Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I believe I was talking about the Senate inquiry into the cost of living pressures on older Australians and the diminishing quality of life that older Australians on the pension were facing. The report also says:

Unmet needs and insufficient services for facilitating in-home care have further constrained the ability of many older people to participate in the community and is increasing the potential for deterioration of health and well-being that could have negative implications for public and personal health costs.

The report also noted:

Income levels, even at a safety net basis, must sufficiently accommodate the need of older people to participate in social and community activities.

It goes on to say, and this is a particularly important point:

Further, supporting the health and well-being of older Australians will have the corollary benefit of reducing the burden on governments for health care costs, aged services and community service provision.

So in other words: from a moral, ethical or rights point of view, even if we did not care about providing an increase in pensions from the perspective of giving pensioners a decent quality of life, the economic rationalists would think that the better approach would be to provide for an increase in the base pension rate so that we can meet pensioners’ basic health and wellbeing requirements because that will reduce the cost of the so-called burdens on the health system. When they do not have a sufficient quality of life, obviously their health outcomes become poorer. As I said, I think even economic rationalists can see that argument: you are better off investing a dollar now than two or three dollars later.

In its conclusion, the report also pointed out a number of very important points. It said:

Whilst we may have seen an increase in the real value of the pension, the committee remains unconvinced that this level is sufficient to maintain a basic, decent standard of living.

Here we are talking of ‘a basic, decent standard of living’. It goes on to say:

Further, other factors, such as the decline in the value of concessions and the trend to user-pays systems, appear to have eroded the purchasing power of the pension and shifted costs on to individuals, including those who may not necessarily have a capacity to pay.

So not only have we seen the increasing cost of fuel, but the cost of groceries, transport et cetera have also gone up. Because the value of concessions is going down, this is putting extra costs on the capacity of pensioners to pay. The committee heard many, many harrowing stories of pensioners not being able to make ends meet: not calling out for help as early as they should do; not being able to afford to heat their homes; not being able to afford to buy their grandchildren presents, which greatly upset many people that they were not actively able to participate—they felt they could not actively participate in their family life because they did not have the financial resources to do so. They also talked of shame. They felt very strongly that they felt very strong shame that they were not able to afford things and that they had to ask—they thought—for handouts. As I view it, the community has a responsibility to provide a decent quality of living for these people who have literally helped to build this country.

The committee also noted that one-off payments had been provided, and the government have pointed that out at length, that they have provided some one-off payments. However, the committee also said that they were conscious that one-off payments signal a problem without providing a long-term solution to address that problem. We have heard that many times from pensioners, that these one-off payments have not been sufficient to deal with the ongoing issues.

The report also pointed out that those most at risk are single pensioners, and especially women, who receive the maximum age pension and those that are in private rental accommodation. They also pointed out that other groups in financial stress in the face of the increased cost of living are those with severe disabilities or chronic illnesses and those in residential aged care. Similarly, older people who have been receiving pensions for some period, especially those over 85, struggle because certain costs that have been deferred become necessities, such as house maintenance, appliance replacement costs and increasing medical bills. So you have got increasing pressure on pensioners who have no other way of being able to provide for these services. Again the committee heard of people whose houses were literally falling apart because they had not been able to maintain them. We also heard stories of people who had become widowers or widows going from a married rate and having to survive on the single pension and being unable to do so because they are still meeting the costs of a family home or shared expenses are now being met on the single pension.

