The Forum > Article Comments > Australia is growing old > Comments
Australia is growing old : Comments
By Babette Francis, published 3/9/2013There is no bearded man with a board around his neck walking around proclaiming 'Repent! The End is Nigh', but perhaps there should be.
- Pages:
-
- 1
- Page 2
- 3
-
- All
So for fifty years and more the 'age hump' has been used to justify increasing record numbers of immigration. Yet it was arguably immigration that has contributed to the 'problem', if any exists. Not that that concerns lobbyists and governments who for the same fifty years and more have shamelessly used the 'hump' and built inter-generational jealousy to justify socially unpalatable changes in policy, such as placing new limits to qualify for the age pension and delays and parsimonious paring of any increases in payment.
At the same time government, Menzies I believe, stole the millions from the taxes paid by all for an age pension from 60 for women and 65 for men, paid it into consolidated revenue and used it for other purposes.
The duplicity of federal governments is also seen in such dubious and callous behaviour as forcing their own middle aged APS staff into redundancy to serve the affirmative action and multicultural imperatives. Doubly nasty when one also remembers that while politicians themselves have their superannuation linked to changes in average male weekly earnings to proof themselves against inflation, the same politicians as bosses are adamant in refusing to allow the same indexation for the superannuation of their employees, public servants and soldiers. That is despite the government's own independent reports recommending a change in the indexation applied to public servants.
Australian governments have form for creating whipping boys out of sectors of the population to justify their own poor planning.