Raising age for Aged Pension eligibility put on agenda
When I posed the question a couple of months ago about whether it was time to increase the eligibility age for the Aged Pension, one of the last groups I would have expected to promote the idea was the National Seniors. But to their credit, that is what they are doing, reportedly calling on the federal government to “raise the retirement are to 75 and increase compulsory superannuation from 9 to 15 per cent.” I think they’re assertion that “ageing of the population poses a greater threat to the economy than climate change” is way off line, but the general basis of their concern is valid.
Such a move would have to be done gradually (as it was when the eligibility age for women to access the Age Pension was moved from 60 to 65 not too long ago), and it would also need to be done in conjunction with other actions – like looking at ways to encourage employment of older workers, and get business to recognise the value that experienced workers provide. Increasing the eligibility age for people wanting to migrate here on a skills visa is another change which could go hand in hand with this.
6 Comments, Comment or Ping
Tony
Andrew:
The unemployed (especially male) over 55 is very high. Lets face it coporations will not change their attitudes.
You might get support from the private SME industries but if their finding it difficult now, we should not even be contemplating it.
Perhaps if we didn’t raise the age eligibility and offered it has an option for people say reducing tax each year etc. Then it might work. But we shouldn’t be forecing the age eligibility until there is a major rethink.
Besides, kids in pre-shool are being taught like good little corporate citizens. Imagine from the time your 3 & 4 right up till you 75 (if you live that long) you will be required to work.
Hasn’t the Australian lifestyle changed. What sort of life are we leaving our kids.
Tony
Aug 31st, 2008
LORIKEET
I belong to the National Seniors. I have their latest magazine and newspaper, but haven’t read them yet.
I think they’re crazy. No one is going to want to employ really elderly people. Some might end up having to live on the dole for 20 years or longer.
But it does reinforce my idea that NO ONE will end up getting either a pension or a return on their superannuation in the future. They will be much too dead!
Tony:
I think you made some excellent points.
I don’t know how National Seniors think young people are going to contribute 15% of their income to super, especially if they don’t have a nest.
Maybe the National Seniors want to get their cut of the booty before the funds go bust. That’s the only logical conclusion I can draw.
Sep 1st, 2008
paul walter
Agre with you both. Bartlett’s approach is typical neolib punish the victim crap, very fascistic.
Sep 5th, 2008
Andrew Bartlett
I presume you’re just being polemical Paul, but even so, “fascistic” is just ludicrous.
I don’t think defining future pensioners and older people as “victims” is terribly helpful for them/us either, although at least with that term I think I can see what you’re trying to say.
Sep 5th, 2008
paul walter
Yes, Andrew, am fed up with the victimhood entitlement “self first”mentality that has been inculcated into usually comfortably- off Australians, such that this coldly would deny those much poorer off even the sniff of hope for the future. AM tired of the nonsense that proposes that poor schools should support rich schools, that the ill should give way in hospitals to conceited idiots doing cosmetic surgery, that aborigines should be disposessed for 4 wheel drive oafs in the mortgage belt blackmailing Australians into supporting their Macmansion debt driven lifestyle for no better reason than because they live in a “marginal”.
One of the lies relates to this neoliberal nonsense relating to “welfare dependence”, where the “wealth dependent” engaged in the “politics of envy”,seeking to rip even more off victims of structural change, if they sense the misery and depression has eased in these, even for a moment.
So much for a “Christian” country, where the well-healed become nonplussed when those at the bottom heap become alarmed at proposed increased migration putting them even further back in the queue, for a chance at a future.
A bit more “do as we do” and a bit less “do as we say”.
Sep 5th, 2008
LORIKEET
Paul:
I can understand your anger. I think most of what you have said is true.
What I hear is that most people over 50 have trouble finding work. The jobs they end up getting seem to be mostly labour intensive and low paid.
I know one lady who hates volunteers. She says they keep other people out of paid work, which I think is quite true. (A lot of paid jobs in Queensland went “voluntary” 25 or more years ago.)
After years of unemployment, this lady finally got a job working the checkout at Woolworths.
Supermarkets seem to employ a lot of women in the 40 plus age group. It involves a lot of standing, but the workers are reliable and don’t nomadically go elsewhere at the drop of a hat.
I think people over 40 have generally been victimised in the workplace for decades. A lot of men have been made redundant in favour of younger blood.
Sep 6th, 2008
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