Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

And it was a bipartisan committee, which made unanimous findings about this very question. This was a central issue in this inquiry: what was happening to the standards of living of older Australians? What was happening to the age pension during the life of the Howard government? This is what the committee found:

The evidence before the committee is highly persuasive that the real incomes of recipients of the age pension and superannuation have experienced substantial growth over the last decade over increases in inflation. In the case of the age pension, the indexation of pension levels to MTAWE has been responsible for a substantial increase in the real value of the pension. In part this has been the result of the growth in real wages that has partly been a product of the government’s workplace relations reform over the past 11 years.