Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to enter the debate on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2019, yet another piece of Orwellian legislation. This government seems to invent weird titles to these bills to try to make itself relevant or mean anything. I want to start by commending the member for Barton and the members of the opposition who have spoken in today's debate. I think it is important that we place on record our concerns.

The old saying 'A leopard never changes its spots' is spot-on when it comes to how the government deal with pensioners and retirees in this country. Despite the government talking a big game and talking up their credentials around support for older Australians, the proof is always in the pudding when it comes to the impacts of what they are trying to do here. We've heard from a number of speakers about the wide range of voices that have concerns around this bill—organisations, peak bodies, individuals and, now, members of the opposition and the crossbench, who have also raised significant concerns.

Vulnerable and disadvantaged Australians will be worse off as a result of this legislation. Only two government speakers have had the guts to actually speak to this bill. I often say about the government: if their legislation is so good and they're so proud of it, why doesn't everyone get up and speak about it? I don't understand why, if people are in government, they don't get up and say, 'This is why we’re doing it.' It is on every single bill. If I were a member of the government, I'd just want to go in there once and say, 'Can someone explain to me why we don't ever speak on bills?' Never, ever is there more than one or two speakers. Why? It's so weird. I can tell you now that, if the Labor Party ever has the privilege of being in government, I'll want to sing from the rooftops about what we're doing. It's common sense, right? I can see the member for Mallee over there saying: 'I guess he's right in some ways. I don't know the answer to that.' But she's a good person and she may have the answer and she can tell me one day when we're in a lift together.

This legislation will have a huge impact on pensioners and those on Newstart. It was first introduced in 2017. It was a bad bill then and it's a bad bill now. All the bill does is introduce cuts to vulnerable Australians, including increasing the residency requirements for age and disability pensioners from 10 to 15 years; stopping the payment of the age pension supplement after the recipient has spent six weeks overseas, as we've heard from a number of speakers—and I want to touch on that, representing a multicultural and diverse community myself; and extending the liquid assets waiting period that applies to Newstart, youth allowance and other allowances. All up, it will rip around $185 million from the pockets of Australian pensioners.

These cuts were announced by the then Treasurer and now Prime Minister in the 2016-17 MYEFO and the 2017-18 budget. There was even a third iteration, in the last parliament, which was the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Payment Integrity) Bill 2017, which the government never brought on for debate. The only word I can think of when it comes to these sorts of cuts by the government is 'obsession'. This is a deep-rooted obsession whenever things aren't going their way. At the top of their list are pensioners and vulnerable Australians—people who are doing it tough, day in, day out. This government want to hit them even harder. On this side of the House, we've fought against these types of cuts before, and we will keep fighting against them, because it's the right thing to do. Where is the fairness in targeting those who have the least to give? Pensioners are our oldest Australians, who've worked hard their entire lives. They have built this country. They've saved and scraped every penny and dollar. And now this government and this Prime Minister say: 'That's not good enough. We're changing the rules.'

If passed, this bill will significantly impact older Australians who want to visit family overseas or need to spend an extended time overseas caring for relatives or grandchildren. It is simply not good enough. Migrant pensioners who have worked hard in Australia and have built a life here should be able to get the pension. In my electorate there are 60,000 people who were born overseas—a very large multicultural community, including a very large Vietnamese Australian community. Family is central to the Vietnamese community in this nation. They value their intergenerational links, and it is a beautiful thing to be part of and to witness—families supporting each other, back in Vietnam and here in Australia. This is part of the Australian fabric, because we are a multicultural society, and of course it is widely expected that people will return home to their place of birth to spend time with their family. But this government doesn't agree that this is a fact of life for many migrant pensioners.

Portability of the pension is a cornerstone of the Australian social security system. When the pension is your main source of income, consistency and reliability of the pension are absolutely fundamental to live week to week, and making people wait longer to get on the pension will only force some Australians to go without, struggle or live in poverty. I'd like an explanation from the government on why these changes are necessary. What is the reason behind this? Are they saying pensioners are ripping off the system, that it's too generous or that we feel that people shouldn't go to see family after six weeks? Just say it. Admit it. Don't hide what you're doing to pensioners behind these weasel words.

We've seen enough over the last 6½ years to know that going after pensioners is in the DNA of this Liberal-National government. They've tried to cut the pension and increase the pension age to 70 in every budget. We heard the Treasurer maybe a couple of weeks ago talking about people working longer—all the shifty, weasel language trying to soften the electorate up. We know it's been their policy for more than five years to increase the pension age to 70, and you can bet your bottom dollar that secretly it still is. Why on earth would bills like this continue to be brought before the House?

I want to say that, when its comes to the Liberals and Nationals, the number of ways they've attacked pensioners and tried to get their hands in pensioners' pockets make a long list. I'm glad the second reading amendment has been moved by the member for Barton, because I want to place on record again these deep cuts that the coalition has tried to deliver to pensioners.

