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

Let me begin by observing that this is a time of great uncertainty for the financial future of older Australians. Senior Australians who are reliant upon income from shares have seen the value of those shares plummet over the last six months or so and have great uncertainty as to whether the dividends from those shares will maintain the incomes that they have become used to. For senior Australians who are largely dependent on the pension there is, of course, the Harmer review, which is currently before the government. It is said that the Harmer review will recommend a substantial increase in at least the single rate of the age pension. This raises all sorts of questions about what might happen to the single rate of other pensions, it raises all sorts of questions about what might happen to other pensions and benefits and, of course, it raises the biggest question of all: how is any massive increase in the rate of the single pension going to be paid for at a time of great pressure on government revenues?

To increase the single rate of the age pension alone by $35 a week would cost $1.7 billion a year. To increase the single rate of all pensions would cost well over $3 billion a year. In a situation where the government has spent $42 billion in one hit on the so-called stimulus package, in a situation where the budget position has moved from a $22 billion surplus to a $22 billion deficit in about eight months, the ability of the government to afford this kind of generosity towards pensioners is under enormous question. The Harmer review was delivered several weeks ago to the government. It is, as I said, strongly rumoured to recommend this very large increase in the single age pension. What the pensioners of Australia and senior Australians would like to know is: what else does the Harmer review recommend? I think it is scandalous that the government is not releasing the Harmer review so that senior Australians and other people with a legitimate interest can actually consider this, debate it and mull over it well in advance of any decision that the government might make.

Of course, there are rumours now circulating amongst senior Australians that one of the changes that the Harmer review recommends to help pay for this generosity to single age pensioners is to include the family home in the assets test. We certainly have had bodies that are thought to be close to the government and influential in the Harmer review process say that family homes worth over $1 million, which in Sydney is a very, very large number of homes indeed—or at least it was before the Rudd recession started to attack housing values—will be included in the assets test for the first time. So I think it is very important that this parliament and, through this parliament, the Australian population know that big uncertainties are crowding in on this area and that the government, if it is to be fair dinkum with the Australian people and if it is to be as honest as it claimed it would be pre election, really does need to put the Harmer review on the table publicly now rather than simply releasing it on budget night along with a whole lot of government decisions that will be presented as a done deal.

The Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Amendment (Commonwealth Seniors Health Card) Bill 2009 and related bill before the parliament now deals with the eligibility of senior Australians for the Commonwealth seniors health card. At present, just under 300,000 senior Australians receive the Commonwealth seniors health card, and this is a very valuable benefit to those people who have it. The Commonwealth seniors health card gives recipients access to prescriptions at about $5 per go, as opposed to the standard rate of about $31. It gives recipients access to free prescriptions once they have spent about $300 a year on pharmaceuticals, as opposed to those without the card, who get access to the $5 rate for prescriptions only after they have spent more than $1,100 a year on prescriptions. The Commonwealth seniors health card gives many older Australians access to bulk-billing, because those who hold it are entitled to the bulk-billing incentive payments, or doctors who bulk-bill them are entitled to the extra payments. It gives holders access to the Medicare safety net at a much lower rate than would otherwise be the case, and it gives holders access to the $500 a year seniors concession allowance. In recent years it has given holders access to the $500 seniors bonuses in the budgets, it gives holders access to the telephone allowance, which in some cases can be well over $100 a year, and, in many states, it gives holders access to a range of state concessions for public transport, council rates, power bills and so on.

So this is an extremely valuable concession but, as a result of the legislation currently before the House, it is proposed to be taken away from a significant number of current holders. At the moment, the Commonwealth seniors health card is available to Australians of pension age who are not receiving a government benefit with taxable incomes under $50,000, in the case of seniors, and $80,000, in the case of couples. This is very important. Thanks to changes which the Howard government made, most superannuation pensions or annuities are not taxable. Thanks to the changes in this legislation, those annuities will not be taxable but they will be counted in the means test for the purpose of access to this card. When this change was first flagged in the budget, it was estimated that some 22,000 senior Australians who currently have the card will lose it. It is possible that, at least in the short term, there will be a lower number of Australians who will lose the card as a result of this legislation, should it be passed, because of the reductions in incomes that many seniors are now enjoying as a result of changes in the share market. But the fact of the matter is that over time very large numbers of Australians who otherwise would have received the Commonwealth seniors health card will lose it as a result of this legislation which the parliament is debating tonight.

