Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on behalf of the 22,000 aged pensioners and around 7,000 people with disability in my electorate who receive a pension. They are deeply concerned about the government's flip-flopping on retirement income policy. Whether they are full- or part-pensioners, or whether they are superannuants, they are looking for certainty, and this Social Services Legislation Amendment (Energy Assistance Payment and Pensioner Concession Card) Bill 2017 provides none of it.

The bill has two schedules. We know that the first schedule is an afterthought and the second schedule is a complete backflip on everything the government has been doing for the last four years. Let's have a look at the first schedule.

We know that the schedule, which contains a one-off payment of $75 for age pensioners, is an absolute afterthought. It comes here not on its policy merits but as part of a deal which was put there to try to ease the $64 billion in big business tax cuts through the Senate. We know that they are deeply unpopular. We know that the Senate crossbenchers were not happy about them, because they are underfunded and unaffordable. So this was part of the deal to try to squeeze them through an otherwise reticent Senate.

The government hopes that this bill is going to distract pensioners from the cuts to energy supplements that it hopes to smuggle through in the shadow of this legislation, but we are not going to allow it and pensioners are not going to be so easily fooled. Here is why: in 2014 the coalition promised that it would reduce power prices. The only thing that stood between pensioners and lower electricity bills, according to the coalition, was the carbon price. We knew at the time that this was not true, but pensioners now know it is not true and everybody in fact now knows that it is not true, because energy prices have not dropped—they have gone through the roof. Whether it is gas or electricity prices, their mismanagement of the energy market has been an absolute disaster. It has seen prices go up and up and up, with no sign of abating.

When the carbon price was removed, the wholesale prices for electricity stood at about $65 or $67 per megawatt hour. Today, do you know what they are, Mr Deputy Speaker Goodenough? They are $134 per megawatt hour on average. That is the average national price. So, instead of going down, they have actually doubled. Against this backdrop you would think a government that was serious about looking after pensioners and people on fixed incomes would be doing something to ensure that we could help people who are struggling to pay their power bills. But instead of this we saw, this very morning, the minister come into this place and introduce legislation that is going to axe the energy supplement for 1.7 million Australians—a payment designed to help vulnerable Australians meet the cost of energy.

The bill—a $1 billion cut to new pensioners and people with disabilities, carers and people on Newstart—will see a single pensioner have their pension cut by $14.10 per fortnight, or $365 a year, a cut that was designed by this government and that is going to hurt pensioners. A pensioner couple will be $21.20 worse off a fortnight, or around $550 a year. Our friends in the coalition who have spoken in favour of this bill and will speak in favour of the pension cut bill are asking pensioners to form a line to pat them on the back and cheer for their $75 once-off payment at the same time as they are going to stick their hand in the air and vote for a $365 cut to pensions. It is an absolute disgrace, in the same week that they are claiming credit for a once-off payment of $75—this is less than $1.50 a week for pensioners—ripping away $365 for every new pensioner.

This is a government that as completely two-faced when it comes to pensions. But I can tell you, the people I represent in this place will be single-minded in their judgement of this government and its pensions policy. It is bad enough for the government to say to people who need help with rising energy costs that they are going to scrap the payments that were designed to assist them to meet those costs. It is bad enough that they are doing that, but it is made doubly worse by the fact that the government's own policies are responsible for sending energy prices through the roof.

A few weeks ago the Prime Minister promised that he was going to do something about gas prices, after sitting on his hands for over four years. They have suddenly twigged to the fact that we have a problem with the gas market in this country, which is seeing gas prices go through the roof for both manufacturers and households. The Prime Minister has promised that by July he is going to reduce the wholesale price for gas from $20 a gigajoule to bring us somewhere closer to the long-term average. Well, today industry passed a vote of no confidence in this prediction by the Prime Minister, in strongly worded statements by the manufacturers of this country, led by aluminium, but they are not alone. They have said that they have no faith in this government's ability to meet this objective. Neither do the pensioners, and neither does the Labor opposition, because we have seen them fail through their inattention and inactivity on gas prices, and we have seen them fail through their inactivity and their mismanagement of electricity policy. The lack of a long-term policy for our electricity markets and the ability to send long-term signals has led to an investment strike in new energy production, and it is this that is having a big impact on the high power prices that pensioners and other households are paying today.

