Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

Perhaps the answers given by Senator Ronaldson would be better described as non-answers. As we know, he wants more questions but we are not getting the answers. Today we asked for some answers about the seniors supplement. We got a lack of answers and a lack of information about what is going to happen so I am afraid I am going to have to tell the veterans of this country what this minister is proposing to do in three very crucial areas of his portfolio. Today we asked him to tell the veterans, but he did not tell them so we will have to. There are three crucial areas where this government is seeking to take away benefits from the veterans of this country. The first, and perhaps the most disgraceful, is changing the way in which the CPI operates in the calculation of veterans' pensions. The Labor Party introduced a scheme where veterans got the best of three methods of calculating increases in benefits. That gave the best possible result to veterans. This government is proposing to take that away from September 2017.

I would like to refer to a document that records what the minister said about this very thing the government is proposing to do. I have a copy of The Northern Daily Leaderdated 12 June 2013. The minister was going around holding his forums with veterans groups. There is a lovely photograph of him in the paper, with Senator Williams and Minister Joyce. The minister pledged that he was going to give to the 57,000 diggers across the country who received the DFRB pension the same arrangement that applies now to veterans' pensions—namely, the best of the three results. What did he say about the CPI being the only method of calculation? He said it was outdated and unfair. So the scheme that Senator Ronaldson is going to apply from September 2017 is what he said just over 12 months ago was outdated and unfair. The report of Senator Ronaldson's comments reads:

"CPI has not been a measure of cost-of-living for at least 15 years,” he said.

“Aged pensioners don’t have their index assessed in this way so they are falling further and further behind.

“It’s basically unfair where they’re at and they deserve a fair go and we’re going to give it to them.”

That last sentence was right—he is going to give it to them! He is going to take away the fair method of indexation. He boasted before the election that he was going to give fair indexation to DFRB pensions, and he did—but there are only 57,000 of those pensions tied to CPI. Do you know how many veterans pensions receive CPI indexation? There are 280,000.