Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was particularly nice. I hear the interjection from the front bench. I would come across a house with a family that had either an Italian or a Greek sounding surname. It was honestly my favourite stop because I was always greeted politely and respectfully. I can't say that was how I was always greeted at the doors, but the hospitality that was shown to me really demonstrated the wonderful communities that have been built here in Australia and the wonderful pensioners who live here. It was clear from my conversations with them that they had a deep appreciation for what this country had given to them and the hospitality that it had shown. Many of their families have ended up in multiple locations. Some kids have joined them here in Australia, many of them have families and communities overseas, and yet this government wants to penalise pensioners who spend a few weeks perhaps looking after a grandchild, perhaps supporting one of their children or perhaps going back and seeing the family they had left behind in other countries. The only inspiration and the only motivation for this government is to be cruel and to be punitive and to take $185 million out of the pockets of Australian pensioners.

The government have form. As the previous member clearly reminded us all, before the 2014 election the then opposition leader, Tony Abbott, said there would be no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no cuts to the pension, no cuts to the ABC and no cuts to the SBS, and what did we see? We saw cuts, we saw cuts, we saw cuts, we saw some cuts, and, to wrap it up, we saw some cuts. It's good to see that the Liberals haven't lost their form when it comes to cutting. They're still very, very good at it. It's probably what the Liberals do best. They know how to cut with the best of them. In 2014, they tried to cut the pension indexation. While the whole world moved around Australia's pensioners, the government tried to say to them, 'You don't need any extra money to be able to afford all the things you did this year. You don't need a little bit extra to pay for your increasing bills or your increasing food costs. No, you can deal with it.' They did that to the ABC as well. Unfortunately they were successful in cutting the indexation on the ABC, squeezing out all of the funding they possibly could. Their list of cuts in this area is long and distinguished. I won't go into many of them. But, on this auspicious day when we mark the unholy alliance between the Greens political party and the Abbott conservatives around voting down the CPRS in 2015, we all remember the famous deal that the Greens did with the Liberals to cut the pension to around 370,000 pensioners by changing the pension asset test. The Greens, in their world of unicorns and kale fairies—

Mr Morton interjecting—

I'm going to pay for that one—don't understand the needs of the people who have come to this country. It is the same motivation that we see in this bill. It is the same motivation in saying to those Australians, 'It doesn't matter that you've had a go, it doesn't matter that you've put your heart into this country, it doesn't matter that you've put your back into this country, it doesn't matter that you came to this country with nothing and you set up a life for yourselves, it doesn't matter that you paid your taxes for decades, and it doesn't matter that you as Australians have given more to this country than we could have hoped for.' It says to them: 'In your retirement, in your last few decades when you should be enjoying everything that this country has to offer, we are going to squeeze a little bit out of each of you.' It is a shame and it does not deserve our support.

But this has been a theme since we've come back to this parliament. For the six months that I've been a member in this place there has been an agenda of cruelty, an agenda of punitive approaches by this government, one after the other, where they are trying to squeeze money out of the welfare system, where they are trying to punish the most-vulnerable Australians, where they are sending debt letters to thousands and thousands of Australians who don't owe a single dollar to this government and then tweet about it in the most absurd way, saying that they want to build an 'ontology of capabilities across government'.

Well, they haven't achieved much through this bill. This bill is pretty damning, but the minister did achieve, I think, one of the highest ratios on Twitter, with 1,138 comments, compared with only 94 'likes' on his 'ontology of capabilities across government' tweet. It was quite an extraordinary tweet, and I hope his advisers at least change his password so that he's not allowed to tweet anymore, because it would be better for the entire country if we were spared his tweets. But it would also be better for the entire country if we were spared his punitive policy of sending vulnerable Australians robodebt notices. It would be better for the entire country if we were spared the sort of legislation that we see week after week from this government, looking to squeeze money out of our social services system, looking to squeeze money out of the most-vulnerable Australians. It would be better for this country if this bill, the 'payment integrity' bill, went the same way as the 'ensuring integrity' bill, defeated in the other place.

They are very quick to label all their bills as being full of integrity, yet they are very slow to bring any integrity to the way in which they conduct themselves. This bill should not pass the parliament. I do not support this bill, and it should be defeated in the other place.

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