Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This bill will reintroduce a number of measures that were previously introduced in the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 1) Bill 2014 and the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 2) Bill 2014.

Most of the reintroduced measures are from the 2014 budget. The first will, from 20 September 2014, rename the clean energy supplement as the energy supplement, and permanently cease indexation of the payment.

The second budget measure will implement two changes to Australian government payments—pausing indexation for two years from 1 July 2015 of the assets value limits for all working age allowances, student payments and parenting payment single, and pausing indexation for three years from 1 July 2017 of the assets test free areas for all pensions (other than parenting payment single).

From royal assent, disability support pension recipients under age 35 will be reviewed against revised impairment tables and the program of support requirements applied.

From 1 January 2015, the bill will limit the six-week overseas portability period for student payments.

The bill will also include amendments that generally limit the overseas portability period for disability support pension to 28 days in a 12-month period from 1 January 2015.

Amendments will exclude from the social security and veterans' entitlements income test any payments made under the new Young Carer Bursary Programme from 1 January 2015.

Untaxed superannuation income will be included in the assessment for the Commonwealth seniors health card (with products purchased before 1 January 2015 by existing cardholders exempt from the new arrangements), and the portability period for cardholders will be extended from six to 19 weeks.

From 1 January 2015, relocation scholarship assistance for students relocating within and between major cities will be removed.

In the last of the budget measures, three family payment reforms will be implemented from 1 July 2015. The first of these will limit the family tax benefit part A large family supplement to families with four or more children.

Amendments will remove the family tax benefit part A per-child add-on to the higher income free area for each additional child after the first.

The bill will improve targeting of family tax benefit part B by reducing the primary earner income limit from $150,000 a year to $100,000 a year.

Lastly, in a non-budget amendment, the bill will add the Western Australian Industrial Relations Commission decision of 29 August 2013 as a pay equity decision under the Social and Community Services Pay Equity Special Account Act 2012, allowing payment of Commonwealth supplementation to service providers affected by that decision.

I commend the bill to the House.

Leave granted for second reading debate to continue immediately.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In rising to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 6) Bill 2014 I can advise the people of Australia of good news and bad news. Let me turn to the good news first of all.

Nearly five months ago in my budget reply on behalf of the Labor Party and the people of Australia, I gave a solemn pledge to Australia's pensioners at this very dispatch box I said:

Labor will not surrender the security of your retirement.

We will fight for a fair pension.

And Labor will prevail.

Today we have most certainly prevailed. Labor has kept the faith with 3.7 million pensioners. We have kept our promise to Australians who have worked hard all their lives, who have paid their taxes all their lives and who have made a contribution to our communities, to our nation and to their own families.

In the five months since the Hockey-Abbott budget my colleagues and I have travelled the nation talking with older Australians, and they are worried. They are deeply worried about the effect of this government's plan to cut up to $80 a week from their pension. They know this government lied to them before the last election. They promised, right up to the very end of the election period, that there would be no cuts to pensions. Now they are worried that because of Prime Minister Abbott, Treasurer Hockey and the gang who sit in government that they will not be able to afford to cool their home in summer and to heat their home in winter. They are worried that they will not be able to buy their grandkids a treat. They will not be able to take their pet to the vet.

Let us be clear: these Australians that Labor fights for do not think that the world owes them a living. They do not seek a life in the lap of luxury. They do not live on a king's ransom. These Australians that Labor fights for have worked for everything they have, and it is their hard work which has made our nation great. They have stood up to the Abbott government's cruel cuts to their security and to their dignity, and they have prevailed. I say on behalf of Labor to the pensioners of Australia: this is your victory over Minister Kevin Andrews and Tony Abbott. This is your victory and this is the government's defeat.

Today, the government has finally faced up to the reality and they have faced the facts: this Prime Minister has no mandate for his cruel cuts to pensions and no amount of headshaking by the Minister for Social Security can make black white. There is no mandate. Tony Abbott's broken promises to aged pensioners, disability support pensioners, carer payment recipients and veterans has been exposed and it has been defeated.

Let me just say at this point my congratulations to our shadow spokesperson for pensions and families, Jenny Macklin the member for Jagajaga. Every political party in Australia wishes they had one like her, but Labor does have one! Thank you and well done!

