Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Community Services, Indigenous Affairs and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that accommodation costs in aged care facilities are a set proportion of pension payments? If the carers’ and seniors’ lump-sum payment is converted to a pension increase, as the Prime Minister thinks is preferable, will this trigger a rise in those accommodation costs? How then will the Prime Minister keep his promise to ensure that carers and pensioners will not be a dollar worse off under his government?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am always taken by a tactic employed by those opposite when they cannot get off the railway tracks; that is, we will have a series of questions on carer bonuses and pensioner bonuses and, when they get the answers they would prefer not to get, they will just keep sailing on over the cliff. As I said before, when it comes to the question of bonuses for carers and pensioners, they will not be a single dollar worse off. It will be a one-off payment within the financial year, as I have indicated before. As a consequence of that, you have a set of assurances to the country at large and to the parliament which were never in the life of this parliament provided by those opposite when it came to the provision of bonuses to carers and pensioners—not once!

I go back again to the sterling policy pronouncement by those opposite. The party of compassion was so definitively committed to ensuring that carers and pensioners had absolute certainty going into the election in November last year that, if they elected a coalition government, they would definitely get their payments. Here is what the coalition had to say to them:

If re-elected the Coalition will consider continuing to pay these bonuses, depending on the economic circumstances at the time.

In terms of the construction of weasel words, this actually deserves the Nobel prize. You have escape clauses writ large from the beginning of that sentence to the end. That is what carers and pensioners went to the last election with by way of assurance from those opposite. What they have from the government as an assurance going into the next budget is precisely that bonuses for carers and pensioners will not result in them being a dollar worse off. They will be paid within the financial year. They will be a one-off bonus. I would suggest that you consider carefully how much longer you are going to continue on this particular set of railway tracks.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I seek leave to table a transcript from 2UE’s Steve Price program this morning, during which the Leader of the House was asked: ‘So the commitment is that the $1,600 carers allowance and $500 pensioners bonus will be paid as cash this financial year?’ Albanese: ‘No, that is not the commitment.’

Leave granted.