The second schedule to this bill is an absolute backflip. In 2015 the former Treasurer announced in his budget changes to the income and assets test which would see a large number of pensioners removed from their pension. In an attempt to assuage the inevitable anger that those people who were being knocked off their part pension were going to feel towards the Treasurer, the Treasurer announced in his budget night speech that they would retain access to the pension concession card. We know that this was a lie. We know that this was not true. Labor have been relentless in pursuing the government to ensure that they stood true to the commitment that they gave to pensioners on budget night in 2015. Well, here we are, nearly two years later, and it has taken until now for the government to introduce this legislation, after being chased up hill and down dale by the Labor opposition and supported by those angry pensioners who have lost access and lost faith in this government. Only today have we seen the legislation introduced to the House to make good on a promise that was made two years ago by the former Treasurer. We welcome the fact that the government is finally doing the right thing, after exhausting every other option.

There are many in this place who value the important relationship that we have with our pensioners and superannuants. It is why the member for Cunningham and I, together with Labor's candidate for the seat of Gilmore, have organised over the last few months a series of pensioner forums. On 7 March in my electorate and in the electorate of Gilmore, we were very happy to host the member for Jagajaga—somebody who is respected across the aisle and around the country for her expertise and long-term commitment in this area. Over 600 pensioners and superannuants attended those forums. I can tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that is a large turnout in any electorate and in anyone's language. They were deeply concerned about the flip-flopping on policy by this government. They were deeply concerned to hear some straight information about what was going on and how they could get some certainty around pension policy in this country. Many issues were raised, such as what was happening with access to the concession card and what was happening to the energy supplements—matters that are the subject of legislation before the House today—but there were some other issues that they wanted answers on.

If you are a part-pensioner then you are acutely interested in the policy around deeming rates. If there is an issue on which the coalition government has been asleep at the wheel, it is deeming rates. There are many Australians who, if they have a mortgage, are enjoying historically low interest rates. We welcome the fact that this is assisting those people who are struggling to meet the cost of their mortgage to have more money in their pocket, because less money is going towards meeting their mortgage payments. But there is a flip side to this coin. If you are a pensioner or a superannuant who is relying on interest on your fixed capital to derive an income then the historically low rates of interest are hitting you hard and making it harder for you to earn the income necessary to meet your weekly expenses. Against this backdrop, you would expect a government that was in tune with the needs of superannuants to be focused on the deeming rates and ensuring that they were relevant with the current rates that were being earned within the investment market. Despite interest rates falling from 2.5 per cent in February 2015 to 1.5 per cent as of 7 March 2017, there has not been an adjustment in the deeming rates. Currently, a single pensioner's savings are deemed at 1.75 per cent on the first $49,200 and any amount over that rate is deemed at a rate of 3.25 per cent. The pensioners and the superannuants that I talk to say, 'If you can find a rate, if you can find a product, if you can find an investment that delivers on that, tell me about it, because there is nowhere in the market that we can get that rate.' There is a call to action for the government to do something about this, to provide some relief to pensioners, part-pensioners and superannuants, because they are struggling to make ends meet.

I have stood in this place before and asked the government to revisit its plan to lift the pension retirement age in this country to the highest level in the Western world. We thought that the deep concern within the community was going to have the government rethink its position on this, but we learnt only this week that the government is persisting with its plan to ensure that we lift the pension age to the highest level in the Western world.

Well, retiring at age 70 might be realistic if you have done office work or non-manual work for your entire life, but if you have worked with your body, if you have worked in physical labour, if you have worked as a builder, a carpenter, an electrician, a plumber or a labourer, or if you have worked as a nurse or a nurse's aide or a hospital orderly, and you have spent your entire life lifting weights, or being on your knees or working in confined spaces, or if you have worked as a truck driver and you have been responsible for lifting weights at awkward angles, you know that, by the time you are hitting your mid-60s, your back, your knees, your elbows and your skin are starting to give in. So only a person who has worked in an office all their life could say with any sincerity that you can work to the age of 70 and your body is going to hold up. People who have worked in physical labour their whole lives know that that is not true.

So again I call on the government to rethink this reckless policy, together with the other areas of their retirement, pension and income policy which are out of tune with the needs of people in my electorate and throughout the Illawarra, the Southern Highlands and the South Coast who are asking for a better deal from the government. They deserve better than the sleight of hand that they are getting through this legislation, this package of bills that is before the parliament today. The coalition have always thought that they could take this constituency for granted. That is no longer the case.

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