Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move Greens amendment (1) on sheet 5840:

(1)    Schedule 11, page 108 (line 1) to page 109 (before line 1), Schedule TO BE OPPOSED.

This amendment opposes the provisions in schedule 11 of the bill, which increases the pension age from 65 to 67. As I articulated in my second reading contribution, the Greens are concerned about the decision to raise the age from 65 to 67, because it has ramifications for many people. While we are not necessarily opposed in principle to this amendment, we believe that this has been brought in without any consultation with the community and it has not been subject to a rigorous discussion or consultation within the community. The first the community knew about it was on budget night. The only real opportunity—besides the emails that I am sure other people have received—is the very quick review of the bill that the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee did. It was through no fault of the community affairs committee, I might add; they had to do it quickly because it was referred to us on either the Tuesday or the Wednesday and we had the inquiry on the Friday, so the community had very little opportunity to make submissions.

There are a number of concerns. One of my principal concerns is that, of those aged between 60 and 65, already 50 per cent of that cohort are on some form of income support. What you are doing for the cohort of people who are already on income support is condemning them to another two years of Newstart. When this bill, which we are just about to pass with the rises to the single base pension rate, goes through, the difference between Newstart and the pension will be $106, so you are condemning people who are already struggling on income support to another two years of income support on, for example, Newstart. We do not think that is good enough. We think the government needs to look at alternatives. It also has not looked at the fact that we may need to consider an increase in the preservation age for superannuation. We do not know if that is the case; we have not had an opportunity to look clearly enough into the facts. We believe that we need to be looking at who this impacts, at to what extent and at what measures should be put in place to help that group of people that is going to be affected.

One of the other groups of people that is going to be significantly affected is a particular group of women who have very little super. We all know about this group of women. They have very little super because they are of that age that they more often than not came out of the workforce when they were raising their children. That group is most likely to have people who come out of the workforce to look after, for example, their ageing parents. At that period of time when they were out of the workforce, they were not earning and were not able to contribute to super. There is a group of women in their mid-40s who have an average superannuation of $8,000. It is that group of women that is going to be caught up by these changes. They thought they would be going into retirement at 65 and now they have to stay in the workforce for another two years. We are not adequately looking after those women. Some of those women may not have employment later on and would then be subject to income support, and they will not be able to access their inadequate super.

So we have a number of concerns with these changes. As I have said, our principal concern is that these changes have been brought in without community consultation. People had been planning for 65; now it is going to be 67. We do not know to what extent it will affect people. We are not, in principle, opposed to this in the longer term, but we think the timing and the lack of community consultation are poor and we are concerned that it has not been considered as part of the Harmer review. We believe it should come out of this bill, that the bill should go forward and that the government can then bring this particular component of it back. When you think about it, it was a bit sneaky of the government to put it in this bill because they knew very well that both this chamber and the other place would want to support the bill. Most of us here have been urging the government to increase the age pension for quite some time. It is rather sneaky to put it in this bill when they know very well that we will not want to oppose it because it is raising the pension. So we say to the government: take it out, go and consult and bring it back when you have some answers to the problems that are going to affect those most likely to be caught up in these provisions. The people affected are those that do not have adequate super, those that have not been able to plan and, most importantly, those that are now on income support. You are condemning them to another two years in the workforce. We should be doing better than that for the people who are ageing in our community.