He plans to introduce a bill to align the pension age with the age that politicians are able to access their superannuation

Clive Palmer plans to introduce a private member’s bill to align the pension age with the age that politicians are able to access their superannuation.



The Palmer United party leader met with the party’s senators-elect in Canberra on Monday to discuss the bill. They were unanimous in their support of it, the mining magnate said.

He plans to introduce the bill to the House of Representatives in the “next month or so”.

“As the prime minister said, it is important the whole community does the heavy lifting and when we look at super and the fact they’re now extending the pension age to 70 it really means people’s super is tied up,” he told reporters.

“And what does that mean? One year before you die, one hour before you die, you’re able to access your super and your old age pension, so it’s only fair members of parliament should have the same conditions.”

Members of the Senate and House of Representatives are awarded an allowance when they retire which is linked to how many years they have served in parliament. They can access their superannuation at the same age as the rest of the population, which is currently 55 but is due to increase to 60 by 2024.

The government has proposed raising the age at which people can access their pension to 70, so under Palmer’s proposal pensions could either be accessed at 55 to 60 when politicians are allowed to access their superannuation, or the age at which politicians can access their super would be raised to 70.

Palmer said he hoped Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey would support the bill to prove they were willing to do as much “heavy lifting” for the budget as they expected pensioners to do.



Palmer still will not say whether the PUP will support the proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act in the Senate. He has previously said the party will not support the increase of the pension age and at the press conference said PUP would not support a proposed deficit levy, or changes to excise on fuel.

“Primarily because we don’t think it’s justified if you look at the true position of the Australian economy, there’s no debt problem. The facts are, if you look at OECD figures, Australia’s national debt is about 12% of GDP at the present time and the average for the industrial nations in the OECD is 73%,” he said.

“So it’s a manufactured issue for the government to be able to bring all these draconian things against people. You’ve got to ask yourself, why do we have a government if we’re going so well?”

Palmer was indifferent to the freezing of politicians’ pay for one year, which the Remuneration Tribunal approved on Monday at the government’s request. He said he gave all his parliamentary income away, so was effectively working as a politician unpaid.