In the 2014 budget they tried to cut pension indexation—a cut that would have meant pensioners would be forced to live on $80 a week less within 10 years. This would have been ripping about $23 billion from the pockets of all pensioners in Australia. In the same budget they cut $1 billion from pensioner concessions—support designed to help pensioners with the cost of living. They axed the $900 senior supplements to self-funded retirees receiving the Commonwealth seniors health card. They tried to reset deeming rate thresholds—a cut that would have seen around 500,000 part pensioners worse off. The next year, the Liberals did a deal with the Greens to cut the pension for around 370,000 pensioners by as much as $12,000 a year by changing the pension assets test. They followed it up in the 2016 budget when they tried to cut the pension for around 190,000 pensioners as part of a plan to limit overseas travel for pensioners to six weeks. They also tried to cut the pension for over 1½ million Australians by scrapping the energy supplement for new pensioners. The government's own figures show that this would have left over 563,000 Australians who are currently receiving a pension or allowance worse off, with this number increasing to in excess of 1½ million pensioners being worse off in 10 years time. So it's crystal clear that this government will go to any lengths to target pensioners when they're looking for money.

This leads me to the disgraceful practice I spoke about in the House last week: the robo-debt program run by the government and last week found to be illegal by the Federal Court of Australia. I want to underscore the importance of this, as my office, like many others around the country, has been inundated with calls and emails from pensioners coming in with letters that have been sent from this government, telling them they owe money and, 'If you don't pay up, we're coming to get you.' These families and pensioners—grandmothers and grandfathers—have worked their entire lives, paid taxes and done the right thing only for this greedy and selfish government to use some sort of back alley type of behaviour to scare people into paying money they simply don't owe. I said it last week and I'll say it again this week: not one of the members of the government has the guts to get up and say: 'Look, we oversaw a program that was wrong. We apologise'. 'Sorry' is always a hard word to say, but when I grew up I was told that, if you made a mistake, you were man enough to own up to it and you apologised.

I don't know why this is all so hard for the government. I don't know why it's all so complicated and it's all so difficult, because this happened. This isn't spin. This isn't made up. And the best we get from the government on this issue is to say, 'Well, Labor sort of said it was a good idea 8½ years ago'. Imagine telling that to someone in my office who was given a debt of $6,000. Imagine telling someone, 'I know you're a pensioner and you don't owe a dollar, but we're going to make you prove that you don't.' Is it any wonder that we found out that what the government was doing was illegal?

When it comes to pensioners, people seem to be scared to the bone and don't know what to do, so it's no wonder this government is bringing in legislation and nobody wants to speak about it. You can see the financial pressure that pensioners are under. You can see the financial stress and strain of the cost of living. We've got the highest energy prices that this nation has ever seen. Now, in the seventh year of this government, we're seeing everything go up and up and up but we're seeing cut and cut and cut from this government when it comes to pensioners.

It wasn't long ago that we learnt from a leak that the government was around $600 million short on its budget savings and was looking for ways to catch up, which involved capturing pensioners and other sensitive groups with robodebt. We know that was in place, but we also know that Newstart is central to this piece of legislation. I want to talk about this briefly in the time remaining. People currently claiming Newstart, sickness allowance and youth allowance must wait up to 13 weeks to access the payments if they have liquid assets—for example, savings or a redundancy payout of $5,500 for a single with no dependant or $11,000 for a person with a partner and dependants. Under this legislation we are debating—well, this side of the chamber is; that side of the chamber is too afraid to get up and defend its actions—now the government wants to extend the maximum liquid assets waiting period from 13 weeks to 26 weeks for claimants with liquid assets of more than $18,000 for singles or $36,000 for couples and people with dependants. It's not just cash in the bank. According to the department, liquid assets include some payments that are made or are due to be made by the person's last employer; amounts deposited or lent to banks or other financial institutions, whether or not the amounts can be withdrawn or paid immediately; assets given to a son or daughter in some circumstances; loans to other people; and compensation payments.

As the member for Isaacs indicated in his address to the parliament today, this is a government that is in search of every nook and cranny of pensioners' pockets and of those doing it tough. We know that, for middle-aged and older Australians, re-entering the workforce can be particularly difficult. The largest single group of people on Newstart is not teenagers or people who the government would like to frame as 'leaners' or whatever their revolting language is about people social welfare; it's people who are 55 years old. We know many middle-aged and older Australians have recently been made redundant from industries that they've spent their whole lives working in. They will require a bit more time to retrain and upskill. So what does the government want during this time? It wants to make it harder for them to receive the support they need. The number of Australians over the age of 55 on Newstart has skyrocketed by 45 per cent under this government. The cost of essentials is skyrocketing, electricity prices are increasing and child care has become unaffordable under this government. Rather than this bill coming in here to make life easier, it's making it tougher for those who can least afford it.

I simply say this to the government. First of all, start defending your policies; actually get up on your feet and explain to the Australian people why you are making these changes. If you're a government backbencher and you were proud of this legislation, you'd be advocating it. You'd get up and say, 'This is what we believe in.' Second of all, if you can't do that, stop attacking pensioners and those on low incomes. Go back to the drawing board and start coming up with policies that will actually help Australians, not hurt them.

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