winter. They are worried that they will not be able to buy their grandkids a treat. They will not be able to take their pet to the vet.

Let us be clear: these Australians that Labor fights for do not think that the world owes them a living. They do not seek a life in the lap of luxury. They do not live on a king's ransom. These Australians that Labor fights for have worked for everything they have, and it is their hard work which has made our nation great. They have stood up to the Abbott government's cruel cuts to their security and to their dignity, and they have prevailed. I say on behalf of Labor to the pensioners of Australia: this is your victory over Minister Kevin Andrews and Tony Abbott. This is your victory and this is the government's defeat.

Today, the government has finally faced up to the reality and they have faced the facts: this Prime Minister has no mandate for his cruel cuts to pensions and no amount of headshaking by the Minister for Social Security can make black white. There is no mandate. Tony Abbott's broken promises to aged pensioners, disability support pensioners, carer payment recipients and veterans has been exposed and it has been defeated.

Let me just say at this point my congratulations to our shadow spokesperson for pensions and families, Jenny Macklin the member for Jagajaga. Every political party in Australia wishes they had one like her, but Labor does have one! Thank you and well done!

What she and all my colleagues behind we have done is expose the plot of the Abbott government to take $23 billion away from the age pension over the next 10 years. They have exposed this plot. Question time after question time, the opposition has asked the Prime Minister, 'Why are you cutting the indexation rate of pensioners?' And all this mealy-mouthed mob opposite ever do is say, 'Pensions are going up!' What a cheap stunt this mob opposite are. They think the people are as stupid as they believe them to be.

We all know that by reducing the indexation rate of pensions they are cutting the real pension by up to $80 a week. And no matter how often that rotten bunch of twisters opposite say these things, it does not make it true. I love this mob opposite! They are always saluting the flag—they are at every parade possible. They love our veterans, they say, except when it comes to the veterans' pensions. It is Labor who has stopped a $65 million cut to war pensions. There are 280,000 people receiving a pension from the Department of Veterans' Affairs: 140,000 service pensioners and 84,004 war widow and widow pensioners. These pensioners were going to be up to $80 per week worse off over the next 10 years, but Labor has won the battle for them; just as they have represented this country, we have kept faith with the contract that we should look after them in their later years.

And we have stopped the plot to increase the age pension eligibility age to 70. This mob opposite say, 'Well, we are all living longer so everyone should work longer.' What a bunch of rotten twisters! The biggest injury this mob opposite will ever face will be a paper cut! And yet they ask every other Australian, whose bodies may be weary and worn out, to keep working. To show the rottenness of increasing the minimum retirement age to 70, it will mean that we have the highest pension age across the OECD. Why is it that this is a government that always asks the most vulnerable to do the hardest and heaviest lifting? If we had used this tortured analogy of our windbag Treasurer Hockey about 'lifters and leaners', the lifters are everyone in Australia—except the Liberal Party. They are just the leaners sitting opposite.

And when they talk about lifting the eligibility age to 70, they are so incompetent. They cannot even work out that most workers comp jurisdictions in Australia only go to the age of 65 or 67. So they want people to work to 70 and yet they have made no provision to lift workers comp, making it impossible to employ many people to the age of 70. But that is a mere detail for these dilettantes opposite. They would not know how real people earn their money.

Then, of course, there is the family tax benefit B changes. Because of Labor, more than 700,000 single-income and single-parent families will not lose their family tax benefit B over three years as a result of the savage cuts that Tony Abbott tried to inflict upon families merely because the youngest child is over six years old. There are 700,000 single-income and single-parent families who are going to have their payments kept safe because of the Labor Party.

And, of course, one of the meanest dog whistles—and this is a government addicted to dog whistles; they have never seen an issue they cannot got the dog whistle out on—is their attack on young job seekers. They probably like to demonise—we know they love to—and stigmatise groups in this community. I suppose that is a topic for a later time. But what they are doing with young job seekers under the age of 30 is that they are so enamoured of dividing this society they wanted the young unemployed to go six months without an income.

