Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in response to the motion to take note of answers today. We can stand in this chamber and debate ad infinitum whether the House of Representatives is a more superior place in this building than the Senate, but in reality, if you look at the Constitution, section 53 clearly says:

Proposed laws appropriating revenue or moneys, or imposing taxation, shall not originate in the Senate.

That is the basis of the advice which the Clerk of the House of Representatives has provided to the Labor Party and we have legal advice to that effect. But let us not detract from that debate in this place today. Senator Troeth stood up and said that trying to increase the pensioner rate for single pension recipients only is not a political stunt. It clearly is. The way in which it is clearly a political stunt is that one day you announce you are going to extend this increase for single pensioners, and then you get a bevy of letters across the country from carers, from people with disabilities and from veterans associations questioning this. On 11 September the Vietnam Veterans Association questioned Brendan Nelson on the review of the veteran pension rates. They said that he had failed in this attempt to promise increased pension rates. So less than 24 hours later, this coalition—the would-be, ‘wannabe’ government of this country—says: ‘Oh gosh! Heavens! We’ve been lobbied by veterans associations across the country, so let’s include them in the loop as well.’ What does it say about pensioners who are on a disability allowance? What about people who are on a carers allowance? And what about those pensioners who are on a married rate? Don’t they matter to the coalition? Doesn’t the coalition care about them at this point in time? Is this a stunt? Absolutely this is a stunt!

This purports to award an increase to some people who would be gathering this allowance and this pension, but not others. It fails to look at the intricate costs, the CPI increases and the link to other allowances across the system. This is simply window-dressing a problem that was never substantially tackled by the opposition in 11 long years. If you do a search on ParlInfo then you will find that Senator Coonan mentioned the word ‘pensioner’ once in this chamber in 2007—only once did that word ever cross her lips in this chamber. Why didn’t she support, in cabinet, an increase to the pensioner rate? Why did she overturn the then minister, Minister Brough, when that proposal was put up? Why don’t those people come into this chamber now and explain why, in fact, in cabinet they could not support an increase in the pension rate, but now they want to push through this legislation in the Senate? This legislation has been done on the run, obviously without consultation and obviously not looking at the broad income support recipients who would miss out on this: 1.1 million age pension couples do not benefit from this stunt; 732,000 disability support pensioners will not benefit from this stunt; 130,000 people getting a carer payment are locked out of this stunt.

The Labor Party have said: ‘We’ll tackle this hard public policy debate. We’ll have a look at the connection between these allowances and the CPI increase.’ When we make a response, following the review, it will be a comprehensive response that looks after all people in receipt of this allowance—not just a very small category of recipients for a very short moment in time just because this coalition decides that it needs to get a bit of relevance. It has changed leaders in the past week, it has changed its front bench in the past week, but it has no positive policies. The only thing that this opposition can seek to do is rush through legislation in a house that is not entitled to do such a thing. If you have a look at the number of people who stood up to defend the legislation, you will find there was only one person on their second reading debate speakers list. So if this were such a great public policy emanating from the now opposition, you would think they would be lining up their backbenchers to support this and justify it. And they cannot. (Time expired)