Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to draw attention to the shameful treatment that this Liberal government has displayed towards Australian pensioners. Those on the other side should be ashamed of themselves. The Labor Party is built on a narrative and a set of values that include fairness, opportunity, education, pensions and better health. They are the issues which we hold great store in. When I look at the Liberal Party, it strikes me that the only narrative and the only set of values that they have is what this government has demonstrated over and over again since they came into government—that is, they promised to be a government of adults but what we see day after day in this chamber is that they are a government of backflips, a government in chaos and a government that is built on lies. They were untruthful when it came to the policies that they were espousing before the election.

If you recall, Mr President, just before the election the now Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, said on national television that there would be no change to the pension—none at all. He was adamant about that. He even said the same thing on the Insiders with Barrie Cassidy, on 1 September 2013. He gave an assurance: no change to the pension, no cuts to the pension. That was the promise this Prime Minister made to 3.7 million pensioners around Australia. He repeated that assurance on the eve of the election. This turned out to be a deceitful statement which those in the community had relied on. They thought they could rely on the then opposition leader to uphold his commitment, particularly to Australian pensioners, that there would be no change to the pension.

It does not matter how many times those on the other side in this place and in the other place come out and accuse Labor, accuse us, of misleading the community and running a scare campaign, because the reality is that pension indexation will change; it will have an effect on the daily living standards of our Australian pensioners—people who rely on what is already a limited income. It was a very dishonest statement. It was shameful that when the now Prime Minister went to the election he made those commitments. We have seen since he has come into power that he has broken that promise. As I said, this will have an effect on the living standards of Australian pensioners. It will have an effect on those people who go into aged care facilities. It will have an effect on the aged care sector, because, as we know, 85 per cent of the pension of those who are living in an aged care facility is taken to cover that expense. It is so disappointing that those who are most vulnerable in our community are the ones whom this government have chosen to attack.

There was the commitment that there would be no change to the pension, the commitment that there would be no cuts to education, the commitment that there would be no cuts to health and the commitment that there would be no change to the GST. What have we seen already? The New South Wales election is on Saturday, and we have seen Mr Hockey once again trying to play politics. We have heard in this chamber again today that Western Australia wants to have a larger cut of the GST. I have to say on behalf of my home state of Tasmania that we will never support it. We are a Commonwealth so that we can ensure that smaller states like Tasmania and South Australia are protected from the larger states who want a larger slice of the cake.

We recently saw in the budget something that was going to impact on the majority of people in this country. People who voted for this government believed that the commitments of those opposite would be honoured when they came into power. It was a very clear message that the Prime Minister gave to the Australian people when he said that there would be no cuts to health, yet we have seen such cuts taking effect in my home state. We have also seen it with the commitment given to no cuts to education. This has led to the Australian community clearly making their views known to government members that they are not going to tolerate the deregulation of universities. They are not going to stand by while regional campuses like the Tasmanian University, particularly the Launceston campus and the north-west coast Burnie campus, are run down. This government has already cut $30 million from the university's budget. This will have an enormous effect on young people living in Tasmania. We already have a very low retention rate when it comes to further education and young Tasmanians pursuing a tertiary education At the same time, we have seen the effects of the cuts that have been made to the TAFE sector. All of these have an enormous impact on our local communities.

It was written in the budget for every Australian to see that what this government wants to do is cut the indexation rate of the pension, cut the deeming threshold for the pension, and increase the age for the age pension to a level that would make it the highest in the developed world. It truly is a shameful and despicable act that this Liberal government would pick on those most vulnerable in our community. This act will, in fact, destroy the standard of living for our Australian pensioners—those who rely on the support of this government. As I said, this will have an impact on the ability of the residential aged care sector to provide the best possible care. Their funding will be cut at a time when we know the aged care sector is facing continued pressures in relation to infrastructure—particularly in my home state of Tasmania, where there are a lot of facilities and not-for-profit organisations that simply do not have the reserves to update facilities or build new ones.

This government continues to attack those people most in need. Today the Attorney-General did yet another backflip, this time on funding for legal assistance. When you move around your local communities and talk to your constituents, you find constant confusion. People really feel unsettled because they cannot rely on this government—what they say one day is completely different from what they say the next day. A lot of organisations in social services and the not-for-profit sector rely on assistance to run their programs. In my own community, the not-for-profit sector is already cutting positions. People are losing their jobs—and these are people with a wealth of experience. Because of this government's funding cuts, that experience and corporate knowledge is being lost to the sector.

I am really concerned about the impact all this is having, not only on our pensioners and those on limited incomes but on health in general—through increased uncertainty, funding cuts to the hospital system and the proposed GP tax. All of those things are of concern within the community. We have seen the unemployment rate increase under this government. This was going to be a government of infrastructure investment and increasing employment opportunities. Unfortunately, we have seen no action on these issues.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.