David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You might have tried talking about pensioners for the last 12 years, Senator Barnett, but you did not find your voice. The question has to be: what has changed? How is it that pensioners were entitled to nothing nine months ago and now suddenly the other side have decided that pensioners are deserving of a change?

This government has compassion and economic responsibility at its heart, both attributes completely absent from the other side both when they were in office and now that they are out of office. The Liberals are completely obsessed with their own internal politics, obsessed with the new purge of the Liberal Party by this ‘time of the moderates’. They are still adhering to this absurd idea that the Prime Minister should not be going overseas.

Pensions are presently subject to a holistic review. In this review this government is going to be looking at pensioners’ circumstances in a proper and considered manner and will be considering their entitlements in the context of both what is required and what is affordable. This review is not an off-the-cuff hip shot. It is not simply a political stunt. It is not something that ignores 2.2 million beneficiaries, as the other side’s stunt bill does. The other side represent a false dawn. (Time expired)