Senator CHRIS EVANS (8:00 PM) —The point I was trying to make, Senator Lees, is that the government's current proposal provides the exemption for those over 65. The rationale given for that was that it was the retirement age. That was the rationale given to me when I asked the question in the committee stage. The point that I was making to you is that the retirement age for women is not 65 and that we have people on age pensions who will not benefit from the grandfathering or grandmothering clause—

Senator Lees —They will, if they join.

Senator CHRIS EVANS —If they join—but by this measure we are exempting them from having to join. The question we are determining is where you draw the line for that. You say that the government originally said 75. You could equally make a case for 85 or 45. There are judgments. The rationale given to me when I asked the question was that it was to do with the retirement age—and, I presume, pension dependency. If there is a different rationale, I would be interested to hear what the minister's rationale is. We are saying that we are excluding women retired on the pension from being eligible for the exemption by drawing the line at 65. There is that group in between.

You say that they can join, and that is true; we could make it 75, and everyone between 65 and 75 could join. Again, it is a judgment call as to where you draw the line. We are saying that we have concerns about women on age pensions being excluded if they are under 65. We do not think that is a sensible step. We are arguing for a broader definition of those who get the advantage of the exemption. As I said to you earlier, part of the difficulty with this is that there is very little in the way of hard statistical evidence on how this impacts on the behaviour of any of these groups, and so we are at a bit of a disadvantage. We are suggesting that we ought to extend it to include those under 65 who are retired on age, widows or veterans pensions.