David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

My electorate of Lyne has, at least the last time I checked the website of the Department of Social Services, more pensioners that are receiving income assistance than any other electorate, so this bill is of critical importance to many in my electorate. I support the bill, but I have a few questions about it, particularly in light of the comments made by the previous speaker.

The concept that the work bonus amount is increased to $300 per week was a coalition initiative brought about by the workforce shortages as a result of COVID shutdowns and the loss of a lot of our workforce, who returned to their home countries. There are plenty of pensioners receiving the age pension or the disability support pension who would like to work. The disincentives are that if they earn too much then they will earn far less on their pension, so this increase to $300 is welcome. What we argued for is that it should go up to $600 on top of the existing $180 so that they would be able to earn $790 a fortnight without affecting their pension. I think that's a great idea because there are plenty of people who could easily exceed the $300 increase on top of the existing $180, particularly if they're doing seasonal work.

Seasonal work in agriculture and horticulture is very intensive work and some of these places are huge concerns. They might pay $3,000 a week if you're a good worker. I think they should be able to earn this rather than keeping it at this artificial income bank limit which, admittedly, is increased. It should be able to be earned at any time in a calendar year, because then we would have many more people who are receiving the age pension who would be quite happy to go off and work intensively in the harvest. That's when a lot of the regional Australian workforce is critically short. This is rather than leaving fruit on the vine or tree and having things rot which, unfortunately, has happened in this last season because there were not enough horticultural harvest workers. That's a tragedy. Increasing this by $600 a fortnight would basically take it up to the tax-free threshold.

I would have no problem if we were to introduce a scheme like they have a New Zealand. Their workforce participation by pensioners is way in excess of what it is in Australia. When you think about it, it would be good for the economy and, if they're on the age pension, but then working, they go up to the tax-free threshold and, if they earn more, they pay tax. At the moment, there's a disincentive because people start losing their pension. Let's think about it: if they're working and earning money and paying tax, then they're working to pay themselves a pension through their taxpaying. Why doesn't Treasury love that idea? It would make so much sense: businesses would be better off, the economy would be better off, the pensioners would be better off and the tax department would be better off.

But there's this idea that it's a punitive measure to take the person's pension entitlement away just because they want to go and earn extra money. There are a lot of non sequiturs in this argument, but we are left with what's being proposed. Pressure from the Leader of the Opposition, and from us before the election, to increase this work bonus allowance has borne fruit and is coming in. But I urge the government not to limit it to the end of 2023 but to keep it going ad infinitum, because we're going to have workforce shortages for years—until the normal flow of youth visas and temporary migrants who come here for a year or two and who work in various jobs in regional Australia is restored. I don't know any industry that has a full workforce at the moment in regional Australia—whether it's in on-farm or off-farm jobs; in factories or in small businesses; in retail or hospitality or tourism, you name it, there are shortages everywhere. There are so many people who are retired teachers, or just people who have worked in blue-collar jobs, who would love to earn a bit extra but don't want to work all the time. You could have people doing locums in schools, in nursing—in all sorts of industries that are critically short of skilled and trained staff. It also facilitates a lot of people who might come into a business in a training role, because a lot of people with trade skills can be of great value to a business. When you take on apprentices, you don't really get a lot of value out of them because you're tying up a productive worker in supervising them. But if you had highly skilled tradespeople coming back from retirement to do on-the-job training with apprentices, it would be good for the business, good for the retiree pensioner and good for the apprentices—they get the benefit of hands-on supervision without the pressure to just get the job done.

There are a lot of good things in this bill, but I must say we could look at this whole issue in a different light. I understand the financial departments think it is a bit of a rort but, really, the minuscule number of people who are working is a testament to how negatively it is seen. The good thing is that if they do exceed the work, they will just have their pensions suspended, not cancelled as under past legislation. That is a good initiative, and we supported that when we introduced it in the first place. I thank members of the Senate who brought this on again and led to it coming back into this House for review.

The provisions that apply to disability support pension workers is also generous—otherwise, you'll have many of these people on DSPs just surviving on the pension and not contributing at all. Obviously, if they have qualified for a DSP, they will not be able to work full-time, but when you have no workers, someone there for a day or two is a lot better for a business than having no one. In hospitality in my region, some cafes and restaurants don't open on weekends—and we're in a tourism hub—because they haven't got enough workers. It's across the board. There is a chronic and acute shortage in regional Australia. With the next picking seasons, we will have many more pensioners—the silver wanderers in caravans—turning up to work on farms during harvest because they feel they're not going to go ahead two steps earning work but then have their pension drop off over a cliff.

I commend this bill to the House, although I do recommend that the government now keep an eye on this and extends it forever. It's a step in the right direction, and when the Treasury realises how much extra growth in the economy we get because we have people working again, it may take our advice and extend it up to the full tax-free threshold, rather than this artificial low level that it's stuck at now.

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