Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

We will be supporting these amendments that have come back from the Senate. We say to the Minister for Social Services: you've already broken your commitment to Australians. You promised to deliver this much sooner than you did. The mismanagement we see from this minister, the mismanagement in the Senate and indeed the mismanagement in the House means that Australians are waiting longer. The minister can seek to try to blame the Senate, who voted for these very sensible amendments. On behalf of the coalition, I commend Senator Dean Smith, who moved a number of these amendments and subsequently amended the bill as passed by the Senate.

The amendments give rise to several coalition initiatives, and we congratulate the government for adopting these coalition initiatives—although we don't congratulate them on being on a go-slow in delivering them. Firstly, these amendments double the age and veteran pension work bonus scheme, the amount that can be earned without impacting pension payments increasing from $300 $600 per fortnight. It also ensures that working pensioners can continue to accrue the unused work bonus scheme income up to the cap of $7,800, exempting future earnings for pension income test purposes. This proposal was announced by the Opposition Leader on 26 June 2022, and was primarily aimed at getting older people back into work and encouraging them back to work or to work longer hours to help ease labour shortages. The minister, who was on the go-slow, did not see the urgency of those labour shortages, and we now find ourselves in the position where, instead of just adopting and accepting the proposal put forward by the opposition, in a pig-headed and stubborn way, the government sought to do it in a different way. The Senate has rejected that.

Secondly, these amendments ensure that pensions will be suspended for up to two years if they exceed the income cap, during which time pensioners will undergo a simplified process to resume their pension once their income falls to the relevantly prescribed level. Both age and disability support pensioners will be able to keep their pensioner concession card for two years as an acknowledgement of, as we said before the election, the importance of the concessions that the PCC offers. Pensioner partners of working pensioners will also enjoy the same pension and PCC arrangements.

We see here a government who promised to deliver this much more quickly. Seniors have had to wait for this to be introduced. It was three months late when it was introduced and now it's five months late. Sadly, the minister has failed those seniors. A majority of the Senate have supported these amendments, and we will therefore be supporting these excellent amendments put forward by Senator Dean Smith on behalf of the coalition.

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