Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to join this debate on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Budget Repair) Bill 2015 to stand up, as I always do, for my community and to oppose each of the measures contained in this bill. It is not surprising that this government needs a budget repair bill, but not as is claimed for anything that it can attach to the previous government—because this government, of course, has doubled the deficit and is struggling with that narrative. It is struggling to convince the Australian public that that is not the case, when every day in this place we see that it is the case.

Not unusually, in introducing this bill the government is once again attacking the most vulnerable Australians. We on this side of the chamber will stand and defend the most vulnerable Australians. This bill cuts support to Australians who have worked hard for their entire lives. It cuts support to people who have made contributions to their families, to their communities and, indeed, to the nation. It seeks to cut support for pensioners. Let us be clear, front and centre, what this legislation is about. It is about repairing the government's issues and repairing the government's doubling of the deficit by cutting support to the most vulnerable in our communities. That is what this bill is about. This bill targets seniors. It targets the most vulnerable.

Let us have a look at this government's record of the last 2½ years. This government's record on pensioners is appalling with cuts that they have tried to get through this parliament since 2013. Every time that they have come into this chamber to attack pensioners and to cut their living wage we on this side have stood up to defend those pensioners. We have had some success. They wanted to introduce cuts to pension indexation—cuts that would have seen an $80-a-week cut to the pension over 10 years. There were cuts to 330,000 pensioners through changes to the pension assets test. There were cuts to pensioner concessions through $1 billion worth of cuts. That was, if you remember, part of their shift of the blame and the cost to the states.

Probably the most venal thing was the government's wanting to increase the pension age to 70, making Australia the only country in the world with a pension age of 70. They were expecting that people who had worked hard all their lives in manual labour could continue to do that until they were 70. It is an important point to note because it goes to the logic behind all of their cuts. As we go to the detail in this bill you will also see that they want to cut support to our seniors and cut support to pensioners who would like to continue their journey of lifelong learning. They want to cut the support that would allow an age pensioner to engage in education. So you would have to work until you were 70 and then, once you were 70, you would be discarded on the scrapheap. You could not go to university, you could not re-engage, you could not decide, with support, to continue your lifelong journey in education. These cuts go to the government's attitude to the senior members of our communities. It goes to the members of our communities that have given so much to those communities.

The first measure I will talk about is the cuts to support pensioners who spend time out of Australia. The government are now seeking to reintroduce a measure from the 2015 budget that changes the proportional payment of pensions outside Australia after six weeks—currently that change is made after 26 weeks. The crux of the first measure in this bill is that the Liberals want to make it harder for some pensioners to continue to receive their full pension whilst they are overseas. Currently they receive the full pension for 26 weeks, but the pension will be reduced to a rate that depends on the number of years a pensioner has worked in Australia. The government are proposing that from January 2017 that 26 weeks will be reduced to six weeks. This unfairly punishes pensioners across the country, but it particularly punishes pensioners in my community. It punishes those who choose to spend a period of time overseas visiting family. This has particular impact in multicultural communities, obviously. It is important to remember that 40 per cent of our pensioners were born overseas. In my community there is large number of pensioners who were born overseas.

As the member for Jagajaga mentioned, the Refugee Council of Australia has had something to say about this. It is opposing this measure noting that, due to numerous problems with family reunion programs, refugee community members are often required to travel overseas for long periods of time to visit their relatives. This is particularly important for those people who may have sick or dying relatives in secondary countries of asylum. The assumption that some people may be making that journey to return to their birth country is just not accurate. It could be that as someone who came to this country as a refugee and is now a citizen has a sibling, perhaps in New Zealand, that they want to care for. This legislation would be punitive to those wanted to do that.

Clearly the migrant and refugee communities are very much opposed to this change. If you think about retirement, you think about the one big trip. If you are taken away from caring for a relative, you can think about that one big trip. And, as the previous member said, if you think about the global nature of our modern lives and the amount of travelling Australians, whether they were born in this country or in others, then this bill seems out of whack with our cultural expectations and with the new, modern world. We are great travellers. We have many citizens who have family living in other countries. As pensioners they are not wealthy. This bill means they can visit relatives at no loss for six weeks, but to avoid that loss they must come home after that. This might be fine for the wealthy who can afford the next plane trip, but others may have spent their savings on airfares for their one big trip. Now that one big trip will have to be limited to six weeks before you incur a loss.

This government does not seem to grasp what Australians value. They value family. They value weddings. They travel for funerals. They may travel for an impending birth. They may be going overseas to support a family member who has had a child, to do some caring for that child. Now that will incur a loss, if it is for longer than six weeks. But, most critically, are those areas of caring responsibilities—where this will limit their ability, without loss, to go and care for a relative overseas. It comes down, as do most things in this chamber, to this government's priorities and to where fairness comes into those priorities. And fairness does not seem to be a priority for this government. They say they have a budget problem, and their answer to that is to place punitive measures on the most vulnerable in our community.

This government does not like to limit its attack on the vulnerable to just the elderly. The bill also includes the abolition of the pensioner education supplement, which I referenced earlier—a small payment of a maximum of $62 a fortnight that this government is hell-bent on cutting. It is hell-bent on cutting support for someone to engage in education—not just cuts in schools education, not just cuts in TAFE, not just slashing support for apprentices; the elderly cannot get educated in this country, either. It speaks volumes of their attitude to education and learning. The pensioner education supplement is a payment of between $31.20 and $62 a fortnight, depending on the levels of study, to help pensioners, disability support pensioners and carers who are studying. It provides a small but important payment to help with the costs of study and can be used to purchase study aids and items such as textbooks, academic resources, printing, transport and internet connections.

Again, the punitive measures come through here; the anti-education. There is nothing new here—it just reinforces the attitude this government has. It reinforces the message to our pensioners, to those people who have given so much in this community, that 'You are finished. You have nothing more to contribute.' This again sends them the message that they do not deserve the dignity of a decent retirement.

This measure will see around 47,000 recipients lose their supplement. It will hurt those who have decided, quite admirably, to improve their financial position, possibly to broaden their minds or to broaden their horizons through the power of education.

The third measure in this bill seeks to abolish the education entry payment, a payment that goes to recipients of Newstart, the parenting payment, partner or widow allowance. In 2013-14, about 87,000 people received this payment. This, too, is a payment designed to assist vulnerable people with study costs. This government's attitude to education and the most vulnerable in our community is extraordinary.

Finally, the bill also introduces a measure that was contained in the 2014 budget—you know, the 'lifters and leaners' budget; the one we all remember so well. A lot of the rhetoric from the other side of the chamber is about being agile. This certainly demonstrates agility, because we have seen this change in indexation trick before. It was also in the 2014 budget around pensions: let's just pause indexation without any reference to the loss that means to somebody's living allowance and their ability to have a decent retirement or a decent life.

This measure predominantly impacts students and some working parents on income support—again, people who are trying to make a difference in their own lives, trying to get an education, to step up, to go on to other things. Again it is that trick—and it shows agility, alright. We are going back to the 2014 budget.

This bill really goes to the heart of the way this government is operating. They have found themselves a new leader but, as Prime Minister Turnbull so eloquently put it yesterday, after 141 days nothing much has changed. This piece of legislation before us today confirms exactly that: the leader has changed, but the strategy has not. They are still going after the most vulnerable, they are still coming after Australia's pensioners and they are still going to punish the most vulnerable to make up for their lack of vision and for their doubling of the deficit. They need to treat pensioners with respect. They need to treat the most vulnerable in this country with respect. I oppose this bill, as do all members on this side of the House.

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