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

Thank you very much to Senator Smith for his question. Also, can I thank him for the recognition of the commitment that we all have to making sure that we support older Australians within our communities, particularly recognising the significant contribution that older Australians make to our economy and to our society, and recognising also the impact that the COVID pandemic has had on all Australians—particularly our older Australians.

We were pleased to be able to put into place two payments of $750 for all eligible pensioners and seniors, in addition to any other payments that they were receiving, to help them with the economic costs associated with the pandemic. As of 31 March 2020, the first round of these payments went out and were successfully delivered to 3.4 million Australian pensioners, as well as to 170,000 carers who were on carer allowance; to 230,000 veterans' payments recipients and Commonwealth gold card holders, as well as 375,000 Commonwealth seniors health care card holders. The second payment will be made in July, and will be made to those people who have not been in receipt of the coronavirus supplement.

Additionally, we have also recognised that with very low interest rates the deeming rates needed to be reduced. Around 900,000 Australians who were income support recipients and who also had amounts of liquid assets in excess of the threshold levels also received a drop in their deeming rates. These reflected the lower interest rates in the economy. Equally, we have been very keen to make sure that our pensioner loan scheme is available to older Australians so that they can, in effect, reverse mortgage their properties to make sure they can have the additional money.