Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will start by saying that, even though we will be supporting these measures, what the member for Richmond has said about the cashless welfare card is right. Regardless of which minister or minister's office decides to call on members of this side of the House to take down a particular post or not to advocate or not to put their views forward, we on this side of the House won't be silenced, as you heard the member for Richmond say. No member on this side will be. We know the cashless welfare card system, which we heard the member for Richmond speak about, is a system about privatising our services and making cuts to pensioners, making it harder for them. I commend the member for Richmond for not taking down the post. I guarantee you that no-one from this side of the House will be bullied into not advocating on behalf of their pensioners in their electorates.

We say these things because, as I said, even though we're supporting this bill, unfortunately this government has a very bad track record when it comes to pensioners. If you go back in history, you can see the many governments that have come to this place, whether it be Labor or Liberal. In 2008 the Labor government was the first government to ever increase the pension—that is, an actual increase, not through the CPI and systems that increase the pension for cost of living or other mechanisms that are in place. They actually put a lump sum into the pension to increase it. It was Labor that did it. Labor is the friend of pensioners and always will be.

I know this bill is about pension portability and that it refers to the rate of pensions available to pensioners overseas and the secretariat having the ability to make decisions in circumstances that are different et cetera, but, as I said, you've got to look at the record of this government. Currently we're hearing the debate about the changes to Medicare. That's something that affects pensioners more than anything else. When I speak with pensioners, one of the things on their minds is always health and health services. You can see the damage that this government has done to Medicare. I know this bill is about pension portability, but it affects pensioners' lives.

When this government came to fruition in 2013, one of the very first acts in that very first budget was to cut billions of dollars away from health. We're seeing the outcome of those cuts trickle down into the states where you see emergency departments absolutely chock-a-block with not enough beds or rooms to put patients in, not enough doctors and not enough nurses. You can't make billions of dollars' worth of cuts to health through the federal budget and not expect it to have an adverse effect in the states, where the money is being administered, put into hospitals et cetera. We're seeing this in South Australia right now, and it has an enormous effect on pensioners.

Talking about pensions, the member for Richmond talked about deeming rates and how this government tried to change them. The assets test affects pensioners who have perhaps accumulated a few savings or perhaps have a second house. The value of the assets threshold has always gone up, keeping up with inflation. This is the first government that has cut it and brought down the threshold for assets, affecting hundreds of thousands of pensioners who have lost money on their pension.

As I said, we're supporting this bill because it will allow pensioners who are stuck overseas a certain period of time in which they can continue to receive their payment before they have to be back here, before their pension is cut off. The pandemic has been a great example of this. The bill will enable the secretary of the department to make decisions based on individual circumstances.

For many Australians who were born overseas, and for Australians who were born here, being able to spend extended periods of time with relatives, with family, is extremely important. Currently, pensioners who have 35 years of working-life residence can receive the full base pension indefinitely while overseas. Pensioners with less than 35 years receive only a proportional rate. I've always been of the belief that, if you've worked and are eligible for the pension, it is your choice when you retire and, as a pensioner, decide to go from Melbourne to live in Queensland because it's sunnier or to go from Adelaide to live in Broome because of the weather. That is your right. But it is also your right to go and live in Italy or Greece or Serbia if you want to. It shouldn't be any different. This discriminates. I've always been of that belief, and I'll continue to be of that belief, because people who have worked and have paid their taxes should have the right to earn their pension and live wherever they want to. In fact, Australia saves when that happens. We've seen figures over the years that show that while pensioners are overseas there are health costs, medicine costs and a whole range of other benefits that they may not get when they're overseas. It is actually a cost saving for Australia, and it's about time we started thinking about these things and not putting pressure on pensioners.

This government has one rule for one and another rule for another. We saw in here yesterday in the debate on JobKeeper that some of the multinational companies and multimillionaire business people in this country have received millions and millions of dollars of government handouts, taxpayers' money, for JobKeeper. Yet, at the other end of the scale, we're constantly pursuing pensioners and trying to see how we can cut the pension. That's wrong. It's not on. Our pensioners, who have worked all their lives and paid their taxes, deserve the ability to retire and be confident of their pension, wherever they decide to live.

This bill will give some flexibility. We've seen during the COVID-19 pandemic how many Australians were stranded overseas through no fault of their own and couldn't come back to Australia. Some are still stranded overseas, despite the Prime Minister having said he'd have every Australian home by Christmas last year. As a result, temporary arrangements were introduced to allow extensions to pension portability—in other words, to be able to receive your pension wherever you are—meaning pensioners would be able to retain their full rate of pension whilst they were overseas for longer than 26 weeks. There are many reasons not only during a pandemic but even without a pandemic as to why people are forced to stay overseas. There could be a serious accident, for example. You could have been planning to go overseas for six, eight, 15 or however many weeks, needing to be back owing to your Centrelink obligations et cetera, but have a serious accident and be unable to leave.

