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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-11-08 Daily Xml
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MURIEL MATTERS

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (15:44): I was honoured recently to be part of a function to commemorate our very own Muriel Matters, hosted by the Governor-General Her Excellency Quentin Bryce, and co-ordinated by the member for Florey. One of the participants at this function was former Labor federal minister and senator Susan Ryan. The Hon. Susan Ryan AO is now the Age Discrimination Commissioner of what was the human rights and equal opportunity commission which, as people would know, has been renamed the Australian Human Rights Commission.

In the discussions that we had, it was apparent that Susan Ryan certainly since she left parliament has been very involved in the superannuation industry and I would say is one of Australia's experts in the area. I was talking to her about what she could see in terms of changes with regard to the policy to change the retirement age in our community.

As members would know, the government is now saying that from 1 July 2017 the qualifying age for the age pension will increase from 65 to 65.5 years. The qualifying age for the age pension will rise by six months every two years, reaching 67 by 1 July 2023, and these changes will be introduced four years after women's qualifying age for the age pension has reached 65 under existing rules. It is very interesting when you actually look at the table. I was a bit concerned to see in my age bracket that the retirement age really does start to go up to 66 from 60, which is what it was for those women born before 1935.

As luck would have it, I am certainly in that category and for anybody who was born from 1947 to 1948, it is 64.5; from 1949 to 1952, it is 65; from 1952 to 1953, 65.5; and, as I said before, in my category of 1954 to 1955, it is 66. That is the way the cookie crumbles, I suppose. Having a background as a workers compensation advocate, I was also interested to know what changes may be afoot in regard to entitlements for workers who are injured on the job past the age of 65 in particular.

We are very well served. There is a quite excellent but huge tome, called Comparison of Workers' Compensation Arrangements Australia and New Zealand (and I was referring to the most recent publication which came out last year), which actually looks at the age limits across the states, as well as at the commonwealth level and in regard to the New Zealand provisions. Part of the discussion that I had with Susan Ryan was that in fact superannuation needed to be looked at, and I understand the federal government has taken up that issue, but also obviously, as the member for Bragg has already pointed out, workers compensation is going to be another area that we really do need to look at.

In South Australia, of course, the retirement provisions say that weekly compensation payments are not payable after a worker reaches retirement age unless the worker is within two years of retirement age or above retirement age, in which case weekly payments are payable for a period of incapacity falling within two years after the commencement of the incapacity. That is in sections 35(2) and (3).

As we know, there are more and more people in the workplace who are over 65, and it would seem to me that one of the things we do need to address is the issue not only of weekly payments but also of people having their medical support paid for through the scheme. South Australia, of course, is no orphan. When you look at the provisions for Victoria, Queensland and other states, that provision is not there.

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