Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

including 55 per cent of those receiving Newstart allowance, 51.5 per cent of those receiving parenting payment, 36.2 per cent of those receiving disability support pension, 24.3 per cent of those receiving carer payment and 13.9 per cent of those on the age pension. People are doing it tough when they have to depend on social security.

In my electorate, pensioners Kaye and Barry Smith live in Buckland, and they told the local newspaper that even a 15 per cent hike in power bills—and they are going up more than that, generally, across the nation—will cost—

Mr Taylor interjecting—

Well, you talk to some of the people who came to my office today: 250 per cent gas bill increases under your government's mismanagement. A 15 per cent hike in their power bill will cost Barry and Kaye Smith an extra $300 a year, an extra cost that they say they cannot afford. In their words:

We would be struggling to have to take a huge increase in power at this time of our lives …

We have to put away nearly 300 [dollars] a fortnight and that's to cover our gas, our power, our water and our rates and that doesn't cover our private health fund or ordinary living expenses. …

We own our own home, we don't have huge debts but even so we can't take huge power increase considering the pension has only gone up $5 a fortnight each.

There is a $16,000 tax cut coming for millionaires, and five bucks for pensioners. Woo-hoo; you blokes are great! Mr Smith said that the couple already had to stick to a tight budget, and:

If you're careful with your money you can survive but … you can't afford to waste it …

Is that really the best we can do for our pensioners—to give them enough to scrape by on, to pay them just enough to keep them from going hungry? I think we can do better.

But what is this bill all about? It is broken into two parts, a once-off Energy Assistance Payment to 1.7 million age pensioners and people on the disability support pension, parenting payment single and veterans payments—notably, not Newstart recipients—and the reinstatement of pensioner concession cards to more than 92,000 pensioners. First the EAP—well, let's be clear: this bill is a shallow attempt to distract Australians from the fact that this government still wants to axe Labor's $365-a-year energy supplement to new pensioners. We are not going to stop payments to people who need them, and we all know that energy costs are skyrocketing and that this government is simply failing to act.

In Tasmania, residential energy pricing rose by 46.5 per cent from the end of 2007 to July 2016, far outpacing other household economic indicators, like wage growth. Even the Tasmanian Liberal government—not well known for its insight—has listened to the state Labor opposition on skyrocketing power prices that are crippling families and small businesses. Unfortunately, the state liberal government solution is not a long-term policy but, like this $75 one-off payment, it is a politically motivated 12-month freeze on power prices. Tasmanian Labor leader, Rebecca White, says that long-term certainty is needed and I agree wholeheartedly with her. These one-off short-term proposals are not the future solution that we need. Rebecca White could be talking about this government—cynical, short-term decision making on the run that is designed to get passed an election.

Labor will vote for this bill because at the least—and it is the very least—it will put $75 into the hands of pensioners. But if anyone here seriously thinks it is going to be regarded as manna from heaven, they are sorely mistaken. Power prices are doubling and tripling and this payment will barely scratch the surface. It is $1.44 a week, or 20c a day—it is better than nothing, but only just.

The real story of this bill is the government's determination to try to axe Labor's $365 energy supplement to new pensioners. The government will no doubt point to this one-off payment to say, 'See! It's not needed. We're doing something—we're looking after pensioners.' But axing the energy supplement to new pensioners will both create a red-tape nightmare and, worse, entrench inequality. ACOSS notes in its submission to the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017 inquiry, where the $365 cut was first touted:

… rather than applying only to new income support claimants, it would apply to anyone who started receiving a payment from 20 September 2016. These people would therefore experience a loss in income. Cessation of the supplement would also create two levels of payment because most existing recipients would continue to receive the supplement. This would create inequity as two people in the same circumstances would receive different rates of payment and would add further complexity to an already complicated income support system.

It is a one-off payment that will not help with the ongoing rises in energy pricing for our communities' most vulnerable.

As for the pensioner concession card, I am very happy to see it come back. It should never have gone out in the first place! On 1 January this year more than 92,300 former pension recipients and 3,600 veterans who received payments lost their pensioner concession cards and their eligibility for payments. In my electorate of Lyons, 1,460 pensioners were made worse off by these cuts, and for two years Labor has highlighted this issue. This government has come late to the party.

It is Labor, boosted by the hard work of Australian pensioners and their advocates, that has forced the coalition into this backflip. So it is a victory, and we welcome it. But it is another embarrassing backflip for this government. The 1 January date was not just about pensioners and veterans losing some or all of their payments, the biggest impact was the loss of the pension card. Without the pension card you cannot access discounted medicines, discounted dental treatment, discounted council rates, discounted water bills, discounted electricity bills, discounted registration, discounted public transport, reduced driver's license fees or a $52 a year subsidy to assist with heating costs. Those all went out the window for people on low incomes because of this government's abject stupidity and meanness. In some cases—in many cases—those changes whacked a couple of thousand dollars in bills onto people who were already on very tight and stretched budgets.

In the 2015 budget speech, then Treasurer Joe Hockey said that anyone who currently had a pensioner concession card would continue to receive a concession card that provides the same benefits, such as subsidised utilities and transport. He said that in his 2015 budget speech. But it turns out that Mr Hockey misled pensioners, and now the government has had to scramble to fix the problem.

We should not be surprised; this is the same government born from the lie that said no cuts to pensions, no cuts to health and no cuts to schools. And yet here we are, four years later, with this disgrace of a government. We are backing this bill—we will welcome any increase in payments to pensioners—but it really is nothing to be proud of.

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