Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to call out the bureaucratic defined benefits scheme in Canberra, the federal bureaucratic defined pensions scheme. According to modelling from the finance department a few years ago—I suspect this figure is actually much larger today—the total cost for approximately 164,000 retired bureaucrats who've worked in Canberra, all of whom would've had a very good salary and very good conditions, is approximately $335 billion. With the retirement of David Anderson from the ABC, it has recently come to light that his final salary was estimated to be approximately $1.1 million or $1.2 million, and in retirement he is entitled to approximately 37 per cent of his final income every year. If you work that out, someone who's been on over a million dollars courtesy of the Australian taxpayer for the last five or six years is now, in retirement, going to get over $400,000 a year until he passes away. Now, Mr Anderson isn't much older than me—I'm led to believe he's about 55 years old—but for the life of me I cannot see how we can justify paying these ridiculous gold-plated pension schemes in retirement.

According to this modelling, there are 40,000 retired public servants, all of whom get more than $75,000 a year, at an estimated total cost of $137 billion. That is completely unsustainable, and it is unfair to the Australian taxpayer, who each will at best get a pension of approximately $25,000 or $26,000, and that's only on the condition that they have assets of less than $312,000 if they're a single pensioner.

The defined benefits scheme needs to be means tested. (Time expired)