Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Is the Treasurer aware of the apparent memory loss of the member for Petrie this morning when she conveniently was unable to recall the deficit figure in the budget? Will the Treasurer help the member for Petrie now and inform the House of the deficit figure in the budget that he could not bring himself to mention on budget night?

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Treasurer might be keen to answer that question, but I am not sure whether it is in order. The question is out of order.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, on your ruling, and which I am happy for you to revisit, the question is within the Treasurer’s responsibility. He is responsible for the budget papers. He is responsible for the deficit figure. As a member of this House, the member for Petrie was not able to recall the deficit this morning on the doors. The Treasurer has been asked if he could talk about the budget deficit figure and he appeared to be prepared to do so. I ask you to ask him to answer the question. It is completely in order.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Treasurer is not responsible for the actions of the member for Petrie and, as I understood it, the question was inviting the Treasurer to give some sort of lesson to the member for Petrie.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, the question was whether you could ask the Treasurer to inform the House about the budget.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No. That was not how you framed the question. The question is out of order.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, on a point of order: the question asked him to inform the House of the deficit figure in the budget. What could be more in order than to ask him to inform the House of the deficit figure in the budget? He did not want to on budget night and he has been protected from doing so today. If he wants to, he should be given the opportunity.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Sturt will resume his seat—and he is warned, not because he raised a point of order but for the way in which he handled himself at the dispatch box. That was not my recollection of the question. The member has indicated that he was trying to change the question to make it in order.

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I believe that Hansard will show that the question was: will the Treasurer help the member for Petrie now and—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The House will come to order. I have ruled on the question. The member for Longman has the call.

Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister outline to the House why the decision to raise the pension age is a tough but necessary reform for Australia’s long-term economic future?

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

I thank the honourable member for his question because it goes to a necessary reform in the parliament to provide the single greatest addition to the single age pension for the future. This government proudly backs what was announced on budget night to aid those millions of pensioners around Australia who will benefit from this particular reform. I noticed on budget night that those opposite said, ‘That was our policy.’ For 12 years they had an opportunity to act on the single age pension and they did absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing! Then, a bit like we have seen in the debate today in relation to infrastructure, what they have done is say: ‘We sort of meant to kind of support it. Out there in the community we are going to tell people that we really did support it, but back in Canberra we don’t want to fess up to the fact that that’s really what our position was.’

The Australian people actually see through the double standards of all of that. They saw a government here for 12 years, awash in cash, with $300 billion plus in revenue coming in off the back of the mining boom beyond the budget parameters. They see this government wrestling with a $210 billion budget revenue collapse because of the global recession, yet they see this government addressing fundamentally the needs of single age pensioners with a necessary reform for the future.

The other part of achieving the sustainability of the age pension for the future, however, is to make sure that we make retirement income policy in general, and the age pension in particular, sustainable in the long term. That is why the government have embraced a range of tough spending proposals for the budget, which we announced on budget night—$22 billion worth. These proposals are tough, they are difficult and many of them will actually cause the government considerable difficulty in our communication with the Australian public. But they are necessary for the long term because we need to make sure that, in providing pension reform for all those Australians who need that support, we are also ensuring long-term fiscal sustainability. That is why we have taken the position that we have in relation to the age entitlement for the age pension and that is why it will be moved along the lines which were outlined by the Treasurer on budget night.

On top of that, however, I noticed very carefully that those opposite seem to be wobbling around a bit on the question of the age pension. I noticed that as soon as we announced this, again, quick as a flash, the good old member for Warringah, the shadow minister for families, was up and about saying that that was his policy too. In fact he was saying they would bring in the upping of the age pension entitlement age earlier than us. I think that is accurate. I do not think I am misrepresenting you, Tony. I think I have it exactly right—he nods in agreement—that the Liberals’ position is to up the age pension entitlement age before the government.

We have said quite plainly that we think that age pensioners should be given plenty of time to prepare. That is why we will not start introducing this change until 2017 and we will therefore not bring it into full operation until 2023. The Liberals and those opposite seem to be quite uncomfortable about these dates and indicated on day one of the budget, through their relevant shadow minister, that their position was not to bring it in in 2017 but to bring it in much earlier. I take it, given the absence of any repudiation of that position, that that is the formal position of the Liberal Party.