There is absolutely no doubt that these people are struggling. We have also heard that the government accepts that there is a problem. The government accepts there is a problem, but, ‘It’s okay, you guys, you can wait till we have had our review, till we have worked out just how much you’re in poverty, and then we’ll think about maybe putting up the base rate of the single pension. But you sit there and wait.’ When I was growing up I heard of the never-never. That is when you used to buy things on hire-purchase. My mum used to call it putting things on the never-never. I sort of feel it is the same thing here. ‘You are never, never going to get the pay rise. We are putting you on the never-never. Just keep waiting and you may someday get a review of the pension.’ But by then these pensioners, real living human beings, would have been struggling in straitened circumstances for a very long time. That is not to say that they have only been struggling over the last nine months, because, believe me, the evidence the committee took was largely under the previous government and coming out of the previous government, so these people have been struggling for a long time. Now what we are hearing is that pensioners are being told to wait, wait until we have done the review, because the increase will not happen as soon as you get the review and here, by the way, is your increase in the pension. No, that will not happen straightaway, because the government will need time to consider the review, and that is going to take a considerable period of time. So they will be on the never-never even longer.

If we had not had the $31 billion tax cuts, the government could have chosen to invest that in our social infrastructure in Australia, in their programs of social inclusion. I would have thought that making sure pensioners have a decent quality of life would have been one of the key tenets of the social inclusion agenda. As I was saying, the committee found that, in order for people to be able to have a decent quality of life and be able to meet their basic living costs, it is essential for them to be able to participate in the community and in its social life. So what would you have thought the government would have been investing in? You would have thought they would have been investing in social inclusion for pensioners, for people who actively need to be facilitated into our community. You would have thought that they would have invested the $31 billion tax cuts in something like that. But before you run away with that idea, we also have to remember that the coalition promised $36 billion, I think it was, in tax cuts, so they were not exactly thinking of investing in the pensioners’ futures and pensioners’ pay rise at that time during the federal election, were they? Who were the only people talking about it then? It is the Greens who have been talking about this for over a year.

The Greens will be moving and have circulated amendments to include in the pay rise for pensioners disability pensioners and carers, because these people are also struggling. It should be noted that disability pensioners did not get the bonus payment. They are getting extra utility payments the same as age pensioners but they did not get a bonus payment, so they are struggling as well. Again I have had a large number of emails to my office outlining the difficulties that people on disability pensions face. So we are moving to increase the base rate for single disability pensioners as well, of whom there are 464,230 in this country, as we understand it from the latest figures. We will also be moving to increase the base rate for single carers, of whom I understand there are 51,304 in this country on the latest figures. We believe this will relieve a small part of the burden that these people face. But $30 a week is very important fillip to help them start meeting the cost of living and start addressing what we believe is a decent quality of life.

I have not heard one person in this place say that we should not be aiming for a decent quality of life for people who are struggling to make ends meet. We need to remember that many of the people we are talking about are in the lowest part of the social wellbeing index, particularly carers. They are consistently in the lowest stratum for the social wellbeing index because of the stresses that they face caring for their loved ones but also because of their lack of income. They are struggling to make ends meet as well as trying to care for their loved ones, as are those on disability pensions struggling to deal with their disability, struggling to make ends meet and also struggling to pay for their equipment and for their accommodation. More often than not they cannot get adequate accommodation, adequate support for finding a job or adequate support to stay in a job. Again, you could not say that these people are very high up on the wellbeing index. They are struggling to make ends meet on pensions that have not been significantly increased or indexed to meet the cost of living.

One hopes that the government will see reason and see that this increase is the least they can do to help people that have been struggling for years to try and make ends meet and who have now reached crunch point. It has come to the point where they will come out and they will voice their concerns. As I said earlier, these are a generation of people who have not wanted to tell others of their hardships and have not wanted to complain. So it says a lot that they are now having to come out and complain and lobby so hard for what is a very modest increase, when you consider the costs of living that they are bearing, the above normal increase in the cost of living that they are facing and the fact that they have not had a significant real increase for many years.

We support, and in fact the Greens initiated this campaign in this place, a $30 a week increase for pensioners, but we will be moving an amendment to ensure that this increase covers those receiving the single disability pension and those receiving the single carers pension. We commend our amendments to the Senate.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to support an increase in pensions of $30 a week. I will start by reflecting on who the pensioners we are talking about are. This is the most generous generation of Australians being treated in a miserly way by one of the most self-serving generations of Australians. Let’s go back. These are the frail aged, who were born in the 1920s, post the First World War. They lived through, in their youth, the Great Depression and then they saw service again in their families in the Second World War. Our most recent pensioners, who reached the age of 65 recently, were born towards the end of the Second World War.

