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

I am speaking today on the Social Service Legislation Amendment (Budget Repair) Bill 2015. Only the Liberal Party would have the audacity to come into this place and put forward a bill with the words 'Budget Repair' in the title, because for the last two years this Liberal government has done absolutely nothing to repair the budget. In fact, the deficit has doubled during their time in office. That is right: the budget deficit has doubled under this Liberal government's watch. Yet they come in here day after day and lecture the Australian people about fiscal responsibility.

It takes a special kind of audacity for the Minister for Social Services to come in here and talk about the need for fiscal restraint. The Minister for Social Services was of course the Treasurer of Western Australia between 2010 and 2012. Today, Western Australia has a budget deficit of $3.1 billion. That is the Minister for Social Services' legacy to the people of Western Australia: a $3.1 billion deficit. This is the man who as Treasurer of Western Australia mismanaged one of the greatest mineral booms in history and left the Western Australian people with a deficit of $3.1 billion. So, every time this Minister for Social Services preaches about the need to cut support to pensioners or people with disability or young people—because we have to be fiscally responsible—we will be reminding him every single time of his record of economic incompetence in Western Australia—a $3.1 billion deficit that the Minister for Social Services left behind in Perth. He has no credibility whatsoever when it comes to budget repair.

Labor understands how important it is to repair the budget, but you have to do it in a way that is fair and equitable. The Liberals' approach, whether it was under the member for Warringah, Tony Abbott, when he was the Prime Minister, or the latest Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, is to make unfair cuts affecting low-income and middle-income Australians. We know that the latest thing they want to do is increase the GST to 15 per cent—a regressive tax that will make the cost of everything go up and will hit low-income and middle-income earners the hardest.

On the other hand, Labor thinks we should make multinational companies pay their fair share of tax. We think that we should end the unfair and unsustainable superannuation tax concessions for the very wealthy. Labor will oppose this bill today. We will oppose each and every one of the measures contained in the bill, just as we have opposed them on previous occasions. I will go through the reasons why. People might remember that these cuts have their origins in the 2014 and 2015 budgets. The bill proves that it does not matter who the Liberal Prime Minister is. This Liberal government is intent on hurting low-income and middle-income Australians.

The first measure in the bill proposes changes to the proportional payment of pensions outside Australia. In other words, the Liberals want to make it harder for some pensioners to continue to receive their full pension whilst they are overseas. Just remember that, all of you over there who have lots of pensioners who were born overseas in your electorates. This bill today is going to make it harder for those pensioners to receive their full pension whilst they are overseas. Currently, pensioners can stay overseas for 26 weeks and receive their full pension. Following that time, the pension is reduced to a rate that depends on the number of years a pensioner has worked in Australia. But, under the government's proposal that is in this bill today and that every single Liberal and National party member is about to vote for, from January 2017 that 26 weeks will be reduced to six weeks. If the government gets its way, after six weeks overseas, some pensioners will have their rate of pension reduced. Labor oppose this because we think it unfairly punishes pensioners who choose to spend a period of time overseas, possibly for visiting family.

As the Chairperson of the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia, Joe Caputo, has said, 'pensioners born overseas often need to travel overseas for extended periods to stay in touch with family or to care for a sick or dying relative'. In some cases, they had never been back to the country of their birth and were going on, as they describe it, 'the trip of a lifetime'. A Melbourne pensioner, Vic Guarino, who came to Australia from Italy in the early 1960s, described the government's changes to pension portability as 'like a threat'. Mr Guarino said:

You want to go [overseas] because you want to see someone in the family that's old … My wife had a sister in Italy, she wanted to spend time with her before it was too late.

They are many pensioners across Australia who feel like they are being targeted by this government.

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