Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister and the Greens political party have made an agreement on age pensioner couples who own their own home and have less than $45,000 in their annual super losing their entire part pension of $11,400 a year. In my electorate of Melbourne Ports, 2,790 part pensioners will be affected by this unseemly arrangement between the government and the Greens political party, which will see this new round of cuts throw 90,000 older Australians off the pension entirely and cut pensions for more than 330,000 people who are in what I would describe as low-income pensioner households. As I said, an estimated 330,000 pensioners will lose their part pensions by 2017. Within 10 years, half of all retirees will be affected. Some single pensioners will lose as much as $8,000; couples might lose as much as $14,000. There will be 236,000 pensioners an average of $130 a fortnight worse off—that is $3,380 per year. A further 91,000 pensioners will lose their pensions altogether. This will leave them, on average, $190 a fortnight or $4,940 a year worse off.

The government and the Greens political party claim that this is just and fair. I can assure them that every voter so affected in Melbourne Ports and in electorates throughout the country will get to know about this. The Greens political party thought that the government had, in return, agreed to extend a tax white paper submission process by six weeks so that people could make submissions on reforming the retirement income system, including superannuation taxes. But the Australian Financial Review reports that the government, from Prime Minister Tony Abbott down, emphatically ruled out touching super this term or next. Greens leader Di Natale conceded there would be no tax changes to superannuation unless the Liberal Party dumped Tony Abbott as Prime Minister or lost the next election. He said the review would at least provide a blueprint for a future government or Prime Minister to adopt, and he accused Labor of selling out pensioners and supporting people on high superannuation. Of course I think that this is a completely dud deal. They have had some commitment to a pathetic review in which the government has already ruled out any changes to the tax treatment of high-income superannuants. The shadow minister for families, Jenny Macklin, has clearly identified that.

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