Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be in this place to ask a question of the minister. I don't think I've ever seen so many people in the Federation Chamber. I will provide the question first and then list the reasons why. My question to the minister is: why has this government sat on their hands in delivering increased work bonus caps for aged pensioners who wish to work to alleviate cost-of-living pressures?

Back in June, the Leader of the Opposition proposed a policy that would benefit older Australians while plugging a gap in the workforce market—namely, that there should be an increase to the work bonus income cap to double its current level, taking it from $300 to $600 per fortnight. This was widely acknowledged as sensible at the time. Subsequently, on 3 August, Senator the Hon. Dean Smith, a Liberal senator for Western Australia, introduced a private senator's bill entitled Social Services Legislation Amendment (Enhancing Pensioner and Veteran Workforce Participation) Bill 2022, which contained this very policy.

Please pay particular attention to the dates that are being mentioned here in June and August. In the first week of September, Labor held the national jobs summit, and we waited with bated breath for a response from the unions and Labor to advise us of their silver bullets to solve the workforce shortages and secure sustainable wage growth for both the short and long term. This came some four weeks later, when, on 28 September, a renamed workforce incentive bill was introduced to the House.

I took particular interest in this claim when the Minister for Social Services stated, in reference to the Jobs and Skills Summit, that:

During this consultation, stakeholders and peak bodies representing older Australians advised that many age pensioners and other pensioners over age pension age are motivated to contribute to the workforce and are an underutilised group …

Four weeks later! Well, that golden revelation must have been a complete surprise considering we'd already put a bill forward outlining exactly that two months prior! And for the minister to state upon the second reading that the skills summit 'presented an enormous opportunity to examine potential solutions' was indeed a stretch, even for Labor! There was an enormous missed opportunity to pass a bill that outlined almost identical but stronger measures in the prior financial quarter rather than allow another quarter to lapse without effective action. I won't labour any longer on the failure for Labor to deliver 'a watered-down version of a coalition bill'.

The first two schedules in the latest workforce incentives bill replicate almost identically the measures provided by the coalition's earlier bills, and we waited an additional financial quarter to see this introduced! Where this bill differs in schedule 3, which takes the coalition's version of doubling the pensioners' work bonus per fortnight and reduces it to effectively increase it of over just 50 per cent, let's be frank, it hardly has the same kind of driving incentive to rejoin the workforce—does it? And this third schedule outlines the aforementioned reduction available only on a temporary basis to 31 December 2023, so it's available for just over 12 months. Comparatively, the coalition alternative could have been passed in September—not late November—and then being available for a longer period for an annual review.

I will ask the minister again: Why has this government obstructed and delayed the introduction of the increased work bonus cap for aged pensioners who wish to contribute further to the workplace across the nation? What do you say to the aged pensioners in my electorate of Cowper who have waited a further two months to access additional employment income to pay for their higher bills? Why has the government rejected access to an ongoing higher work bonus cap from January 2024?

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