Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Hansard source

I am sorry it has come to name-calling, Senator Wong, but I have to say I have stood by a consistent position on this matter.

Senator Wong interjecting—

I have stood by a consistent position. I certainly have.

Senator Wong interjecting—

The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN: Minister, allow the senator to speak uninterrupted, please.

I have maintained a very consistent position about this matter. I have always argued that indexation should be improved and today by my vote I am backing that position. I am supporting what I have always said to the people of the ACT is the case. With great respect, Senator Lundy and her former colleagues in the ACT Labor Party, Ms Ellis and Mr McMullan, and Dr Mike Kelly, the member for Eden-Monaro, and a host of other Labor members with significant numbers of Commonwealth retirees in their electorates have made the same sorts of sounds. The difference between them and me is that today I am going to honour the commitment that I have made to the people of my electorate by voting for this bill and they will not. That is the difference and that is consistency. I want to turn to what Senator Bob Brown has had to say in this debate. At the last federal election the Greens in the ACT fought very hard on this issue. They argued very strongly that indexation had to be improved for Defence superannuants and for civilian superannuants. Senator Brown has justified not supporting the bill today on the basis of having on a previous occasion put to the Senate a motion to link support for this legislation to his proposal to increase the mining tax, saying that, because the coalition failed to support his measure to increase the size of the mining tax to pay for this particular expenditure to increase super­annuant pensions, therefore he cannot support the coalition's bill. A few logical observations need to flow from this. First of all, if we had put forward a bill which had no savings in it to address this issue—if we had no savings proposed in our legislation to deal with the extra expenditure which we are asking the Commonwealth to incur—there would be some justification for Senator Brown saying to the Senate, 'We can't support you because you don't tell us how you are going to pay for this piece of legislation'. But, of course, we did not do that. We did come forward with savings to address the cost of this measure. And those savings were valid savings; they were effective savings. How do we know that they were effective? Because the Labor government itself has taken up those savings in the budget of this year. It has cut projected growth in the size of the Defence civilian workforce: that is exactly what it has done. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. You are flattering us by saying we were right with those measures; we could achieve those savings. And, with you having achieved those savings with the measures we proposed, I think it is now incumbent on you, the Labor Party, to support the measures in this bill.

But Senator Brown's position is another one altogether. He tied this into his mining tax—a measure that he knows the coalition would not support, does not support and will not support—and had us say, 'We can't support you because we don't believe that we need the mining tax to be increased or that we need the mining tax at all, and we have other alternative measures for making these savings.' We voted against Senator Brown's motion, as he knew would be the case. Having done all of that, Senator Brown now says, 'Well, we don't need to support your legislation, because you did not support our particular proposal for how to pay for it'.

My question to Senator Brown is: will that be a test he applies to every piece of legislation for additional expenditure that comes forward to this Senate in the next 2½ years? And, if not, why not? If you felt that a particular measure had to be paid for by linkage to an increase in the mining tax, will you apply that test to every piece of legislation that the opposition brings forward or, for that matter, that the government brings forward? 'Good idea; we like what you're doing but we won't support you unless you also support our position on a mining tax.' There is no obvious linkage between Commonwealth superannuation, Defence Force retirement benefits and mining, so on what other basis would Senator Brown be making this proposition?

I will tell you what Senator Brown was doing: he wanted to break his promise and he wanted to betray the people to whom this promise had been made. He did not have the guts to say, 'We're not prepared to do that anymore. We're not in election mode and we don't need the votes at this stage.' So he concocted a little scheme where he linked this to something which he knows the coalition does not support, had us defeat his motion and then said, 'Oh well, therefore I can't support your bill.' It makes absolutely no sense; there is no logic in that whatsoever.

This is a measure which the coalition has funded in the package it has put to the Senate. We know it has funded it because you have taken the saving yourselves. It is incumbent on you, therefore, not to use the argument that we have not paid for it. We have paid for it. If you do not believe that the pensions are worth paying and if you do not believe that the people who have served Australia in the Defence Force are worth this increase then say that. Say it in as many words: do not pretend that there is some other fiscally responsible reason why you cannot support the legislation.

I am sorry that Senator Wong needs to resort to name-calling in this exercise, but it is something that I feel very strongly about, and have ever since I entered this Senate. I had been here only a little while when I went to two people: I went to Senator Watson, the former long-serving senator from Tasmania, and asked him, 'What's the argument about this indexation of Commonwealth pensions? What's the argument against indexing it by some higher measure than the CPI?' He said, 'There is no argument.' I also went to my predecessor, Senator Margaret Reid, and asked her a similar question, and she gave a very similar answer. I have stood by that view ever since then, and today I am going to vote consistently with the views that I believe in and which I have expressed to my electorate. It is a great pity that others who have reaped votes from retired public servants in the ACT by saying, 'We sympathise with your point of view, and we will do all we can to support it,' are not taking the same position here today.