A $30 rise is not enough for the really poor pensioners with no income and is too much for those well off pensioners that Peter Costello stuck on the public t-t in his last couple of budgets. About 20% of all aged pensioners have no other income. The next 40% have less than $50 per week extra income, with maybe some savings.
However, many of the top 40% have lots of extra income, including super based on tax concessions. There are more than 3 million people on pension-linked payments, all of whom would benefit from a general pension rise and so it is likely to be spread thinly.
Government figures show the Coalition’s push to boost the single pension by $30 a week would add another 7500 well off people to the aged pensioner numbers by increasing the income test cut-out to $854 for a single pensioner up from the current $778 per week. As even $1 of pension entitles people to
more than $1300 in allowances, this illustrates the problem of raising general payments and undermines the argument that simplicity is the best solution.
Interestingly the Government wimps, using these figures very publicly in case they offend the better off recipients.
So it’s left to groups like Women’s Electoral Lobby to suggest better solutions: give aged pensioners living on their own in private rental accommodation an equity payment of $70 per week that won’t flow on to others.
Other groups needs targeted payments too but maybe the review needs to work out how to target their needs more effectively. This type of payment would ensure the $1.5 billion the opposition wants to spend goes to those who need it most and stops the Opposition’s Vegemite thin spread to even the relatively well off.
Best of all, this option would cost less than $200m!
Eva is right about Labor continuing to be wimps. It needs to be made known who benefit mostly under welfare spending in the last government. It was wealthier elderly, through access to health cards, superannuation benefits and the taxation system benefited the most. There was very little for people with little or no other income. Yes there will be screams but most of these people will not vote for Labor under any circumstances.
The sick, handicapped, carers and unemployed suffered a worse fate than the elderly
There is no way that the pensions should be increased across the board until it is identified who would be better off.
I am a aged pensioner with my own home and small savings. I resent that the Seniors card is issued to all and carries more weigh in the community than a pension card. I was told at one outlet, they do not recognized the pension card as unmarried mothers have them. I felt highly enraged as holders of Senior Cards can be quite well off. A unmarried mother who has been deserted by the child’s father could be having trouble making ends meet.
Eva Cox – the voice of reason that demonstrates targeted compassion can save a billion and have more than twice the punch. The government will inevitably look whimpish trying to get to work impeded by stone throwing teenagers whose delight is intoxicating, it seems, as they damage anything relying for cheers from the less than ordinariness of resource limited targets.
The oppositions few sophisticates are seriously underestimating decent ordinary Australians especially as they wake up to how their careless trust has been abused for more than a decade.