The government estimates raising age pension age to 70 would drive more than 25,000 people to other welfare payments

Pension age hike will force thousands of elderly Australians on to Newstart

Half of the 51,300 older Australians affected by an increase in the age pension age would move on to Newstart or the disability support pension in the first year alone, new figures suggest.

The Coalition has long proposed increasing the age pension age from 67 to 70, kicking in from 2025-26. The change is likely to make Australia’s pension age the highest in the developed world.

Government estimates show the move would affect 51,300 people in the first year alone, according to a response to questions asked in Senate estimates.

The government also predicts 12,934 people would move from the age pension to the disability support pension and 12,825 to the Newstart Allowance unemployment payment.

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The changes have not yet been legislated, but the pension changes remain Coalition policy after being first proposed in 2014.

They would follow Labor’s increase of the pension age from 65 to 67 when it was last in government – a change that is being gradually implemented from July 2017 until July 2023.

The opposition has pledged to fight any further increase to the pension age.

The shadow social services minister, Jenny Macklin, said the data showed increasing the pension age would not necessarily keep older Australians in work, as the government intends.

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“Many Australians won’t be able to work for longer like Mr Turnbull wants them to. Instead they’ll just be forced to live on Newstart or the DSP,” Macklin said.

“Labor understands how hard it is for older Australians to find work, particularly when their job has taken a toll on their body and where there is age-based discrimination in the workforce.”

But the government has hit back, saying Labor’s policy would have created an extra 61,761 DSP recipients and 63,187 Newstart recipients by the time it was fully implemented in 2024-25.

“Jenny Macklin had no concern about this when she increased the pension age. Now she is crying crocodile tears – what a hypocrite,” a spokeswoman for the social services minister, Dan Tehan, said.

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The new data comes amid a concerted push to raise the Newstart rate by $50 per week, led by the Australian council of social service.

The maximum Newstart payment is currently $272.90 a week for a single unemployed person, or just $38.98 a day.

Respected economist Chris Richardson this week called on Malcolm Turnbull’s government to boost Newstart. He described it as “embarrassingly inadequate”.

Labor is also facing an internal push to commit to raising Newstart at its national conference in July.