Labor has seized on the fact the Coalition’s plan to lift the pension age to 70 is absent from its omnibus welfare bill, calling on the government to ditch the measure entirely.
The government maintains it is still Coalition policy but the deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, has said it is subject to Senate negotiations.
On Wednesday, the government introduced an omnibus welfare bill that combined its childcare package, family tax benefit cuts, paid parental leave and several blocked “zombie measures” including restricting the pension for Australians overseas and introducing a four-week wait for the dole for young jobseekers.
The only “zombie” measure not contained in the bill was the government’s plan to increase the pension age to 70, the Australian Financial Review reported.
Under the proposed change, announced in the 2014 budget, people born after 1 January 1966 would have to work until they are 70 before they are eligible for pension.
Guardian Australia has confirmed that lifting the pension age remains Coalition policy but the government did not include it because budget savings would not flow until 2025 and it did not want to risk the whole package when it could push for the measure separately at a later date.
Asked on ABC’s AM on Thursday why the government had omitted the pension change from the omnibus bill, Joyce said the public wanted the government to negotiate and that’s what it was doing.
Asked specifically about whether it would change pension policy, Joyce replied: “We have our policy but we are negotiating with the Senate as we always do.”
Joyce said the government proposed the change because it had inherited debt from the previous Labor government.
On Thursday, the shadow social services minister, Jenny Macklin, said that it was “not good enough” to put the pension age change on hold and called for the government to axe it entirely.
“Labor has strongly opposed the planned increase to the pension age to 70 since it was first proposed in the horror 2014 budget,” she said. “How does Mr Turnbull expect construction workers, nurses and farmers to work until they’re 70? He’s completely out of touch.
“The changes unfairly hurt Australians living in regional and remote Australia, where life expectancy is lower.”
In the omnibus bill the government made a number of compromises, including giving some families two extra weeks of paid parental leave and increased fortnightly family tax benefit payments.
But the government still faces an uphill battle to pass the package, as Labor and the Greens oppose it and the Nick Xenophon Team has not committed to support it.
On Thursday, the shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, told Radio National that Labor had opposed the original childcare package because it linked changes to family tax benefit cuts and the new bill linked it to even more cuts.
