Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You would not want to challenge the Speaker's rulings, would you? I certainly do not. Eighty dollars per week, $23 billion will be ripped out of pensioners' pockets. Everybody knew it was a scam and no amount of points of order are going to change that by the so-called Minister for the Environment. No amount of spin and innuendo and trying to dance round of the facts, which we see constantly in question time, will change that. Many of the pensioners in my electorate watch question time rather diligently and they see through what the government's rhetoric is.

We know what the Liberal Party set out to seek to do and the Labor Party stood in their way and stopped them doing it. And so it was to be with part pensioners. We know, having tried to rip $23 billion out of pensioners' pockets, the government has now attempted to rip a mere $4 billion out of the pockets of part pensioners. Some of those single pensioners will be $8,000 a year worse off under this measure. Others, couple pensioners, will be $14,000 worse off a year—and those opposite want to talk about fairness. On average, 236,000 pensioners will be $130 a fortnight worse off, $3,380 per year. And 91,000 pensioners will lose the pension altogether.

The government's election promises cannot be trusted because they were a lie. Who is helping them implement this rancid, wretched agenda? They finally found the same partner they found for their wretched rejection of the Malaysian transfer agreement, the Greens. What a bunch of fools the Greens have been in this. Not only have they done a deal which undermines the pension, which sees all of this damage and wreckage to part pensioners, which facilitates the government's agenda of hostility against the pension but what did they get for it? If you listen to them, they said that the government will now look at the exploding concessions to wealthy superannuants. But if you listen to the government—the minister must have loved dealing with the Greens—he said no, we have not changed our position'.

So the question arises: have the Greens have been completely hoodwinked on this bill? I am not sure if the member for Melbourne is listed as speaking on this bill but it would be interesting to know his views. It would be interesting to know his views on the Green leadership as well—apparently he has been retired to do other projects. So we have the Liberals and the Greens doing a deal where one party says that they will look at wealthy superannuants and their concessions and the other party says no they will not. We know what will happen here. Everybody in Australia should know what will happen. The Prime Minister will say one thing about superannuation before an election. He will give all sorts of guarantees to those wealthy superannuants before the election. But after the election it will be a different story. It is either that or the Greens have been completely hoodwinked. Either it is secret deal with the Greens, under the table, some sort of arrangement after the election to remove the concessions that wealthy superannuants have—people with millions and millions of dollars—or the Greens have been completely hoodwinked. They are mugs. If this is their deal, well I have got a bridge in Sydney I would like to sell them. What a pack of mugs.

This is, I think, the great dividing line in Australian politics, the great values question in Australian politics at the moment. The question is: whose side are you on? Are you on the side of pensioners? Or are you on the side of people who are very wealthy, who are getting the biggest tax break ever constructed in the history of Federation? That is a pretty clear values proposition.

As Prof. Andrew Podger said, what the government has done is a very tough wealth tax but it only applies to part pensioners. It only applies to those people who have accumulated a bit of super, who have worked all their life, who have done their best to put themselves in a position where they are not entirely reliant on the government. And what the government will do is apply a vicious taper rate to them in conjunction with the Greens—that is who is passing this legislation—while the very rich, the super rich will get this massive tax concession and will be completely let off the hook. How could that be fair? How could that be sustainable?

It is one of two things: either the Greens have got some sort of secret undertaking out of the government to tackle these superannuation concessions or they are mugs. Because what they voted for is a tax on working people, on people who have worked all their lives, so that the very rich can skate out of the system, not just skate out of the system but get a very generous tax concession.

This is one of the great values questions in the Australian parliament and in the community at the moment. The community will rule when they look at the details—just as they did with the government's initial attacks on every pensioner—that this is an attack on aspiration and an attack on working people. It is an attack on all those people in their 50s who are about to retire. They will look at this and they will judge it for what it is: a rancid, terrible deal which attacks the interests of this country.

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