Then I seemed to see some criticism this morning about the government’s ‘consultation processes’ on this matter. Are we beginning the great Leader of the Opposition crabwalk on this position as well? The Leader of the Opposition was always for an emissions trading scheme until one was actually introduced into the parliament. The Leader of the Opposition was always for a whole range of things including infrastructure investment until hard decisions had to be taken. The Leader of the Opposition was supporting the shadow minister for families, with whom he has such a close personal working relationship, on the question of upping the age pension entitlement age until we saw the debate beginning to unfold at the doors this morning.

The question which the nation at large would like to know is: what date will the Liberal Party propose to bring this in? Ours is plain—2017 through until fully operational in 2023—and necessary to underpin long-term sustainability of the age pension. I would say to those opposite: are we still sticking to the position that the Liberals would bring this in earlier? If so, what is the date, or is this now a matter of inconvenience, profoundly so, within the inner sanctums of the Liberal Party? Given the silence on the part of those opposite I would suggest that we are about to see a crabwalk with pike on this question. The government’s policy is clear.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education. Is the minister aware of Kieran Stubbs, a vision-impaired 18-year-old, whose family lives a three-hour bus trip away from Deakin University, where he has been accepted to study following his gap year? Given he planned his future around the rules as they were, how does the minister justify her changes to the youth allowance from 1 January 2010, which condemn Kieran to giving up his dream of tertiary education? Why should regional students such as Kieran pay the price for the government’s reckless spending?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I genuinely thank the member for Sturt for this question because it enables me to answer some of the outrageous scaremongering he has been engaged in. On budget night the government outlined some responsible reforms to student income support. Why did we do that? Because the information in the Bradley review clearly showed that this was a program that had problems with its targeting. That is, income support was going to families high up the income spectrum, including families that earned more than $200,000 a year and including families that earned more than $300,000 a year.

Faced with that, this government took the tough decision to actually better target student income support. What have we done? No. 1: most people who qualify for student income support qualify because of their family income. We have increased the family income thresholds where people will qualify. Where people would have cut out at low family incomes, now families can get support further up the income spectrum. So many families who would have been in the range of $80,000, $90,000 and $100,000 and who would have missed out under the Liberal Party’s scheme will get support under our scheme. Secondly, we have made more generous the way in which students are treated as independent by virtue of their age. Under the Liberal Party’s scheme independence was classified as being 25 years of age. We are going to phase that back to 22 years of age. Both of these measures mean more students will qualify. Yes, we have financed those beneficial changes in a tough decision by changing one of the ways in which students qualify to be considered independent and judged on their family income. In terms of the actual way in which students are treated, the ways in which students have been assessed to be independent have been changed, and that is because the evidence in the Bradley review very clearly showed that it was those work test independence ways of being assessed which were leading to this skew of students and their families getting money up the upper income end of the scale.

I have got a very clear emerging test here for the member for Sturt—and I will come to the individual example he raises in a moment. My very clear test to the member for Sturt is this—and it goes to the theme of the opposition’s attack today which has just outlined its opportunism to anybody watching or anybody listening: we have restructured these benefits so more students benefit. More than 30,000 extra students net benefit. We have restructured these benefits so that more than 30,000 students get more money, we have restructured these benefits so that tens of thousands more students get a student start-up scholarship to help with their course costs at the start of the year and we have restructured these benefits to provide relocation assistance to more people than it was available to before.

The choice here for the member for Sturt is very clear: is he going to cut all of these increased benefits in order to finance keeping the work test as it is now—I am not surprised he is running off—knowing that some of that money goes to families who earn $200,000 and $300,000 a year or is he going to make a complete laughing stock of the Leader of the Opposition by saying that we should put more money into this area of government policy? That means, of course, everything the Leader of the Opposition has ever said about debt and deficit will be viewed as a complete farce because he will have authorised one of his shadow ministers going on an expenditure blitz to blow the budget. I will wait to see which it is. I will also wait to see, when this is dealt with in the Senate, whether the word of the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Treasurer that the only budget bill they are blocking is the private health insurance bill is worth anything—another great test for the two of them and for the Liberal Party overall.

On the question of the individual raised by the member for Sturt, if he provides me with the full details, of course I will look at it, and I will look at whether or not on a proper examination of the new income tests the person he is engaged in scaremongering—the person he is frightening and the person’s family that he is frightening—is actually eligible.