These were people who did not have the money to go off to university in most cases. Yet did they complain when we decided that it was important to put the next generation of young people through university? No, they did not; they encouraged that to happen. These were not a generation of people who had a government put aside money for them for their superannuation for their retirement years. These were people who were brought up in hard times, served this country twice through two world wars and lived through the Depression, as I said.

In the case of women in particular, they were entering the workforce, if they indeed ever did enter the paid workforce, at a time when it was customary in Australia not to employ married women. Many people in this parliament will recall that women did not get equal pay in Australia until the seventies. So there were women who, for example, trained to be teachers or nurses and who went to go back to work and of course were not able to because people did not employ married women at that time. Equally, across most of Australia women were encouraged to be at home, to be the homemakers, and there was no idea of paid maternity leave, paternity leave or any of that. It was expected that women in that generation would manage the household and help to bring up the children. They paid their taxes as PAYE earners for most of their lives for the most part.

Now, in return, what do they get from this nation, which has never had such a great surplus and such wealth as we have now? They get a generation of politicians—and I am going to talk about the Howard years—who say that they want to cut the corporate tax rate so that it is as low as possible to maximise company profits as greatly as possible. There are CEOs retiring from companies on a handshake of $33 million, more than most of these people or anyone they knew earned in their entire lives. We are seeing a generation which says, ‘We need to cut taxes for the highest level of income earners,’ and this occurred throughout the Howard years and was kept on by the Rudd government in this year’s budget—$31 billion worth of tax cuts, a large number of those to the rich.

The Greens were the only people in this parliament to say we should not be cutting taxes for the rich and we should be using that tax money to invest in infrastructure, to improve pensions and to improve the lot of health and education in this country. But of course that did not get up; that did not suit the mood. All we saw during the Howard years was the base rate of the age pension get left behind in terms of average weekly ordinary time earnings or the consumer price index—indeed, any way you wish to look at it the pension got left behind.

I would like to reiterate the point that my colleague Senator Siewert just mentioned that it is women who are living longer. It is in many cases frail and aged women who are then left as widows to try and manage a household where previously there were two pensions coming in, including the married couple pension, and where one, often the wife, is left to manage with exactly the same fixed costs as previously but only the single pension on which to manage. It is because they cannot manage that many of them go prematurely into aged care. That is a downward spiral for many people because it is an emotional wrench that often leads to physical difficulties and emotional stress, which then lead to the downward spiral for many of our older women.

These are also the women who for a large part of their lives did not manage the books in the family—often it was their husbands who managed all the income side of things. Many of them are left with a history of never having gotten their driver’s licence, for example. It is time, as a nation, to actually put some thought into what this generation we are talking about gave of their lives and their health—their health during the wars and the Depression and their commitment to building this country. Now they are frail and aged and do not have superannuation. They did not have the same opportunities that they sacrificed a great deal for so that we could have those opportunities. Then we turn around and say to them: ‘Oh well, we don’t think we can afford it. We can actually put it off and look at it through the Henry tax review and we will maybe review it next year and you might get something in next year’s May budget, if you are lucky.’

We are running a $22 billion surplus and we are talking about no more than $1 billion, from what I understand from the figures, that would go into supporting an increase of this kind for single age pensioners and for people on disability pensions. Running a budget surplus of $22 billion, if we cannot put $1 billion towards helping people who are living in poverty, whose self-respect and dignity is being undermined by the fact that they cannot manage no matter how hard they try, then it does not say much about this country—it does not say much about us being a caring country, a compassionate country. It does not say anything about our sense of justice. If ever you wanted to talk about social justice in this parliament, this is a social justice issue. Around the world people are looking at this issue of intergenerational equity. We see intergenerational equity as what we might pass on to our children. But I would also like to think about intergenerational equity in terms of how we look after our aged community, because that is also about how we see fairness and how we see justice and how we try to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor.