What she and all my colleagues behind we have done is expose the plot of the Abbott government to take $23 billion away from the age pension over the next 10 years. They have exposed this plot. Question time after question time, the opposition has asked the Prime Minister, 'Why are you cutting the indexation rate of pensioners?' And all this mealy-mouthed mob opposite ever do is say, 'Pensions are going up!' What a cheap stunt this mob opposite are. They think the people are as stupid as they believe them to be.

We all know that by reducing the indexation rate of pensions they are cutting the real pension by up to $80 a week. And no matter how often that rotten bunch of twisters opposite say these things, it does not make it true. I love this mob opposite! They are always saluting the flag—they are at every parade possible. They love our veterans, they say, except when it comes to the veterans' pensions. It is Labor who has stopped a $65 million cut to war pensions. There are 280,000 people receiving a pension from the Department of Veterans' Affairs: 140,000 service pensioners and 84,004 war widow and widow pensioners. These pensioners were going to be up to $80 per week worse off over the next 10 years, but Labor has won the battle for them; just as they have represented this country, we have kept faith with the contract that we should look after them in their later years.

And we have stopped the plot to increase the age pension eligibility age to 70. This mob opposite say, 'Well, we are all living longer so everyone should work longer.' What a bunch of rotten twisters! The biggest injury this mob opposite will ever face will be a paper cut! And yet they ask every other Australian, whose bodies may be weary and worn out, to keep working. To show the rottenness of increasing the minimum retirement age to 70, it will mean that we have the highest pension age across the OECD. Why is it that this is a government that always asks the most vulnerable to do the hardest and heaviest lifting? If we had used this tortured analogy of our windbag Treasurer Hockey about 'lifters and leaners', the lifters are everyone in Australia—except the Liberal Party. They are just the leaners sitting opposite.

And when they talk about lifting the eligibility age to 70, they are so incompetent. They cannot even work out that most workers comp jurisdictions in Australia only go to the age of 65 or 67. So they want people to work to 70 and yet they have made no provision to lift workers comp, making it impossible to employ many people to the age of 70. But that is a mere detail for these dilettantes opposite. They would not know how real people earn their money.

Then, of course, there is the family tax benefit B changes. Because of Labor, more than 700,000 single-income and single-parent families will not lose their family tax benefit B over three years as a result of the savage cuts that Tony Abbott tried to inflict upon families merely because the youngest child is over six years old. There are 700,000 single-income and single-parent families who are going to have their payments kept safe because of the Labor Party.

And, of course, one of the meanest dog whistles—and this is a government addicted to dog whistles; they have never seen an issue they cannot got the dog whistle out on—is their attack on young job seekers. They probably like to demonise—we know they love to—and stigmatise groups in this community. I suppose that is a topic for a later time. But what they are doing with young job seekers under the age of 30 is that they are so enamoured of dividing this society they wanted the young unemployed to go six months without an income.

Of course, we saw people desert the sinking ship of this idea on the weekend. We do not know if it was an elegant leak from the Minister for Social Services; he said it was not him. Well who was it? This is not a game of Cluedo, government. We know who it was; we do not need to have the guessing games. It was the Treasurer and the Prime Minister. I do not know if they have set the Minister for Social Services up as a patsy; I do not know if he is their bunny or if he is their brain surgeon. Whatever the description, the outcome is the same: they wanted to attack young job seekers.

So there are 100,000 young people who will not have to face six months of poverty. We know that the coalition's plan is not earn or learn; it is earn or learn or starve. They want to create a divided society where our young are sleeping over the grates to get warm, where they are begging, where they are forced to do even worse things just to make ends meet. This is a government—they love families so much they want to privatise the cost of people to the age of 30 back to families. It is a disgrace, and Labor have stood them up.

What I said though is that there is good news and there is bad news. The good news is that Labor, being a strong opposition, have looked the government in the face and we have not blinked. We have seen the worst they can throw at Australian pensioners and we have prevailed on behalf of Australian pensioners. Unfortunately, there is one dirty deal that is still sneaking through. The Liberals have an addiction to lecturing us about working with the Greens, but they cannot wait to slip out behind the bike shed and do a deal with the Greens. And the dirty, dirty deal they have done with the Greens—you don't have to look too sad, Kevin; this one is probably not your brainchild either—I am afraid to say, is to scrap the senior supplement. That is anyone who has a Commonwealth seniors health card.

