Social Services Minister Scott Morrison says a report that the Abbott government considered kicking millionaires off the aged pension is a "beat-up".
News Corp says the government's budget razor gang shelved a secret plan to get millionaires off the aged pension in favour of slashing the indexation of payments for every pensioner in Australia.
It says the expenditure review committee was asked to consider slashing pension payments to wealthy seniors last year by changing the taper rate, the preferred option of former Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews.
Mr Morrison said on Sunday he was not on the ERC at the time but there would have been a discussion about a range of options.
"The great revelation here is the government decided not to do something," he told ABC television.
"I think that is a bit of a beat-up about something that happened over a year ago."
News Corp said senior ministers had confirmed they agonised over the prospect Prime Minister Tony Abbott would be accused of kicking seniors off the pension and breaking an election promise not to cut pensions.
Instead, Treasury proposed a change to the indexation arrangements for all pensioners, meaning the rate of increase would effectively be slowed, from 2017.
The change was announced in the May budget, with welfare groups and Labor arguing it would cut pensions by $80 a week within 10 years.
Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce said if it had been based on the CPI in recent years rather than average weekly earnings people would have been ahead.
"We acknowledge we have to make hard decisions to turn the finances of the nation around," he told ABC television.
"If we don't, we won't have to worry whether it is the CPI because we won't have the money, we won't be able to borrow the money to pay for the pensions."
Labor leader Bill Shorten told News Corp that Mr Abbott had "lied to pensioners before the election".
"Now every single pensioner has to pay the price for that lie."
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