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

I apologise, Acting Deputy President. Senator Minchin is the champion of conservatism in this place, notwithstanding the fact that we are now in the ‘time of the moderates’, as one Liberal insider revealed recently. Senator Minchin is familiar with these moderates. Chris Pyne is another champion of the moderates. We all remember Chris Pyne in office, don’t we? He was too young to be the minister for ageing. Let us now hope that he is not too smart to be the shadow minister for education.

Senator Minchin, Senator Coonan and Senator Ellison were members of the cabinet that knocked back Mr Brough’s submission. Senator Ellison is no longer on the front bench, but Senator Minchin and Senator Coonan most certainly are. Day in and day out they have now sought to lecture us about the plight of age pensioners—this new discovery of theirs. Since he was the Minister for Finance and Administration at the relevant time, did Senator Minchin support Mal Brough’s submission? It does not seem very likely that he did. If I am wrong about that, let him come in here and explain it to us. Did Senator Coonan support Mr Brough’s submission? I do not know. But I think it is now time for her to tell us. Senator Ellison was Minister for Human Services at the relevant time. He would have had first-hand knowledge of the position of age pensioners. Perhaps he supported Mal Brough’s submission to the cabinet. But the fact of the matter is that they were all silent. They have discovered age pensioners and they have discovered these issues only in their cynical search for political recovery. That is apparent to all of us. That was apparent to all of us from the moment this farce began. The only thing that they do not understand is that it is also apparent to pensioners.

Whatever the position taken by these senators, the fact is that the Howard cabinet rejected Mr Brough’s submission. The Howard government, after 15 years of continuous economic growth and at a time when, Prime Minister Howard told us, the Australian people had ‘never had it so good’, decided not to increase the base rate of the pension. No-one resigned from the cabinet in protest and, as I have already detailed, Senator Bernardi remained mute.

The fact of the matter is that the cost of increasing the base rate of the age pension for the 980,000 single age pensioners by $30 a week is some $1.5 billion a year. The Labor Party and the Rudd Labor government understand the plight of pensioners and, unlike those opposite, for us this is not a new discovery, a facade or a political stratagem. For us it is a matter of principle, of policy and, I might say, of action. Those on this side absolutely and, I might say, contemptuously dismiss the claims of those opposite to be motivated by concerns for age pensioners. They are not. This is a bogus populist campaign, poorly conceived and executed. It will lead them nowhere. It is designed to distract attention from their own dismal record of failure and irrelevance, a record built on top of a record in office of ignoring pensioners. Last November the Australian people rejected them and their policies, particularly their harsh, extreme and unjust treatment of Australian working families. Those opposite then elected a leader who completely failed to connect with the Australian public, and now we have to endure this farce. We on this side know that the situation of Australia’s age pensioners is a tough one, just as it was 18 months ago. (Time expired)