LOCAL MPs TELL TONY ABBOTT HANDS OFF OUR PENSIONS

17 April 2015

Local MPs Sharon Bird and Stephen Jones have warned that local pensioners face growing uncertainty about their future thanks to Tony Abbotts year of chaos and confusion on pensions.

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Over 39,000 pensioners in the region are still facing an $80 a week cut to their pension thanks to Tony Abbotts plans to slash indexation of the pension.

Sharon Bird said that pensioners deserve better and that Labor wouldnt give up the fight.

The Social Services Minister, Scott Morrison, has completely failed to provide any certainty to worried pensioners. In the space of just one month, he has floated five separate thought-bubbles on how to cut pensions.

First it was a sunset clause to its cuts to pension indexation after ten years that appeared out of nowhere in the Intergenerational Report. Then it was a delay to indexation cuts. Third came the idea of a three year review into pensions, and now weve had two different proposals on changes to assets test taper rates.

Stephen Jones said that the Government had broken its promise it made to pensioners before the last election that there would be no change to pensions.

If Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison get their way, pensioners will be pushed into poverty and hardship. Yet they were singing a very different tune in the lead up to the 2013 federal election.

Its time for the Government to admit they got it wrong, end the dishonesty and chaos, and drop their cuts to pension indexation.