Social Services Legislation Amendment - Cashless Pension Card
This bill, the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Portability Extensions) Bill 2021, is a sad reminder for Australians that the government has failed them. It has left them without a vaccination and it has left them stranded in dangerous and unsafe parts of the world. Without this bill, they would also be left without the financial support which they desperately need right now. That's why Labor supports this bill, but we know that there are huge concerns from the people who this bill affects. People who are trapped because the government has failed to provide them with a vaccine and failed to bring them home deserve so much more from this government.
We can't forget, as the member for Barton has said, that this government cut social security to the bone. It was Labor that gave the largest increase to the pension in more than a century. Over the last eight years, we've seen this government try to cut the pension again and again and again—cut, cut, cut. For more than 20 years, pensioners could expect their pensions to rise as prices rose. That was always something that pensioners could rely on, but not under this government. This government has tried to stop pensioners getting the support they need, freezing their pensions. After pressure from Labor and the community—and pensioners, who don't mind standing up for themselves, because they know that this government won't stand up for them—the government capitulated and gave them two one-off payments. But it's part of a pattern of behaviour from the government when it comes to the pension. The pension payments that we provided to those stuck overseas are more than they would have been had Labor not stood up against this government's mean cuts.
Remember: in 2014, there was the $80 cut from the pension with the removal of indexation; the $900 cut with the axing of the seniors supplement for self-funded retirees; and the $1 billion cut from pensioner concessions. That was just 2014, in the Abbott-Hockey horror budget. But they continued in 2015, because they actually believe in making life harder for pensioners who have worked their entire life. Expecting a secure, stable retirement, pensioners have to worry, every year, about what's going to come from this government in the budget. By changing the assets test, the government cut as much as $12,000 a year for some 370,000 Australians. That wasn't enough. In 2016, they cut the pension for around 190,000 pensioners by limiting their travel period to six weeks, and they cut the pension for around 1.5 million pensioners by scrapping the energy supplement for new pensioners. On the government's own figures, 563,000 Australians were worse off. When it comes to this government and what it might cut, the reality is that anything is possible. After the government has racked up $1 trillion of debt, with no reform plan, I worry that pensioners will be first in the firing line again when this government snaps back to its 'cut, cut, cut' approach to managing the nation's finances.
The government also has a habit of denying things and then, a few weeks later, doing them. I am worried by some very odd and carefully chosen language used by government ministers about the cashless debit card. This card, which has been trialled in a range of communities and has cost the government millions of dollars in terms of its rollout, is now being expanded. We know the minister 'wants to make this mainstream'. Making the cashless debit card—the 'cashless pension card'—mainstream will mean that pensioners lose the flexibility that they deserve in their retirement. Pensioners are worried. I bring the concerns of the pensioners in my electorate into this House. The minister has used some very careful language. The government are so sensitive about this because they know that what they are discussing is wrong. It is disrespectful of pensioners.
Mr Tudge interjecting—
Mr GORMAN: I've got no problem! This government has a problem with pensioners buying a beer. I've got no problem with pensioners buying a beer. They have worked hard, helped build this country and raised their families. If the penalty this government wants to put on pensioners for enjoying their retirement is to restrict their ability to buy a beer or a glass of wine, it is absolutely disgraceful. It is garbage from this government.
We know that older Australians are vulnerable. We know that, when this government talks about expanding the cashless debit card into a cashless pension card, it is something that is of concern to pensioners. This government will now seek to expand this. Think about a stranded pensioner overseas—the people we're trying to help with this legislation. How would a cashless pension card work if you were stuck overseas? Could you use it in the UK? You wouldn't be able to. Could you use it if you were stuck in Indonesia? No. There are huge rollout problems with a cashless pension card, because they have to approve the providers. It's also a huge amount of red tape for businesses in my electorate. Any expansion of the cashless debit card is a huge expansion of red tape for the small businesses in my electorate. Having to go through an approvals process by this government, having to go through—
Ms Collins interjecting—
Mr Tudge interjecting —
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member for Perth has the call and will be heard in silence.
Mr GORMAN: The minister at the table is proudly saying that he 'designed the damn card'. Most of us come here because we want to change the nation—we want to build infrastructure, and we want to make sure we leave the next generation better off than the generation that came before. Instead, what this government is looking to do by expanding the cashless debit card is clearly something those opposite know they should be embarrassed about. Until the government can properly rule this out—and I quote the minister again—
Ms Collins interjecting —
Mr Tudge interjecting —
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member for Perth will be heard in silence. If the members want to have a discussion, they can leave the chamber.
Mr GORMAN: As long as the government say that they want to make the cashless debit card mainstream, with a cashless pension card, I will continue to bring the concerns of my community into this chamber. That's my job—to make sure that we raise these concerns and that the government doesn't continue down this path. My view is that pensioners have made sacrifices. We've all made sacrifices over the last year, but pensioners have done it tougher than most. Before the pandemic, pensioners were making sacrifices. Research that the government commissioned after they started cutting the pension showed this. The research showed that a third of Australian pensioners were experiencing energy poverty. Energy costs have been a major concern for older Australians. Many pensioners spend a substantial portion of their income on power bills.
