Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Batman, like a number of seats in Melbourne, is a working-class area. It's a proud Labor area. It's one of the areas that really stood up and fought, with working people who fought for the pension. That's part of the proud Labor and union legacy.

But what do we have coming from the Greens? We all remember what the Greens did: they voted with the former Prime Minister and the Liberal government to cut pensions. They cut the pensions of people who live in the seat of Batman. The Greens voted with the Liberals to cut the pensions for 330,000 pensioners, by up to $8,000 for single pensioners and $14,000 for couple pensioners. Yet the Greens seem to think that people are going to forget this. The Greens seem to think that the working people today in Batman who will retire in the next 10 to 20 years are going to forget that it's the Greens that voted with the Liberals to cut their pensions and to force them further into poverty. Those are the priorities of the Greens; they're the wrong priorities of the Greens. And then we have the candidate for the Greens saying, 'We might just increase the pension.' That's not anywhere in their policy document; there is no commitment whatsoever to increasing the pension—another thing that they have thrown out. Only Labor and Ged Kearney will stand up for the pensioners and working people in Batman. Only they will protect the pensions of Batman.