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

I rise tonight as the member for Lalor very pleased to join the debate on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017, with an opportunity to talk about the pensioners in the electorate of Lalor. I would assert that like most pensioners across Australia, these people have worked hard all of their lives and have made their significant contribution to our country. Many have raised families, many have gone without to ensure that their children had a better start in life than they did. Many have worked long and tireless hours. It is my opinion—and I know it is the opinion of those on this side of the House—that our pensioners deserve the deepest respect. They also deserve to have a dignified retirement.

I rise tonight to mention how, critically, the hallmark of this government since it came into power in this country, and the thing that has been the most insulting they have done, has been to put aged pensioners into their bucket of what they describe as welfare recipients. In my view, and in the view of those on this side of the chamber, the aged pension is not welfare. It is a hard-earned entitlement in this country. Pensioners across this country deserve our respect. That is why this legislation is so disappointing.

We all remember the 2013 promise by the then Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, saying there would be no cuts to pensions. And we know what followed that. Time and time again, this government has attacked pensioners and has tried to claw back funds to fund its largesse to the big end of town through the pockets of our pensioners. Tonight's legislation is about this government cleaning up a mess that it created itself by making a promise—former Treasurer Joe Hockey made a promise—that pensioners would not lose the pensioner concession card. Then, of course, what we found was that they actually did. Either he was too lazy or, as usual, the legislative agenda of those opposite was a complete mess, and his promise fell off the workings of the legislation that they brought into this House. We are here cleaning that mess up tonight. How long has that taken? That is the question that the pensioners in Lalor are asking. They are asking me, they are asking members opposite. How long has it taken for you to clean up this mess after you ripped away their rights to the pensioner concession card without negotiations with the states and the territories, and without even really understanding what that meant in their lives on the ground. It meant that they would not get the concessions that they had been getting in different states for different things at different values, which make the complexity of it difficult to go into the detail of. But you can bet your bottom dollar that every pensioner knows exactly what they missed out on when they lost their pensioner concession card. They know to the letter, they know to the cent and to the dollar what that cost them. Of course, they live frugally. So we are here to clean up that mess.

Also, with this piece of legislation, we are being asked to embrace a one-off energy assistant payment of $75 for a single pensioner. It is a once-in-a-lifetime offer, while, at the same time, we know that this government wants to cut the energy supplement of $365 every year for every pensioner. For the last four years, I have sat here and listened to those opposite rail about the increase in electricity prices. Their hypocrisy stands exposed before us tonight because we know their intention is to cut that energy supplement of $365 a year to pensioners. They know the cost of electricity, but they want to take away pensioners' assistance to meet those costs and pay those bills.

We will support these changes, because the measures in this bill will help to relieve some of the pressure that this government has placed on elderly Australians, but it does not mean that we do not see through this government. It does not mean that we will drop our guard and believe that they suddenly believe in a fair society. It is clear that this government does not understand fairness. There is no lens through which you can see that more clearly than being here tonight and listening to this debate. We know that because, although they were here a few weeks ago crawling backwards out of the chamber as they repealed their zombie cuts, they left two. For a thousand days they argued for those, many of which were attacks on pensioners. For a thousand days they walked into this chamber and argued for these measures, and then they had to take them back. And when they did, they did not take them back because they had changed their minds. They told us themselves that they removed those measures from the legislative agenda because they could not get them through the Senate, not because they had changed what they believe, not because they suddenly saw the light and saw that pensioners needed more support. No—they did it because they could not get it through the Senate. But they have left two, and the worst of those two is the notion that people will not be eligible for the age pension until they are 70.

In the electorate of Lalor the median weekly rent is $280. We only have to say that, in one of the most affordable communities in Victoria, to know that that means a single aged pensioner renting is paying 60 per cent of their pension on accommodation. You only need to look at that one statistic to understand what this means in terms of their level of being able to access things in our community. Time and time again this government has brought into this House measures that would be real cuts to pensioners.

I am reminded that it was a Labor government that last gave pensioners a pay rise. It was a Labor government who saw the need and did those things, and it is a Liberal-National government that is intent on putting their hand into pensioners' pockets to take things from them. In 2014 the Liberals tried to cut the pension indexation and leave pensioners $80 a week poorer over 10 years. That should not be a surprise, when we know that they also support a $77 a week pay cut to people who will lose that through penalty rate cuts. We remember when the Liberals tried to reset the deeming rate thresholds, changes that would have negatively impacted half a million part pensioners. Who could forget when the assets test changed and the goalposts were shifted for hundreds of thousands of pensioners who had carefully planned for retirement. Almost 100,000 retirees lost their pension and many more had their payments reduced.

This government comes in here tonight and asks us to support them to clean up their mess. On this side of the chamber we will do that, but we will not be foxed. We know what is coming. We know that they will bring back the clean energy supplement to have it cut and taken away from pensioners. When electricity bills are rising, the irony is almost too much. We know that as a government they are set on reducing the cost of providing for pensioners across this country, pensioners who deserve our respect, who deserve a dignified retirement, who deserve not to be scrimping week to week in fear that there will be changes come through this parliament that will once again reduce their capacity to live at any level of acceptability.

It is almost unbelievable that this government is persisting with the second of those zombie measures—raising the age pension age to 70. It is unbelievable, until you cast your mind back to this week in question time, when Minister Porter stood at that dispatch box and talked about unemployed people over 55 and the fact that he felt that they were not looking for work hard enough.

In my community, I have met lots of people who have lost their jobs post 50. I see the pressure on them and the stress on them. Many of them are suffering from mental health issues, as a result of the loss of self-esteem and the loss of security from the loss of their job.

This government persists in wanting to punish those who need our help the most. Tonight, it is pensioners. And it is the government trying to clean up their own mess. It is a shame, and this government should hang its head in shame.

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