Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I should just respond. In terms of the technicality, again, the minister said he is not going to support the principle of the amendment anyway and so it really does not matter whether it is technically correct. I disagree, because it is about the formula being published. Whether it is a transitional formula and a transitional rate, if the transitional formula is there it can be applied retrospectively. It does not matter that it applies to the transitional rate; it is simply the formula. While I am of course disappointed that the minister has taken that attitude, the people who will really be disappointed are the people who have been artificially disadvantaged in the past.

I acknowledge, Minister, and I said so at the outset, that fixing this problem will make Daryl $206.97 a week better off. But Daryl has been disadvantaged over the last decade or so by the same amount. The amount will differ depending on what the interest rates were and what formula would have been applied. So, for the minister to say, ‘It’s a matter of money—how much it is,’ means he fails to see that the object of the act was that people should be compensated by the amount of 75 per cent of normal weekly earnings. Leaving the deeming rate where it was and at 10 per cent—which could never be achieved in real terms—disadvantaged people and absolutely physically stopped the objective of the act being applied to people who had to leave work through illness or injury. So it is not a matter of giving them a gift or finding the money; this is money that they were entitled to, that the act said they were entitled to. But the way it was interpreted, the way that the lump sum superannuation payouts were treated—simply applying 10 per cent, which the government had known for many years was unrealistic and therefore inappropriate—deprived all the recipients of this benefit of getting what the objective of the act was meant to achieve.

So it is not a matter of me wanting anyone to get a gift. It is not about me wanting to make it administratively difficult for you, Minister. All I am saying is that these people had an entitlement and that, if their estates had it, their estates still have it and it ought to be paid. Those were the objectives of the act in the first place. It was completely the government’s responsibility to change the deeming rate in line with the current returns’ current interest rates. The government failed in that responsibility and therefore stopped the objectives of the act being applied to these people. So the government do have an obligation, in my view, to fix this. I am glad they are fixing it now, even though we could still argue about the appropriateness of the rate, but the fact is that it ought to be fixed and people ought to get what they were entitled to get for the last decade or so.