We have pensioners in Australia who are going to bed early in the evening because they cannot afford heating; people not eating fresh fruit and vegetables to maintain their health, because it is too expensive; and people who are reducing the amount that they eat in order that they can give their families something for Christmas. This is the reality of the people we are talking about. Can you imagine the stress on an older person who has prided themselves throughout their lives on developing and keeping family bonds getting to the point where they feel like they cannot extend any generosity to their families in the seasons of Christmas or Easter and also who then feel like they have become charity cases? There is a lot to this. It is not just about the money in terms of the $30—and, frankly, $30 is going to go nowhere, but it is a start. It is not just about goods; it is about dignity and it is about fairness and it is about justice.

While I am on that I also want to address this issue of equity in climate change, because we know that under an emissions trading system power prices are going to go up and we know that, because of the underlying increase in the price of oil, petrol is going to go up. The people who have fixed costs and no capacity to increase their income in most cases are these pensioners that we are talking about here. We should be looking at what the Greens have put forward: we need to go out and retrofit the nation’s homes to give people full insulation, solar hot water and permanently reduce their energy costs.

I am aware that, under Prime Minister Howard, instead of introducing an increase in the pension he gave a cheque for a utilities allowance, which worked out to about $8 per pensioner per week. So it was nothing like the $30 that we are talking about now. But, if on top of a rise in the pension we went out and put solar hot water systems on the nation’s houses and started to put them out on the houses of the most vulnerable first, we would make a permanent saving. One-third of people’s power bills is hot water. So to actually take away that cost for people would be a tremendous contribution to them. But if we put in full insulation, then it would also take the edge off what they are going to have to try to do to keep themselves warm or keep themselves cool. Who are the most vulnerable when Australia experiences extreme heat waves? It is the young and the old. We have already seen an increase in the number of deaths due to heat exhaustion as a result of climbing temperatures, and that is going to continue.

We have a situation where we do not have adequate public transport so that people who can no longer drive can move around in Australia’s cities. So we need to do a whole package of things. This should not just be seen as, ‘Oh well, we’ll try and give them $30 and then forget about it.’ We need to actually think about this constructively, because if we went and retrofitted the nation’s houses with solar hot water and full insulation, we would be creating a huge number of jobs. We would be rebuilding the manufacturing sector in Australia, because you would need to build plants to roll out the solar hot water technology on a scale unprecedented in Australia. I note today with great pleasure that we have the ACTU coming out with several of the NGOs and agreeing that what Australia should do to embrace the green revolution in technology and to deal with climate change is to retrofit the nation’s 7.4 million homes, as the Greens have been suggesting.

So this can be a win-win situation all round. We can actually do something to make life more comfortable and cheaper, and start with the most vulnerable first, and at the same time create job opportunities and boost our manufacturing sector. So I think this debate is important. It is something that the Greens brought on here in the Senate last year. I note that when we put this motion last year it was not supported by the coalition. I heard earlier Senator Barnett from Tasmania talking about how worried he is about pensioners in Launceston. Well, he was not worried about pensioners in Launceston last year when he voted down the motion to increase the pension nor apparently when he was supporting the tax cuts for the rich but no increase of the pension for the poor. However, I am glad that that has changed and I am glad that this parliament seems to have had an insight into just how difficult it is and that the opposition will be supporting an increase in the pension to Australia’s most vulnerable, particularly those single age pensioners and our disability pensioners.