This is a government that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. As of last month, annual payments for people who are eligible for Commonwealth seniors health card were worth $886.60 for singles and more than $1,300 for couples. Just so we clear up who these forensic detectives are chasing down the welfare borrow: to be eligible for this you have to earn less than $50,000 a year; you are not someone who is getting a pension. People earning less than $50,000 a year in their older years who do not get a pension are not that well off, but they are obviously too rich for the taste of these Liberals opposite. What a shame these people do not have $2 million in super, then they would get a kickback from this government. And what is happening is that the couples who earn less than $80,000 a year do not get a pension. There are 280,000 people—once upon a time this arrogant mob opposite might have said, 'These are the Liberal heartland.' Not any more, ladies and gentlemen, not any more.

The next payment was due on 20 December. Clearly this is a government who has succeeded with the Greens—because the Greens do not necessarily understand how middle-income Australia lives; their voting base sometimes is the well-off too. But what we see here is an unholy coalition of the extreme right and the Greens combining to mug 280,000 Australians. Don't you love this silent minister for immigration at the table, head buried in his notes? What a disgraceful deal, and no doubt there are people in your electorate, courtesy of your deal with the Greens, who are going to be losing money. Well done, Scott; another good day at the office!

As I said, there is good news and there is bad news. We have the dirty deal done with the Greens and the Liberals. I know they do not do—of course, why did I know they would do a deal with the Greens? Because Tony Abbott promised they would not do it before the last election. How do you know Tony Abbott is making a promise he is going to break? You watch his lips move.

What we say to pensioners in Australia is that unfortunately Joe Hockey, a bit like that Japanese lieutenant who was found in the mountains of the Philippines in 1974, is never going to give up the war. He is never going to give up the war against the pensioners. The Treasurer sees his budget as a war on pensioners. I am afraid to say that this morning this arrogant government, this most arrogant, out of touch government, has again tabled legislation seeking to resuscitate all of these dreadful cuts, which we have stopped this time. They want to bring it on again. They are an arrogant government. They are refusing to accept the verdict of the Australian people. If Labor were being selfish, we would say it is a good thing they have brought them on because it keeps reminding Australians what they are like. But I actually wish this government would stop torturing and hurting 3.7 million pensioners and making them unsure about their income security.

Now the Treasurer has said that he will not give up his war. Give up his war? Who is this man to say he is at war with Australia's pensioners? That is not why people voted for him. The Prime Minister yesterday in question time—not once, not twice, but on eight different occasions—said he was committed to all of his broken promises. He was committed to making sure that they would try this stunt of attacking ordinary people, average-income earning people, pensioners; he would keep trying it and trying it. And of course the finance minister did not want to be left out of this farce. He stands by it too.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What does the Assistant Treasurer say?

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We don't know. But when the government unveiled their attacks on pensions, we said that if they wanted to rip away the pension they would have to come through the Labor Party. You would have to come through the Labor Party, we said. All Australians know that the Liberal Party and their country proxies, the Nationals, have tried their best to come through the Labor Party to attack 3.7 million pensioners. But I can report to the parliament and to Australia they have failed on this occasion. We have met them and we have defeated them.

And we will make clear again that this government's retreat from this destroys the credibility of the budget and it destroys the credibility of the Prime Minister. It has taken the Prime Minister more than four months to realise that this unfair budget was not going to wash with Australians. It took Labor four minutes; it took Australians four minutes. But make no mistake: these arrogant characters who sit opposite, who believe they have a born to rule mentality to make whatever decisions they can, inflicting pain and hurt on ordinary Australians, are introducing these measures again. Tony Abbott wants to cut your pensions. Tony Abbott wants to cut the funding to schools and the funding to hospitals. He wants to cut billions from schools and hospitals. He wants to increase your taxes. He has not given up on his GP tax. He wants to make you pay more for going to the doctor when you are sick.

The real solution to defeating these people and their rotten measures is not just defeating their legislation, as we have on this occasion, it is to defeat Tony Abbott. As long as Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party occupy the benches of government and occupy the seat of the Prime Minister, Australians will always have to fear these people coming after their pensions. We did not ask the Liberals to make pensions an election issue. We did not ask them to do that, but they have and so we will answer them and we will prevail.

Do not look at what this Prime Minister says, look at what he does. He breaks his promises and he lied to people before the election. They have their plans for Australia—their rotten, nation-dividing, impoverishing plans, picking on the vulnerable, unfair changes without a mandate—they have them in the top drawer. They have not put them in the bin. What Australia needs to do is put Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party in the bin of election politics, because that is the only way we will stop these people.

