Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the senator for his question and for the opportunity to clarify this particular statement. I understand that many older Australians, particularly our age pensioners, are impacted significantly by cost-of-living pressures. But I would like to say that, with the comments that were reported in the paper last week, I certainly did not intend to say or to infer that older Australians who rely on the age pension are doing it easy. I am concerned that any offence may have been taken by or caused to our older Australians. As I said, I know older Australians are doing it tough and that's why one of the first things I did, on becoming the Minister for Families and Social Services, was to seek advice from my department in relation to deeming rates, which was the subject of the interview to which Senator Farrell is referring. In doing this, we managed to provide assistance to nearly a million older Australians and other recipients of allowances by reducing the deeming rates from the lower threshold by 75 basis points, or 0.75 per cent, and for the upper deeming rate by 25 basis points, or 0.25 per cent. This way we will see older Australians, about 360,000 older Australians, actually end up with more money in their pockets in their fortnightly payments.

The other thing, too, is that the track record of this government since it came into government is a very strong track record of supporting older Australians. We have increased the pension for singles by $117.80 a fortnight and by $177.40 per fortnight for couples. You can be assured that this government will make a priority of looking after our older Australians.