Hockey: barackining for the greedy

"Robbery Joe" in full rant against pensioners

Veronica Sheen
Research Associate, School of Social Sciences at Monash University

... With large numbers of workers not being able to access a pension until 70, the outcomes will be more reliance on other pensions and benefits. The default for some will be the disability support pension as suggested by both the Grattan Institute and Productivity Commission. This adds adds a layer of an eligibility requirement of “impairment” for income support on to the pension income and assets test. A long-term project of governments is to reduce reliance on this payment and again a new round of review of eligibility is under way.

The later pension eligibility age will mean many older workers in their sixties will be forced on to unemployment payments – the low Newstart allowance at a mere $A250 per week. This will widen older age penury and heighten the risk of homelessness.

The government and the institutions advocating for a later retirement age have largely not engaged with these difficult and complex factors that are relevant to public financing for an ageing population. As such, the logic for raising the pension eligibility age as a solution to the “budget crisis” is deeply flawed and is setting up future governments for other social and economic “crises” down the track. It is a shame that the “mature debate” is over before it even began.