Senator PRATT (Western Australia) (15:02): I move: That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Families and Social Services (Senator Ruston) and the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians (Senator Colbeck) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today relating to the administration of the Social Services portfolio. This afternoon's question time shows very much that Australians who rely on the government cannot rely on them. We have here, in all the answers in this question time, an absolute demonstration of the abject failure of this government to stand up for the needs of pensioners, people on Newstart and people who rely on aged care, including home care. The government cannot own up to the fact that it has attacked pensioners in every budget since 2014. In all budgets since 2014, the government has included cuts to the pension. We have a Prime Minister who is determined to cut the pension and to increase the pension age, forcing farmers, bricklayers and nurses to work until they are 70. Equally, this government doesn't want to be seen to let the truth stand in the way of a good front page. They had the gall to promise needy and vulnerable Australians a boost of up to $800 in their pension and put that on the front page of the paper, then found—surprise, surprise!—the money is not there at all. How many pensioner couples of Australia's 2½ million pensioners got anything like $800? Well, you had to get called out on that, didn't you, to own up to the fact that, actually, documents released under FOI show that, on average, seniors secure just $5 a week for singles. With the change of deeming rates, the average windfall for age pensioners is just $249 for singles, a fraction of the $800 pensioner bonus heralded across the front pages of Australia's papers in July. Now, the gall of this kind of false spruiking by the government is pretty incredible, given that the nature of the front pages really didn't make it clear to Australian pensioners that unless they actually had investments they weren't going to see a cent of that increase in funding, because it is just a change in the deeming rate, let alone that if the government had wanted to correct deeming rates so that it could put $800 back into the pockets of Australian pensioners who have investments it could have changed the deeming rate more substantially in order to create an adjustment that was a true reflection of that. But, no, that is not what the government did. The government made measly changes to the deeming rate that aren't a true reflection of the rates of return that pensioners are likely to be receiving currently. If you've got an investment of up to $51,000 then the government is currently deeming that you will get a return of more than one per cent on that investment even though many, many pensioners will not be seeing returns of anything like that, let alone getting a return of more than three per cent on investments of over $50,000. The government knew that all along when it made these announcements. In order for pensioners to get $800 back, the government would have had to make far more substantial changes to the deeming rates, so it is incredibly galling that all this government can do, for all of its rhetoric about standing by Australians who need its support, is spew out measly weasel words and false promises. It does nothing but cut all of its delivery.