We should also be increasing what carers get paid around this country. There are so many vulnerable people, and it is hard to believe, in a country with the wealth that we have, that we cannot be more generous. I find that a matter of justice, as I said. It defies the Australian tradition of the fair go. It is almost, in my view, a lack of respect and appreciation for what this generation of Australians have done for this country so that we can be the free country that we are. Because a number of these pensioners, having also given war service, have suffered physical ailments and mental problems as a result of that war service—and their families have suffered in the course of trying to cope with that as well. So I would like this parliament to reflect on the idea that the people who have been most generous to us through the sacrifices they have made are the people to whom we as a parliament have been the meanest. Let us hope that this changes as a result of this move initiated by the Greens, campaigned for by the Greens, now supported by the coalition—and hopefully supported by the government. At last we might see this beginning. It should only be a beginning because an increase of $30 a week is a long way behind where it needs to go.

Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in reply—I am very pleased to sum up the debate on the coalition’s Urgent Relief for Single Age Pensioners Bill 2008. I think what is clear from the contributions that we have heard in the Senate today is that there is not much room for dispute that Australia’s single age pensioners are finding it virtually impossible to live on the basic pension of $273.40 per week as indexed. I think it is also a fair summation to say that everyone agrees that $30 a week, whilst not in itself a panacea, would certainly give a helping hand to some of the most vulnerable pensioners that this country needs to make provision for.

I just want to say at the outset that it was interesting to hear the comments of Senator Xenophon from South Australia, who agreed with the coalition that it is clear that there is a great deal of urgency and concern in the community about the issue of pension increases and how pensioners are doing it tough. I thank the senator for his thoughtful contribution to the debate. Similarly, there was Senator Fielding, with his opening comments that pensioners are doing it tough and that for the Senate to delay or wait further to have a debate on the pension would be sending pensioners the wrong message. So I thank also Senator Fielding for his thoughtful contribution.

I have listened very carefully to what the Greens have had to say. If you strip away some of the criticisms, I do think it is very important to point out that there appears to be a fundamental failure to recognise that there was a Senate inquiry into the cost-of-living pressures for older Australians, which reported in March this year. So I do not think it is fair to say that we have not had a Senate committee inquiry into this bill. There has been a very extensive one. It is certain that the report called on the government to listen to older Australians’ concerns. When it comes to Senator Evans’ contribution, it was very interesting because he made a number of complaints about the coalition but really did not address with any particularity what it is that the government is going to do as a matter of urgency to help the most needy and vulnerable pensioners. Instead we had a fairly longwinded discussion about how there was need for serious thought, balance and all of the usual things that Labor are saying these days as they conduct committee after committee—but we never see any action for it.

I think it is also fair to say that what is extraordinary, when we are having this debate about whether the most vulnerable Australians should be receiving an additional payment of $30 a week, is the spectacle today of the globetrotting Prime Minister off to New York, leaving in his wake this serious, unresolved problem of justice for single age pensioners. I think it is also fair to say that the government’s contempt for pensioners is clear. (Quorum formed)

I was talking about the PM jetting off to New York, leaving in his wake this serious unresolved problem. It does seem that, while he has a plan for the UN, he does not have a plan at all for Australia’s pensioners. The government’s contempt, I think, for pensioners is shown by the procession of ministers—shall I say a conga line of senior government ministers, to quote an expression of a former Labor leader?—who have solemnly assured us that they could not live on the single pension. Indeed, this is a serious failure of leadership when you have the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and other senior ministers who say that they cannot live on the single pension and admit that there is a problem but have comprehensively failed to address it. What sort of government is it that actually admits there is a problem but does absolutely nothing to address an urgent need?

It is difficult, I think, to believe that the government is sincere. I would not level that at Senator Evans—he is a sincere man—but he came in here feigning some concern. He, of course, sat at the cabinet table and accused me and other senators on this side of sitting around the cabinet table looking at this, but when the Rudd government considered an 83-page report by the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and an 11-page Treasury report in April this year, it somehow or other could not quite bring itself to give the plight of pensioners a proper consideration in the budget. I think it is patently clear that the government is intent on ignoring pensioners and the plight that they face.