Eighty thousand dollars a year sounds like lot of money, and to people on significantly less it is a lot of money, but let us not forget that the people who have this kind of income from their superannuation only have it because they have saved and put money away during their working lives. They have paid tax on that money. They paid tax on the money often enough when it was earned, they paid tax on the money when it went into the fund, and the income of these funds has been taxed, so this is not money which has not contributed to the general commonweal. This is not just a freebie for them; this is money that they have earned. This is money that has been taxed and this is money that now, in their senior years, they are getting back.

Let us not forget that every self-funded retiree saves the community perhaps $25,000 a year, a very substantial saving that taxpayers generally enjoy because of the hard work, thrift, prudence and responsibility of self-funded retirees. So, by prosecuting this particular piece of legislation, what we really have from the Rudd government is a sneak attack on self-funded retirees. These are decent, hardworking, responsible Australians who deserve a break. They were given a break by the Howard government and they do not deserve to have it taken away by the Rudd government.

In the course of this debate, I am sure we are going to hear lengthy argument from members opposite about consistency. They are going to say that this legislation just applies the same kinds of tests to this benefit that are applied to other benefits. I have to say that that is very convenient for the government to say now, but if they had a shred of decency and honesty—if they had any real sense of honour—they would have said this before the election, not after the election. They would have come clean with the seniors of Australia about their plans before the election rather than just springing this on people in last year’s budget.

I regret to say that the Rudd government has form in this area. The Prime Minister likes to stand before us as Captain Clean or the Milkybar Kid of Australian politics saying, ‘Look, you know, I’m honest; I’m straight; I’m true,’ but the fact of the matter is that we have had a series of means tests slapped on benefits that were not flagged prior to the election. In some cases they were explicitly disavowed before the election. We have the means test that has been slapped on the baby bonus, we have the means test that has been slapped on the family tax benefit part A, we have the means test that has been slapped on the childcare benefit, and we have the means test that has been put on the private health insurance rebate. To the best of my recollection, in the case of both the baby bonus and the private health insurance rebate, the government gave explicit pre-election promises that there would be no means tests—promises that have been shamefully broken by the government since that time. They are dishonest, sneaky means tests, and this is a dishonest, sneaky means test in the tradition of the Rudd government.

I hate to say it, because I know that not all members of the Rudd government are as animated as some are by old-fashioned notions of class warfare and envy. I see the minister for small business and deregulation at the table this evening; his title is no doubt soon to be changed to ‘minister for even smaller business and re-regulation’ in the wake of the Prime Minister’s Monthly essay, which sings the praises of regulation and denounces deregulation as some kind of noxious neoliberalism. To his credit, the member for Rankin, the minister for small business, has always been, at least by comparative standards, a voice for economic sanity inside the Australian Labor Party, so I suspect that there is much which dismays him in the current direction of the government, but that is what we have.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Dr Emerson interjecting

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

I am very happy to engage in further praise of the member for Rankin, because the last thing I would want—from a political point of view, anyway—is to see the Rudd government attending to the better angels of its nature rather than to those who mostly seem to rule amongst members opposite. This is bad legislation, it is dishonest legislation and it damages the very instincts and elements in our society which a decent government should encourage. It is bad legislation. This opposition will certainly be opposing the legislation both in this House and elsewhere.

I say in wrapping up that the principle of this legislation is bad but that the application of it is going to be quite uncertain. Many self-funded retirees need to take lump sums out of the capital of their superannuation because, for argument’s sake, they have an unexpected major expense. There has been some talk from the government that in that situation the money that they take out will not count towards this new means test, but I have to say that all of the inquiries that the various seniors organisations have been directing to this government have not elicited clear, precise, certain responses, so I think not only that this is bad legislation but that it could provide for a whole lot of very inconsistent and erratic treatment of people who are caught up in it. It did not take long for the Rudd government to revert to Labor type. We had the Prime Minister throughout 2007 claiming to be an economic conservative and saying that there was not the thickness of a cigarette paper between the economic policies of the then Howard government and those of the then opposition. I have to say that the longer the Rudd government lasts the less like the Howard government it looks, the less responsible it looks and the more like the Whitlam government it looks. This is certainly in keeping with that not especially honourable tradition. This bill should be opposed.

Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The shadow minister, in talking about and raising the issue of what was taken to an election, is exhibiting the absolute height of hypocrisy. Just across the corridor, in the Senate, we have a debate right now about killing off Work Choices and making sure that it is gone forever. It was the Howard government that, before the 2004 election, never mentioned a word about these absolutely major changes affecting all working people across Australia. It is the absolute height of hypocrisy for the shadow minister to come to this place and accuse the Rudd government of misleading or not being open and transparent with voters before the 2007 election. The Rudd government has been open and transparent, and one of the things that we have been open and transparent about is that we know that seniors and pensioners have been doing it tough. In relation to that, we have taken the position that we need to be looking at how we can assist. In October last year the first stimulus package fairly and squarely went to providing some assistance to those pensioners and carers who have been doing it so tough.

