Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

We could put it through this parliament tomorrow, as the member for McMahon says. If you are fair dinkum about fixing retirement incomes in this country then we have done the work for you. If you are not, if you want to keep defending a small number of people with a huge amount of super over the interests of 330,000 pensioners in Middle Australia, write to them all. Write to everyone in Australia. Write to the people in your electorates and tell them that your preference is to cut the pensions of 330,000 people, rather than fix the superannuation of a small amount of people.

We have got a very simple message for those opposite: get your hands out of the trouser pockets of the pensioners of this country; get your hands out of their handbags. Do not pocket the pension. Make sensible changes to the retirement income system in this country so that a small number of the wealthiest super accounts are fixed and so that we do not smash the retirement incomes of 330,000 good people, who have done the right thing their whole lives. They have paid their taxes, they have raised their kids, they have put them through school and uni—they deserve, and they will get from us, the respect and the dignity that they have earned in this community.

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