There is a report in the Sunday Tasmanian that, no doubt, would not have escaped Senator Brown’s notice, where a lifetime member of the Labor Party asked for pensioners to be given a fair go. She appealed directly to the Prime Minister, and she said that he ‘all but ignored’ her. The chairman of the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council, Bishop Christopher Saunders, in response to a question on ABC Radio on 17 September about the urgent plight of pensioners and whether the government should act now, said:

It seems to me that, if someone is at your door and they’re in dire straits and they need help, it is better to help them there and then rather than say, ‘Listen, come back next week when I’ve had time to write a letter about it’.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Come back in 10 years!

Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It seems to me to be urgent. Of course, we have had a report—although from the interjections opposite I am not quite sure whether or not it is a correct report—in the Australian Financial Review that, in fact, government backbenchers are getting increasingly concerned about the government’s failure to act to do anything for pensioners and have endorsed the push for extra financial assistance to aged pensioners.

Before I go on, Senator Evans also complained about the number of questions, which focused on pensions, that were asked of him in his capacity as the minister. That prompted me, over the time I was out of the chamber—which was only a few minutes—to look at how many questions Mr Rudd asked on pensions in question time when he was Leader of the Opposition. The grand total of that is two. I also looked at how many questions the opposition spokesperson on seniors, Ms Macklin, the member for Jagajaga, asked on pensions in question time. That was none. Compare this with the performance in the House of Mr Abbott, the member for Warringah, in just nine months of opposition, when he raised the issue of seniors with the government eight times in question time. This sort of counting of questions, I think, may not go all that far but certainly does answer the claim made by Senator Evans that, somehow or other, this indicates either interest or lack of interest; the coalition wins hands down.

Various speakers have attempted to accuse the coalition of failing to act to assist pensioners when we were in government. I utterly reject this claim, and I want to come to the various things that we did when we were in government. It is quite an interesting list. First of all, the decision taken by the coalition government in 1997 to link the age pension to growing incomes—25 per cent of male total average weekly earnings—rather than the cost-of-living increases, the CPI, means that pensioners now directly share in the benefits of a stronger economy and in the significant increases in wages since the coalition came into government. In 1997—this was a terribly important step—the coalition government legislated that the age pension be set to at least 25 per cent of male total average weekly earnings or increased by the CPI, whichever was the greater, and the coalition government increased pensions at two per cent a year above the rate of inflation. It was our government, of course, that introduced the utilities allowance to assist pensioners with the cost of utilities such as gas and electricity. The first payment was made in March 2005. Of course, to further encourage workforce participation—which I assume everyone in this chamber would support—the coalition government increased the amount of the age pension that a part-rate pensioner can receive above the income-test-free area by reducing the pension income test withdrawal rate from 50c in the dollar to 40c in July 2000. We also passed legislation to halve the assets test taper rate. From 20 September 2007, pensions are only reduced by $1.50 instead of the previous $3 per fortnight for each $1,000 worth of assets above the allowable assets limit. These achievements, of course, meant that we had consistently addressed these issues and had a very strong record in government.

Moreover, what is important, since we lost office, is the rise in the cost of living. The overall cost of living has increased by 4.5 per cent in the 12 months to June 2008. The last opportunity we had to do anything was in the last coalition budget; the setting of that budget is now close to two years ago. It is interesting that the overall cost of living has increased by 4.5 per cent in the 12 months to June 2008. Since the election of the Rudd government, I am sorry to say, the cost of milk has increased by 3.6 per cent; the cost of jam, honey and other spreads has increased by 3.62 per cent; and the cost of fuel has increased by 14.5 per cent. What all that tells us is that it is incumbent on the Labor government to address these increased cost-of-living pressures that have become manifest, increasingly so since they took office.

The increase in cost-of-living pressures makes the need for immediate relief even more compelling than at the end of 2007—with the last coalition budget in May of that year. During 2007 the now Prime Minister went around Australia promising to do something about the cost-of-living pressures. He led pensioners to believe he would do something about the cost of petrol and the cost of groceries. But, less than a year since the Rudd Labor government came to office, we are seeing the skyrocketing prices that I have detailed. Mr Rudd went to the election promising to ease the cost of living, but Australians are in fact worse off today than they were under the coalition government. If the Rudd government were serious about helping out people on pensions, they could fix it right now.

