Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

in reply—I am very pleased to sum up the debate on the coalition’s Urgent Relief for Single Age Pensioners Bill 2008. I think what is clear from the contributions that we have heard in the Senate today is that there is not much room for dispute that Australia’s single age pensioners are finding it virtually impossible to live on the basic pension of $273.40 per week as indexed. I think it is also a fair summation to say that everyone agrees that $30 a week, whilst not in itself a panacea, would certainly give a helping hand to some of the most vulnerable pensioners that this country needs to make provision for.

I just want to say at the outset that it was interesting to hear the comments of Senator Xenophon from South Australia, who agreed with the coalition that it is clear that there is a great deal of urgency and concern in the community about the issue of pension increases and how pensioners are doing it tough. I thank the senator for his thoughtful contribution to the debate. Similarly, there was Senator Fielding, with his opening comments that pensioners are doing it tough and that for the Senate to delay or wait further to have a debate on the pension would be sending pensioners the wrong message. So I thank also Senator Fielding for his thoughtful contribution.

I have listened very carefully to what the Greens have had to say. If you strip away some of the criticisms, I do think it is very important to point out that there appears to be a fundamental failure to recognise that there was a Senate inquiry into the cost-of-living pressures for older Australians, which reported in March this year. So I do not think it is fair to say that we have not had a Senate committee inquiry into this bill. There has been a very extensive one. It is certain that the report called on the government to listen to older Australians’ concerns. When it comes to Senator Evans’ contribution, it was very interesting because he made a number of complaints about the coalition but really did not address with any particularity what it is that the government is going to do as a matter of urgency to help the most needy and vulnerable pensioners. Instead we had a fairly longwinded discussion about how there was need for serious thought, balance and all of the usual things that Labor are saying these days as they conduct committee after committee—but we never see any action for it.

I think it is also fair to say that what is extraordinary, when we are having this debate about whether the most vulnerable Australians should be receiving an additional payment of $30 a week, is the spectacle today of the globetrotting Prime Minister off to New York, leaving in his wake this serious, unresolved problem of justice for single age pensioners. I think it is also fair to say that the government’s contempt for pensioners is clear. (Quorum formed)

I was talking about the PM jetting off to New York, leaving in his wake this serious unresolved problem. It does seem that, while he has a plan for the UN, he does not have a plan at all for Australia’s pensioners. The government’s contempt, I think, for pensioners is shown by the procession of ministers—shall I say a conga line of senior government ministers, to quote an expression of a former Labor leader?—who have solemnly assured us that they could not live on the single pension. Indeed, this is a serious failure of leadership when you have the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and other senior ministers who say that they cannot live on the single pension and admit that there is a problem but have comprehensively failed to address it. What sort of government is it that actually admits there is a problem but does absolutely nothing to address an urgent need?

It is difficult, I think, to believe that the government is sincere. I would not level that at Senator Evans—he is a sincere man—but he came in here feigning some concern. He, of course, sat at the cabinet table and accused me and other senators on this side of sitting around the cabinet table looking at this, but when the Rudd government considered an 83-page report by the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and an 11-page Treasury report in April this year, it somehow or other could not quite bring itself to give the plight of pensioners a proper consideration in the budget. I think it is patently clear that the government is intent on ignoring pensioners and the plight that they face.

There is a report in the Sunday Tasmanian that, no doubt, would not have escaped Senator Brown’s notice, where a lifetime member of the Labor Party asked for pensioners to be given a fair go. She appealed directly to the Prime Minister, and she said that he ‘all but ignored’ her. The chairman of the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council, Bishop Christopher Saunders, in response to a question on ABC Radio on 17 September about the urgent plight of pensioners and whether the government should act now, said:

It seems to me that, if someone is at your door and they’re in dire straits and they need help, it is better to help them there and then rather than say, ‘Listen, come back next week when I’ve had time to write a letter about it’.