By Leith van Onselen

The AFR has this afternoon reported that Chief executive of National Seniors, Michael O’Neill, has slammed rumoured changes to the Aged Pension, claiming that raising the pension age would backfire as a Budget savings measure, since older Australians would simply shift to Newstart or the disability pension.

While this might be true for some oldies, O’Neill has failed to mention that the Aged Pension is currently around $6,600 higher than Newstart – i.e. $19,916 per annum for a single pension versus $13,273 for the single Newstart unemployment allowance.

Moreover, according to the 2010 Henry Tax Review, if existing arrangements continued, by 2040 a single pensioner would be paid “more than twice as much as a single unemployed person”, since the Aged Pension is indexed at 27.7% of the average male earnings, whereas Newstart is indexed against the consumer price index.



Meanwhile, Labor’s Jenny Macklin continues to place political expediency ahead of the national interest, once again attacking the Government for refusing to rule-out changes to the Aged Pension:

“Tony Abbott said time and time again before the election that he wouldn’t change the pension – today we learn that’s exactly what his government is planning,” she said.

As I argued on Monday, Ms Macklin obviously endorses creating a nation of working tax slaves, as today’s generation Xers, Ys and Zs are forced to pay more tax (and consume less) in order to fund the growing army of retired Australians, many of whom also enjoy generous taxpayer entitlements and are in much stronger financial positions than their children.

Macklin’s continued lobbying against reforms to the Aged Pension also ignores what is a genuine fiscal and social problem facing the nation, and her partisanship is precisely the opposite of what Australia needs if it is to successfully navigate the challenges ahead.

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