Senate passes PM pension bill with independent bench support

Ke­jan Haynes

The Sen­ate on Mon­day ap­proved the Prime Min­is­ter’s Pen­sion (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025, which now sets a min­i­mum one-year term in of­fice for any prime min­is­ter to qual­i­fy for a state pen­sion, with a tiered pay­ment struc­ture based on time served. Cru­cial­ly, the bill ap­plies retroac­tive­ly from March 10, 2025, dis­qual­i­fy­ing for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who served from March 17 to April 28.

The bill re­quired a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty to pass in both Hous­es of Par­lia­ment, mean­ing the gov­ern­ment need­ed the sup­port of at least four sen­a­tors from ei­ther the In­de­pen­dent or Op­po­si­tion bench­es. The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives passed the bill on June 27 with 27 gov­ern­ment MPs in favour and 11 Op­po­si­tion MPs ab­stain­ing.