Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I understand that, Mr Deputy President, but I did want to give credit to Senator Cameron for his acknowledgement that the 457 visa for John McTernan was the worst 457 visa ever. It is interesting how quickly Labor turns upon itself.

I will come to the question before the Senate. Indeed I will, because it is very important that we make our pension system sustainable, and keep it sustainable. It is also very important that we do not have scaremongering from the Labor Party and that we do not allow the scaremongering of the Labor Party to go unchallenged.

So I want to make a couple of points about the need for fiscal sustainability and the reality of what is happening to pensions, not what Labor claims is happening to pensions. Labor has claimed that pensions are going down, that pensions are being cut, when in fact that is absolutely not the case. They are doing their best to scare pensioners in this country in a disgraceful scare campaign, which seems to be all that the Labor Party has left. But of course we know that in fact that is not true. So let us deal with the facts rather than what the Labor Party is saying.

We are seeing pensions going up twice a year, as they always have. Let us be clear on that. So we have seen in fact no changes yet to the way pensions are indexed. In fact, what we have seen is pensions going up twice a year. In March of 2014, the total age pension—which comprises the basic rate, the pension supplement and the energy supplement—increase from $827.10 a fortnight to $842.80 for singles, and from $623.40 a fortnight to $635.30 each for couples. In September 2014, the total age pension increased from $842.80 a fortnight to $854.30 for singles and from $635.30 a fortnight to $644.00 each for couples. Both of these pension increases were in line with cost of living increases, which were higher than the alternate indexation option of MTAWE. So, instead of taking at face value what the Labor Party claims, let us deal with the facts: pensions will continue to go up twice a year.

In addition to that, we have gotten rid of the carbon tax, which has seen electricity prices, for the first time in living memory, come down. So one of the great costs for pensioners has been reduced. For the first time in living memory we have managed to lower the cost of energy in the country by getting rid of Labor's and the Greens' carbon tax. So pensions have been going up while we have been working on other areas, such as cutting the carbon tax, to lower costs for pensioners and families in this country.

In the time that I have left, I want to make the point—and it needs to be said—that the situation we face where we are looking to make our budget sustainable is not an insignificant one. We have inherited a challenge from the economic vandals in the Labor Party; they thought that they could just spend their way out of trouble, that they could consistently spend more than we earn. And they left us with a debt legacy of $1 billion a month in interest payments. At the moment that is projected to rise to $3 billion a month. That is $100 million more in spending a day than we have in revenue. That is completely unsustainable.

The Labor Party should be condemned for their economic vandalism when they were in office. Our job is to try and restore that. When it comes to pensions, we want to do it by ensuring our pensions remain sustainable so we can look after the most needy, instead of wasting money the way the Labor Party did on all manner of inefficient spending. That is the challenge that we have inherited; that is the challenge that we are up for. We want to make sure that our pensioners get a fair go and that they continue to see their pensions rise and continue to rise into the future.