Look at the Minister for Immigration giving me one of his stares!

Mr Morrison interjecting—

It is the 'Minister for Homeland Security' now—whatever your title! We had better check with the foreign minister, Sunshine. Returning to the topic, the current Prime Minister—

Mr Morrison interjecting—

We could call you the alternative Liberal Prime Minister—whatever you want to be called, General! But what I say to you is that we will fight these changes.

Today we have had a victory and pensioners have had a victory. Today the government has retreated in the face of public disapproval and the combined weight of outrage and the voice of ordinary people, and if we want to defeat these pension changes again—which they are so eager, so hungry to bring on—then we will defeat them at the election.

Make no mistake, Australia, this government wants to cut the indexation rate of pensions. They want to cut the rate of pension payments to veterans. They want to change the payments which go to young people under the age of 30 looking for work. They want to go after family tax benefit payments to hundreds of thousands of Australians. This is a government that has no plans for the future other than dividing this country, making the vulnerable pay more, and creating a lack of confidence in the high street of Australian small businesses by their attacks on the pensions. The good news is that we have won today, and the better news is that at the next election we will hold this government to account and we shall succeed in our arguments there too,

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a humiliating back down from this government we have seen today! Never before have I seen such a shambolic budget mess—shambolic, absolutely shambolic. We had a budget brought in by the Treasurer in May this year and from budget night the Labor opposition has made it absolutely clear that we would fight these pension cuts every day until we defeated them. And today is that day. This government has been forced to back down and acknowledge that they cannot get these cuts through the parliament.

We have also said every day since budget night that we would stand with Australian families and fight for the $7½ billion that they want to take out of the pockets of Australian families. Today, Labor has prevailed on behalf of Australian families. We know how hard it is for Australian families to make ends meet, but what does this lot opposite want to do? For an ordinary family, a single-income family on $65,000 with a couple of kids at school, this government's budget would leave that family $6,000 a year—each and every year—worse off. That is exactly what this minister, who claims he stands up for families, wants to do. The reality is of course that he wants to strip 10 per cent of those families' incomes. That is what this budget means in real dollars for those families.

But as we said on budget night, the cruellest measure of all in this budget, a measure that we could not actually believe when we saw it in the budget papers—because never before has Australia's social security system seen such a cruelty—was the decision by this government to say to young Australians under the age of 30, 'If you cannot find a job and if you cannot find a training place, then we are going to leave you with absolutely nothing to live on.' What are they going to live on? They are saying to young Australians that for six months they will have nothing to live on. Then they will be told to go and work for the dole and, if after that period they still cannot find a job, they will go on nothing again. That is what this government is trying to introduce. Today Labor has said to this government that these measures are cruel and we will not support them and we have protected some of the most vulnerable people in this country. We have campaigned with pensioners—

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

Mr Deputy Speaker Broadbent, I rise on a point of order on relevance. The bill, No. 6, is about specific matters that the Labor Party is supporting. Neither the Leader of the Opposition nor now the shadow minister have addressed any of the issues in the bill. We have been very tolerant. Leaders of the Opposition are often given a great deal more latitude than others, but the shadow minister should actually address the provisions in the bill, that are the ones the Labor Party are supporting, and so far she has not spoken to any of those at all.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Leader of the House for his contribution.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Just to pick up on the Leader of the House's point, Labor indicated our position four months ago. Four months you have had to figure out what you had to do to get agreement to the measures that Labor said we were prepared to support. But no, they are far too arrogant for that. They come in here today and finally present the bill that we are debating right now that does contain measures that Labor said four months ago we were prepared to support. But because of their arrogance, they were not prepared to come and have a discussion and figure it out. They were actually forced to this position because they knew that their bills were going to go down completely in the Senate and they would have ended up with nothing, absolutely nothing, if they proceeded with their genius strategy in the Senate.

Fortunately, we have got to the point where Labor has agreed to some sensible changes, and Labor has always been prepared to support sensible changes. But we will never support cuts to the pensions. We will never support what you want to do to young Australians, which is to leave them on their own and to say to them that they will have absolutely nothing to live on for six months. We will never support saying to families, 'We will take family tax benefit part B off you when your youngest child turns six.'