What is the opposition’s position? Originally, when there was debate about pensions we had all this confected anger—confected concern for pensioners—and a call from the then opposition leader for a $30 a week increase. When the October stimulus package was announced, the then opposition leader—because there had been a change by that time—said, ‘We support the stimulus package because we think it is doing the right thing.’ However, it did not take terribly long for them to walk away from that position. If we listen to what they are saying today, and have been seen saying now for many months, almost every contribution from those opposite is in opposition to the stimulus package. So one has to ask: exactly where is the opposition in relation to support for seniors? The shadow minister spoke about this era of uncertainty crowding in on seniors in Australia. The ‘crowding in of uncertainty’ has been generated in some sense by the shadow minister, and his contribution today did nothing to dispel this uncertainty. Scaremongering about the family home is what he contributed here today. He is raising totally unsubstantiated issues and throwing them into the mix.

Last year the opposition was calling for a $30 increase. The shadow minister is now asking, ‘Can we afford to do anything for pensioners?’ The opposition has moved very rapidly from its position of: ‘We care for seniors. We care for pensioners’—because it saw some political gain in that argument at the time—to one of: ‘We do not even support the one-off payments that they received last year. We do not support a process of review of the pension, and whatever that review is going to recommend we do not think it can be afforded anyway.’ The position of the opposition in relation to older and senior Australians is totally disgraceful.

Amidst the uncertainty there is one thing that is quite clear: that this side of the House, the Rudd government, is there with pensioners and seniors assisting and making sure they get the maximum assistance they can while they are doing it tough. We have put processes in place to review the pension. We have made one-off bonus payments and this stands in such stark contrast to the performance of the opposition, who wax and wane depending on which votes they are going to gain in the contest for leadership in the Liberal Party. They have tried to use the pensioners and seniors of Australia for internal political purposes. That is a shameful thing.

I rise in support of the Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Amendment (Commonwealth Seniors Health Card) Bill 2009. The bill implements a 2008 budget measure to change the adjusted taxable income test for the Commonwealth seniors health card. The measure introduces similar treatment of income sources for people claiming the Commonwealth seniors health card to ensure that income received by all seniors is treated in a similar way and to ensure that the income test is applied to all cardholders consistently. The change will apply to the seniors health card issued under either the Social Security Act 1991 or the Veterans Entitlement Act 1986. The seniors health card legislation needs to be in place to give Centrelink and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs the authority to gather the required information from customers by May 2009 to enable implementation from 1 July 2009. The information to be gathered is new information that has not been requested previously from this group. All cardholders will be required to reply regardless of whether or not they have the relevant income.

In my electorate of Dobell on the New South Wales Central Coast there are nearly 17,000 people aged 65 or above. Senior citizens play a very important part in the community of the Central Coast. Nearly every week I attend a function or an event which senior citizens are closely involved in. Recently I was at the gala bowls day held at The Entrance. Nine bowling clubs from the Central Coast were in attendance. I must say it was a very enjoyable afternoon where I was introduced to bowls for the first time. But the purpose of the gala bowls day was to recognise the work that these senior volunteers had done in their particular sport to make sure that the district lawn bowls could take place. At this event I was able to present a large number of volunteers—almost all of them seniors—with certificates of appreciation. Without these senior volunteers these sorts of events would simply not be possible. The gala bowls day is just one example of how seniors are active in the community in my electorate. Look at any group of volunteers and see how many seniors are involved.

Another great example of senior citizens being active and involved in my electorate is the Toukley Senior Citizens Centre. This is the biggest senior citizens centre in the Southern Hemisphere. At one stage it had over 6,000 members. The number is slightly less than that at the moment, but it is an extremely large senior citizens centre that provides a whole range of services and activities for senior citizens. It is one of the places I go very regularly because not only do you get some great advice from our senior citizens but you are also able to interact with them and see the wonderful job that they are doing, the way in which they are keeping so active in the community and the contribution that they are making to it. Hospital auxiliary groups which are in all hospitals—at Wyong Hospital in my electorate—do an absolutely tremendous job. These are senior volunteers working in my community.

Seniors also play a very strong economic role in the community. The Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy will know—because he made an announcement of funding for the Central Coast Business Enterprise Centre of some $2 million, which is the first time that these business enterprise centres actually received any federal funding—the role that seniors play in mentoring other businesses on the Central Coast. It is a tremendous role that seniors play in my community on the Central Coast. So the senior citizens on the Central Coast are—

Debate interrupted.