Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to take note of the answer given by Senator Fifield. I know lots of pensioners, and I interact with quite a number in my suburb, because there is a petition circulating at the moment in respect of some cuts in funding initiated by this federal government. I heard Senator Cormann say today that, if you do not learn from history, you are doomed to repeat the mistakes. Had Tony Abbott's new indexation system been in place for the last four years, a single pensioner on the maximum rate would be around $1,500 a year worse off than today. So here we go. Changing this indexation after making a very deliberate, up-front promise not to do anything in the pension area has been rightly picked up by the pensioner community.

We are accused of scaremongering. We do not have to scaremonger. Pensioners are very, very worried about this indexation proposal. We see the two economic dries, Senator Seselja and Senator Canavan, say: 'It has to be done. It has to be done.' The economic rationalists, in Senator Canavan and Senator Seselja, are sent out here to defend the indefensible. There are all manner of members of this place. Out of the 226 of us, there would be no-one who has not had representation on this issue. This issue is widely held and deeply felt, and it is not a scaremongering campaign. People are very, very worried. There are people who do not make a success of this great economy of ours, who by no fault of their own, by dint of their hard work and effort, have failure in the body, just get through to retirement and then have a respectable living on the pension. It is being denied by these people. They send out their foot soldiers, Senator Seselja and Senator Canavan: 'Well, we can't roll the bills over in 2030. Who will look after us?'

We had a proposition where we could incrementally increase people's chances of having a greater respectable retirement by increasing superannuation. That is the way to do it: allow people to have a good, useful, well-paid job and to have a contribution to superannuation that allows them to build a successful fund to then take control of their retirement. But I have to tell you that superannuation has only been around since 1986. There are a lot of people in the economy who are going to retire with minimum savings in super, just a little bit to keep them from actually being on the poor list, and you are taking away the pension that would sustain them, at least in terms of a minimal subsistence level.

And I do know lots of pensioners. I will touch on one issue: the National Partnership Agreement on Certain Concessions for Pensioner Concession Card and Seniors Card Holders. That means that there is another $190 that is going to go on the rates of pensioners because this government has taken $27 million, I think it is, out of the contribution to that national partnership agreement in South Australia alone. That will affect 160,000 pensioners. So, for all the government's claims of doing great things for pensioners in abolishing the carbon tax, it does that on one hand and then it takes it all back on the other. This really is an issue which will come back to haunt this government. And I do not believe that it will even have the intestinal fortitude to carry it out. Its own backbench is in revolt about it. As I say, it sends out the dry economic foot soldiers, Canavan and Seselja, to give us the spiel—no heart in it, no passion in it, no feeling in it.

The pensioners of Australia and the pensioner organisations of Australia will mount a very successful campaign. We on this side know who we stand with. We stand with the pensioners. We stand with those people who need that payment to survive in a decent way. And we are not about changing an indexation, which allows them to get less. We would prefer that they continue on the highest possible index to sustain their modest retirement with a bit of dignity as recognition of the hard work they have put into our great Australian economy.

Question agreed to.