Of course, we saw people desert the sinking ship of this idea on the weekend. We do not know if it was an elegant leak from the Minister for Social Services; he said it was not him. Well who was it? This is not a game of Cluedo, government. We know who it was; we do not need to have the guessing games. It was the Treasurer and the Prime Minister. I do not know if they have set the Minister for Social Services up as a patsy; I do not know if he is their bunny or if he is their brain surgeon. Whatever the description, the outcome is the same: they wanted to attack young job seekers.

So there are 100,000 young people who will not have to face six months of poverty. We know that the coalition's plan is not earn or learn; it is earn or learn or starve. They want to create a divided society where our young are sleeping over the grates to get warm, where they are begging, where they are forced to do even worse things just to make ends meet. This is a government—they love families so much they want to privatise the cost of people to the age of 30 back to families. It is a disgrace, and Labor have stood them up.

What I said though is that there is good news and there is bad news. The good news is that Labor, being a strong opposition, have looked the government in the face and we have not blinked. We have seen the worst they can throw at Australian pensioners and we have prevailed on behalf of Australian pensioners. Unfortunately, there is one dirty deal that is still sneaking through. The Liberals have an addiction to lecturing us about working with the Greens, but they cannot wait to slip out behind the bike shed and do a deal with the Greens. And the dirty, dirty deal they have done with the Greens—you don't have to look too sad, Kevin; this one is probably not your brainchild either—I am afraid to say, is to scrap the senior supplement. That is anyone who has a Commonwealth seniors health card.

This is a government that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. As of last month, annual payments for people who are eligible for Commonwealth seniors health card were worth $886.60 for singles and more than $1,300 for couples. Just so we clear up who these forensic detectives are chasing down the welfare borrow: to be eligible for this you have to earn less than $50,000 a year; you are not someone who is getting a pension. People earning less than $50,000 a year in their older years who do not get a pension are not that well off, but they are obviously too rich for the taste of these Liberals opposite. What a shame these people do not have $2 million in super, then they would get a kickback from this government. And what is happening is that the couples who earn less than $80,000 a year do not get a pension. There are 280,000 people—once upon a time this arrogant mob opposite might have said, 'These are the Liberal heartland.' Not any more, ladies and gentlemen, not any more.

The next payment was due on 20 December. Clearly this is a government who has succeeded with the Greens—because the Greens do not necessarily understand how middle-income Australia lives; their voting base sometimes is the well-off too. But what we see here is an unholy coalition of the extreme right and the Greens combining to mug 280,000 Australians. Don't you love this silent minister for immigration at the table, head buried in his notes? What a disgraceful deal, and no doubt there are people in your electorate, courtesy of your deal with the Greens, who are going to be losing money. Well done, Scott; another good day at the office!

As I said, there is good news and there is bad news. We have the dirty deal done with the Greens and the Liberals. I know they do not do—of course, why did I know they would do a deal with the Greens? Because Tony Abbott promised they would not do it before the last election. How do you know Tony Abbott is making a promise he is going to break? You watch his lips move.

What we say to pensioners in Australia is that unfortunately Joe Hockey, a bit like that Japanese lieutenant who was found in the mountains of the Philippines in 1974, is never going to give up the war. He is never going to give up the war against the pensioners. The Treasurer sees his budget as a war on pensioners. I am afraid to say that this morning this arrogant government, this most arrogant, out of touch government, has again tabled legislation seeking to resuscitate all of these dreadful cuts, which we have stopped this time. They want to bring it on again. They are an arrogant government. They are refusing to accept the verdict of the Australian people. If Labor were being selfish, we would say it is a good thing they have brought them on because it keeps reminding Australians what they are like. But I actually wish this government would stop torturing and hurting 3.7 million pensioners and making them unsure about their income security.

Now the Treasurer has said that he will not give up his war. Give up his war? Who is this man to say he is at war with Australia's pensioners? That is not why people voted for him. The Prime Minister yesterday in question time—not once, not twice, but on eight different occasions—said he was committed to all of his broken promises. He was committed to making sure that they would try this stunt of attacking ordinary people, average-income earning people, pensioners; he would keep trying it and trying it. And of course the finance minister did not want to be left out of this farce. He stands by it too.

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