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

Yesterday marked two years since the election of this wretched government—two years since this Prime Minister said:

I look forward to forming a government that is competent, that is trustworthy …

Instead, this Prime Minister has presided over the most incompetent and least trustworthy government since Federation, and yesterday we saw the government produce its latest propaganda document: 28 pages of absolute dross. Nowhere in those 28 pages does it mention this Abbott government's attack on Australian pensioners. There is no mention of the fact that the Liberals and the Nationals tried to cut pension indexation by $80 a week over the next decade, no mention that the Liberals teamed up with the Greens to cut the pension of 330,000 pensioners, no mention that the Liberals and Nationals want to increase the pension age to 70 and no mention that the Liberals have cut $1.3 billion from pensioner concessions.

Even now we see in this document that the government has the hide to claim credit for the current pension indexation arrangement. This Prime Minister went around Australia saying that he wanted to cut pension indexation. In fact, each and every member of the government—Liberal and National—voted to cut the indexation of the pension.