What does all this mean for their budget? Of course what it means for their budget is that they will never get these measures through. They have reintroduced them again today to try and keep the numbers in their budget, but the truth is that when we see their budget numbers we all know that those numbers are inflated. What we have proven in this parliament yesterday and today is that these measures will never, ever get through Labor. Labor are going to do everything in our power to stop you cutting the pension, to stop these massive cuts to family payments and to stop the cruelty of your attack on young Australians. We will do everything to stop these measures. I sincerely hope for the most vulnerable Australians that Labor will continue to prevail.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You would hardly know from the speech of the Leader of the Opposition or the speech of the shadow minister, the member for Jagajaga, that today the Labor Party in this House will pass a series of significant reforms for social security in this country and that those reforms will pass through the Senate and, in doing so, will amount to a saving of $2.7 billion to the budget. One would hardly know from having listened to the rhetoric of the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow minister that they are actually supporting the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 6) Bill 2014.

What are they supporting in this bill? Let me reiterate what this bill actually does. Firstly, it renames the clean energy supplement as the energy supplement and permanently ceases indexation of that payment. The Labor Party is supporting that measure. Secondly, it is pausing indexation for two years from 1 July 2015 of the assets value limit for all working age allowances, student payments and parenting payment single and pausing indexation for three years from 1 July 2017 of the assets test free areas for all pensions other than the parenting payment single. From royal assent, disability support pension recipients under the age of 35 years will be reviewed against revised impairment tables and the program of support requirements will apply. This is a measure which was promised in the budget and that will now pass this House not only with the support of the government but also with the support of the Labor Party—even though you would never know it from listening to the previous speeches.

From 1 January 2015 the bill will limit the six weeks overseas portability period for student payments. The bill also includes amendments that generally limit the overseas portability period for the disability support pension to 28 days in a 12-month period from 1 January 2015. There are further amendments. Untaxed superannuation income will be included in the assessment for the Commonwealth seniors health card, with products purchased before 1 January 2015 by existing cardholders exempt from the new arrangements, and the portability period for cardholders will be extended from six to 19 weeks. From 1 January 2015 relocation scholarship assistance for students relocating within and between major cities will be removed. And in the last of the budget measures, three family payment reforms will be implemented from 1 July 2015. The first of these will limit the family tax benefit part A large family supplement to families with four or more children. Amendments will remove the family tax benefit part A per child add-on to the higher income-free area for each additional child after the first. The bill will improve targeting of family tax benefit part B by reducing the primary earner income limit from $150,000 to $100,000 a year. These are significant measures in this bill. The government introduced in the budget this year—

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, am I allowed to ask the minister a question?

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Chief Government Whip, under an intervention you are allowed. You have been misbehaving, so I would say that this is a continuation of that.

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Probably. I merely want to know whether it will be enough to pay off Labor's debt.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry. I have to ask the minister whether he is prepared to accept the intervention.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will take the question from the Chief Government Whip: will there be enough to pay off Labor's debt? Sadly, no. And we did not hear one mention of that by the Leader of the Opposition, because basically he is still in denial. He is in denial about the state of the Commonwealth finances that they left at the end of their term in office. We are galloping towards $123 billion of accumulated Commonwealth government deficits—the product of the previous Labor government. We are on a trajectory to $667 billion worth of Commonwealth debt—the trajectory left by the previous Labor government. We are paying in interest alone $1 billion per month and, if we were ever—God forbid—to get to $667 billion worth of Commonwealth debt, we would not just be paying $1 billion a month but we, as a country and as taxpayers, would be paying $3 billion a month in interest. That is the sad legacy of Labor in office. This government—unlike the kindergarten capers we had from the previous government—is committed to restoring the finances of the Commonwealth of Australia so that Australians can have financial security into the future. This is an important part of that. Secondly, we believe that Australians who are capable of working should be encouraged to be in work and not to be on welfare. We do not want to condemn people to welfare for years and, in some cases, decades of their lives, but instead encourage them to be in the workforce and be part of the productive part of this nation. That is why these measures are important.

We are glad that the Labor Party is prepared to support $2.7 billion worth of savings—not that you would have understood that from the speeches from the Leader of the Opposition or the member for Jagajaga—that are part of these measures. The other bills which have been reintroduced today have been reintroduced in a way in which we expect—with further consultations, negotiations and discussions with other members of the Senate—will also be able to achieve some further changes from the past. On that note, I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.