Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

He wants another go! Keep interjecting, because I will keep reminding people what you voted for—that you wanted each and every one of the pensioners in Hindmarsh to be $80 a week worse off. The recent cut in the assets test also went through this House with the vote of the member for Hindmarsh. There was no warning before the last election. That was yet another broken promise by the member for Hindmarsh. Don't worry: all the pensioners in Hindmarsh know all about it.

Last year, we had a different Treasurer who liked to go on about lifters and leaners. No doubt the member for Hindmarsh agreed with the previous Treasurer that somehow the pensioners in Hindmarsh were leaners and deserved to have their pension concessions cut. The South Australian Labor government did not agree with that view. Labor did not agree with that view. We think that pensioners deserve support. That is why Labor governments do things to help pensioners and not the reverse.

Everybody here wants to try to forget that the Liberals tried to cut $1.3 billion from pensioner concessions. But I remind the member for Hindmarsh and every single member of the Liberal and National parties that pensioners have not forgotten. They have not forgotten. They know that each and every Liberal and National Party member of this parliament voted for the $80-a-week cut to the pension over the next 10 years with reductions to pension indexation. Pensioners will not forget that. They will not forget that this government wants to increase the age pension age to 70, which would mean that this country had the oldest pension age in the developed world.

Pensioners also will not forget that this Liberal government tried to cut the deeming thresholds for pensioners, which is another way to cut the pension. The member for Hindmarsh voted for that as well. Pensioners certainly will not forget the latest Liberal Party betrayal, which was the cut to the pension assets test. Three hundred and thirty thousand pensioners across Australia, quite a few of them in the member for Hindmarsh's electorate, are all going to be worse off because of this latest cut to the pension.

Labor opposed these measures. We understand how important it is to support pensioners. We understand just how critical it is, wherever pensioners are living. Whether it is Hindmarsh or in other parts of Australia, pensioners know that the only party that they can rely on is the Labor Party. It was the Labor government that delivered the most significant increase to the pension since the age pension was first introduced, more than 100 years ago, and it is only Labor that will make sure that pensioners are better off.

Pensioners understand that they have been completely lied to by Liberal Party and National Party members, including the member for Hindmarsh, who told them before the last election that they would have no changes to their pension. Plainly, that is not true. Pensioners in South Australia are very pleased that the South Australian Labor government has provided this new $200 payment to pensioners. Labor, in the federal parliament, welcomes this measure and it also welcomes the exclusion of this income from the means test for social security and veterans' affairs payments.

See this speech in context