When this pandemic hit, it showed just how vulnerable pensioners were. I congratulate the McGowan Labor government in Western Australia, who saw that vulnerability and sought to provide a $600 credit to pensioners in my electorate so that they could continue to pay their power bills. Where the income supports that were being provided to pensioners during the pandemic weren't sufficient, the state stepped in. That's a pattern of behaviour that we see time and time again.
The other thing that's important to note is that it's also pensioners and senior Australians who raise concerns about the lack of affordable renewable energy in our grid. Pensioners are people who do that long-term planning. They don't just think about how much money they're going to have this month or next month; they're thinking about the rest of their lives—20 years. Pensioners know that, over those 20 years, the only way they're going to have lower power bills and the energy they need to run their houses and keep them warm is to make sure that we start that important transition towards renewable energy. Otherwise, it's just going to be the same pattern that we've seen for the last eight years under this government—a 50 per cent increase in power bills, pensioners choosing to have cold showers and not put their heating on at night, and not being able to afford to run their air conditioners during heatwaves, as we experience in Perth on a regular basis.
I'll now come to the people who are stuck overseas that we are trying to help. As of 28 May, 35,000 Australians want to get home but can't. Many of them are older Australians; 4,260 of them are classified as vulnerable Australians. So, while we are passing this legislation to help them with financial support, I'd much rather we weren't having this debate. If the government and the Prime Minister had delivered on their promise to get everyone home by Christmas last year, this legislation wouldn't be necessary. It's as simple as that. We wouldn't need it. We need this legislation. It's been six months. It's another broken promise from this Prime Minister.
In India alone, there are more than 11,000 Australians who are trying to get home. Some of them are grandparents who haven't seen their grandkids for more than a year and families who have been separated by the incompetence and laziness of this government. The Prime Minister promised the Australian people in the middle of a pandemic that he would get these pensioners home. The Prime Minister having broken that promise, we finally have some legislation to at least provide them with their pension payments. This is the same Prime Minister who assures us that he is on a war footing in terms of how we're helping people.
Mr Tudge interjecting —
Mr GORMAN: I wonder. We get questions from time to time from people who say, 'How do different people get to the frontbench?' I ask the government opposite: how do you leave the Prime Minister in his job when he has continued to lie and fail the Australian people?
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member for Perth will withdraw that.
Mr GORMAN: I withdraw. The Prime Minister said that we are on a war footing. But apparently this doesn't apply to the vaccine rollout or quarantine. If it did, we would be making proper use of our defence assets. If Labor was in government, we'd look at things like RAAF Base Learmonth as a priority to make sure we had the capacity to get these pensioners home so that we wouldn't have to send the cashless pension cards and payments overseas. Instead, we could just bring them home. That would also mean that they could spend their pension here in Australia and support Australian small businesses. But quarantine, despite being a Commonwealth responsibility, is not a priority, even though pensioners are stuck overseas saying, 'We want to come home; we want to get back to where we grew up, where we worked all our lives and where we can see our families and our grandkids.' We know that the Halton report recommended a purpose-built facility in Western Australia, but, because this government is so stubborn and so determined to ignore the expert advice, our nation is stuck. Premier McGowan has said very clearly that he would like to see 'a facility next to an international-capacity airport'. It's been suggested that Exmouth or Busselton could be the location. Premier McGowan said:
… there's those sorts of places that are outside of the very heavily populated inner city of Perth, but the Commonwealth shows no appetite.
I just can't understand why you would choose to leave the most dangerous bits of quarantine in the middle of our CBD after we've had so many pieces of evidence that it doesn't work. I know what that means to the pensioners who live in my electorate: they are left vulnerable to these quarantine leaks which we see time and time again. They haven't had their full vaccination schedule. The information coming out of this government is light to non-existent at best, although I understand that every pensioner in my electorate next month will receive a personalised letter from the Prime Minister telling them about the vaccine schedule and why they should get vaccinated. When pensioners need a vaccine and the government's solution is to give them a letter from the Prime Minister, I think that just shows how badly the rollout of the vaccination schedule has gone.
The government has failed when it comes to the confidence that is needed in the vaccine rollout. This is a huge problem that this government fails to address. It's great that we've got this legislation, and it is very important for a very small number of people, but I'd also expect the government to do something for the very large number of people who are waiting for them to actually step up on the two jobs that they should be focusing on day in, day out: quarantine and vaccines. If you get quarantine right and you get vaccines right, we won't need legislation like this and we can bring the pensioners who are stuck overseas home. We can make sure they're spending that money here in Australia and we can reconnect Australian families who have been stuck apart for more than a year because of the incompetence of this government.