We were getting calls in my office over many years from people who were stranded overseas and were fearful of their pension being cut—serious illness, the death of a family member, custody proceedings in a country in which the person is located or a legal requirement for that person to remain in that country, outside of an Australian connection with proceedings and other things. Robbery is another great example. You could be ready to leave but you're robbed and lose your passport and have to stay for an additional week or two.

So these changes are the right thing to do, to provide the ability to look at the actual circumstances of that person and why they're still overseas. But the government's taken a long time to enact measures that assist pensioners. This is a measure that will assist them. As I said, we've become very used to seeing this government trying to chip and cut at people's age pensions. Pensioners have worked very hard all their lives. Many of them have even fought in wars on our behalf. We should be making their lives simpler.

The pension is a very proud legacy of Labor. It was introduced by a Labor government so that we could ensure that older Australians could live with dignity. Pensioners have worked hard. They've contributed all their lives. They deserve dignity and respect, and they deserve a government that's on their side, not constantly looking at cutting, at chipping, at manoeuvring themselves with cashless welfare cards and a whole range of other things just so they can cut money from pensioners for the budget. On the other hand, we have a government that's given out billions of dollars to multinationals and millionaire businessmen under JobKeeper, and they turn a blind eye; they're not even interested in following up to see how they can recover some of that taxpayers' money. And pensioners paid taxes through their working lives—to be handed over to millionaires and billionaires. It just doesn't make sense to me.

On this side of the House, as we heard the member for Richmond say earlier, Labor will fight for pensioners. We will stick up for pensioners, and we will ensure that pensioners get the dignity they deserve through the systems we have so we can not only acknowledge what they've done for this nation and for the next generation but also allow them to live in dignity. Only Labor will fight for that. As I said at the beginning of my speech, when Labor was in government we were the first government to ever increase the pension—not by the CPI or other mechanisms but to give pensioners a lump sum every fortnight from thereon.

Over the past years all we've seen this government do is try to cut the pension, and we've seen it time and time again. It seems to be a national sport for the conservative Liberal-Nationals government—continually, no matter when they are in power. Whether in the Fraser years or in the Howard years, the government was always attacking pensioners first. And, as I said earlier, it's not just through the pension. Health is also very important. We've seen proposals to change Medicare, which will make it harder for pensioners to get hip replacements, shoulder replacements, knee replacements and a whole range of other things. That will have an effect on them. That is part of the pension scheme that we have, to ensure that we have a universal health system for those people who need it more than anyone. As we all know, as you age you become frailer, and illnesses set in, so older people are reliant on good government health services.

There are a whole range of things that we need to do in order to assist pensioners. We've seen this government cut the energy supplement. I know, through the pensioners I speak to in the federal electorate of Adelaide that I represent, that the supplement had been a big help to them. It was a huge help to know that you'd be getting $90-odd every so often to assist you with energy costs, with payment of bills et cetera. That is gone. With the changes to the assets test, as well, we saw pensioners who had a few savings on the side, to supplement their income, missing out on payments that they had planned on—and no-one retires and goes onto a pension or a part-pension without planning their future.

Then you have a government like this Morrison-Abbott-Turnbull government that comes in and pulls the rug out from under your feet. You can imagine someone who is retired and is getting a part-pension or a full pension, with a small accumulation of assets, and then a government comes in and changes it all. When you were planning to live on X amount of dollars for the rest of your life, all of a sudden you just get a great big chop. That's not on.

They axed the $900 senior supplement to self-funded retirees receiving the Commonwealth seniors health card. That's another one. They tried to reset the deeming rates thresholds. That would have seen half a million part-pensioners made worse off. So you've got a government that is continuously trying to cut and chip away at pensions yet on the other side is handing out billions of dollars to the richest businesspeople here in Australia and turning a blind eye to it when it's realised that that money that was given to those millionaires and billionaires was for a specific purpose: to keep people in jobs—and many did. But in some instances there was no need for it, because their businesses grew 10-fold during the pandemic. That money should be paid back into the coffers of Treasury so pensioners can have more money to live on and we can do more for pensioners with some of that money.

In 2016 we saw this government cut the pension to around 190,000 pensioners as part of a plan to limit the overseas payment to pensioners to six weeks. As I said earlier, if you're a pensioner and you decide to retire in Adelaide, in my electorate, and you want to go and live somewhere else, you should have every right to do so. This is a cruel government that's never looked after pensioners. Only Labor will look after pensioners. (Time expired)

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