I want to deal with a couple of ill-founded criticisms that have been made in the course of this debate that may be based simply on not understanding what the bill does or not understanding its factual basis. The first is that Senator Evans suggested that this bill would add to the various pressures on the pension of the income tested rate. However, it is clear from an express provision in the bill that the bill will isolate the additional $30 per week from the income tested rate. The additional $30 per week is not added on for the rate used under the income test, and it is not used for other purposes—for example, setting the daily care fee in a nursing home. I think it is important to make that point.

The second criticism, also made by Senator Evans—and it has been a bit of a mantra for the government since they have had to come to terms with the fact that this coalition does not stand for increase taxes, particularly increased taxes that will be inefficient and for which we said the government had no mandate at the time of the election—was that the government, in effect, cannot afford to make this provision, this additional $30 payment for a single age pensioners, and the coalition should not be seeking it, on fiscal grounds. What this ignores is that, due to the careful fiscal management of the former, Howard government, the Rudd government has inherited a massive surplus of some $94.4 billion over five years, with this year a surplus of $21.5 billion. The government, if it chose, could certainly reorder its priorities and responsibly allow this relief to single age pensioners now.

It will not affect the outcomes of either the Hamer review or the Henry review. There are certainly no budgetary constraints on making this immediate additional $30-per-week payment to affected pensioners—and we are calling upon the government to do so because this is a matter that deserves urgent consideration. As they have acknowledged that none of the higher echelon of the government—ministers, from the Prime Minister down—could live on what we are asking pensioners to live on, it requires urgent attention. The government cannot wait a couple of years— until the Harmer review wends its way to making its report and then the Henry review gets around to it—before, hopefully, making some provision in the 2010 budget.

In my view, Australians expect any competent government sitting on a large, inherited surplus to be able to walk and chew gum. They should be able to provide for pensioners. That is part of the brief when you are in government: you have to look after those who need to be looked after in circumstances where that need is demonstrably clear.

Finally, I want to deal with the suggestion that there are a lot of other pension recipients and classes of pension recipients who should be included. In answer to that, we acknowledge that there is always more that can be done but there does need to be a first step. I do understand and, to some degree, sympathise with the senators who have raised their desire to include in the coalition’s bill other categories of pensioners in addition to single age pensioners, the 928,834 pension recipients to whom this benefit is directed. But, at this stage, the coalition’s point of view is that we have to take the first step—and I do believe it is in the right direction—to assist the Australians who are the most vulnerable. We do recognise that there is a need for more support for carers and people with disabilities. This call for an increase in the single age pension is a step towards addressing the immediate needs of some of the most vulnerable people in our society, given that age pensioners are not eligible for some of the extra benefits that, for example, disability support pensioners currently receive. It is, I think, critical to understand that the single age pension, compared to OECD rates, has been relatively low. This increase would bring them to slightly above the OECD average when compared to the couple age pension.

The total of 928,834 pensioners includes 857,229 single age pensioners, 700 widow B pensioners and 70,907 single age service pensioners. It will provide a $30-per-week boost as an additional payment that is on top the income tested rate of the base pension. So the coalition calls on the government to expedite further consideration of the needs of all pensioners—let us not leave anyone out in what we are asking the government to do—who simply cannot wait until 2010 for a comprehensive and thorough response to their needs.

The government in my view needs to address the needs of close to one million Australians who the Prime Minister can help with this particular bill that supports single age pensioners. I believe they should do just that. It is, I believe, a national disgrace to have to admit that there is a problem as basic as meeting the essential needs of Australia’s most vulnerable aged people. The government must not dither and hide behind reviews any more while the most vulnerable are living under unbearable financial stress. This is not a matter for a committee and it is not a matter for a delay; it is a matter for leadership. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the second reading amendment moved by Senator Fielding be agreed to.

Question negatived.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.