Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to speak to the issue of the carers bonus. I call on the Rudd Labor government to commit immediately to the carers bonus, and, indeed, the seniors bonus of $500. The government need to provide an ironclad guarantee that the $1,600 annual bonus to carers will remain. We cannot wait until the May budget. The indecision and the word games by the Rudd Labor government over the last five days have been almost laughable. They are causing enormous anxiety to older Australians and vulnerable Australians—those that are disabled, those that have families that are in a very difficult and onerous position. The depth of despair and distress knows no bounds.

This Rudd Labor government needs to wake up and reverse the decision that has been put forward by the department or by their own decision makers which was leaked last week and is now on the public record. So far the response from the Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, and, indeed, his ministers, has been entirely inadequate.

The first response was from the Prime Minister while in the Solomon Islands a couple of days after this was revealed, when the anxiety levels were increasing markedly. It was along the lines that he ‘won’t leave them in the lurch’. What does that mean, exactly? Weasel words! Then the next day, or the day after, the Prime Minister said that ‘these people won’t be worse off’. What the 400,000 carers, and their families, of Australia need is an ironclad guarantee that the government will commit to retaining the $1,600 annual bonus payment. That is what the carers need.

In my view, the carers in Australia are the unsung heroes of this nation. They are providing billions of dollars in savings to the economy each year. The time and compassion that they give to their charges is immeasurable. To even contemplate placing further financial burdens on them is inconceivable to me.

I want to draw the chamber’s attention to the responses to these matters of both the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, and the local member for Bass, Jodie Campbell.  Both of them have said publicly that these payments were a ‘one-off’. They were not one-off payments—that is categorically wrong. They were paid each year, and every year, for the last four years.