Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

It is important to note that the first party in this place that actually put forward a proposition to increase the qualifying age for the pension was in fact the Australian Labor Party. So clearly, as a matter of logic, there is nothing wrong in principle with increasing the qualifying age for the age pension, because the Australian Labor Party did that.

I should also point out that we have always been in the position of seeking to honour our aged-care pension commitments, because our commitment before the election was that we would not make any changes that would apply in the current term of parliament, and we have not put forward at any stage a proposition that would see pensions change in this term of parliament.