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

Thank you, Mr Deputy President. I am not surprised that the squawkers over there like Senator McGauran want to say, ‘Tell us something else!’ I understand that a former minister in your government actually took a proposition to the cabinet of the former government to raise pensions and it was rejected. Did we hear Senator McGauran or Senator Bernardi complaining about that? Did we hear any of that? No, we did not hear any of that then. What a disgraceful performance!

What an opportunist opposition it is that wants to get up and just make cheap political points when it knows that we are fundamentally going to address the underlying needs for the pension in the future and fix the system which it neglected and failed to take any reasonable steps on for 11½ years. It is not as if we do not understand the tough times many people in our community, particularly pensioners, are going through. That is why we addressed many of those issues with a down payment in our very first budget.

When we were elected in November last year and delivered the budget in May this year—not that long ago—we addressed some of the fundamental needs of pensioners on the understanding, as we have been saying ever since, that we needed a complete overhaul of the pension system in this country to make it fairer, to make it more equitable and to actually deliver better outcomes, not just cheap shots that the opposition wants to throw up. It wants to give out a few extra dollars, which would then have flow-on effects on allowances and other benefits and would leave people worse off in many circumstances.

We need to take an overall look at the whole pension system and address the whole issue to make pensioners better off across the board, not just single pensioners but couples, disabled pensioners, disability support pensioners, veterans—everybody. We want to get that right. That is what the work that we are doing is about. In the less than 12 months that we have been in government, we have been working on this issue and we will ultimately deliver a better, fairer, equitable system for the future for all pensioners, instead of taking the lazy political position that the previous government took, which was simply: stopgap here, stopgap there, act when the politics get a little bit too hot but never do anything structurally.

This government recognises that right now many people who are wholly dependent on the pension are struggling to cope with rising living costs. We have the guts to actually say it and we have the guts to actually do something about it—not this political harping over there and not the political opportunism that we see from a miserable opposition that never lifted a finger. They thought that everything was fine while they were in government, but now there has suddenly been this great revelation. Well, we knew about the problems that you had when you were in government and we are working hard to fix them.

The government has already taken action to provide extra support to pensioners, which includes a $500 bonus payment for seniors that benefits some 2.7 million pensioners. So we have not done nothing, as the harping and squawking that was coming from over there would suggest. Over 3.2 million are benefiting from a higher rate of utilities allowance, now $514 a year. Under our government this allowance has been extended to carer payment and disability support pensioners for the first time. Did I hear Senator Bernardi get up and say, ‘I congratulate the government for doing that for the first time. I wish we’d done that in government’? No, I never heard any of that because, again, in government they thought it was all okay. It is only now that they are in opposition with their crocodile tears that they think there is a problem. (Time expired)