You cannot spend a house, and single front shacks can cost a million dollars in many places today. And, paying the pension to a mere quarter of a million people who live in houses worth a million or more is chicken feed compared to what governments spend on climate change and renewable energy fraud, not to mention corporate welfare.

The current government, hardly a great manager of the economy, has decided to go after pensioners again. After all, they haven't put the boot into pensioners since the multi millionaire Malcolm Turnbull was Prime Minister, and the current secretive, big bucks, PM was treasurer.

"... creating an incentive to generate additional cash … ". Well, that ignorance could come only from someone relatively fit and young who has fallen for the crap that age is only a number.

Young people hate old people Politicians hate old people. I watched two demented, screeching thirty-something-females last night, carrying on about the burden old pensioners are to them. One of the harpies complained that she couldn't afford it: she was behind in her mortgage payments. She and her whining generation need to learn how to organise their own finances, not blame a generation or two who could do so, and well before superannuation existed.

Risible rubbish. This man had his fortune handed to him! From a hard-nosed and indifferent media mogul who like all of his ilk, relied absolutely on the endeavour and enterprise of others and able to use and throw away humans who were past an arbitrary use by date!

The pension is not and never ever was an entitlement! It was conceived to support the most impoverished in the twilight of life And when first envisaged and kicking ina t 65, the average life span of the Australian male was 63.

Rather than support people who throw millions away, the family mansion needs to be included in the assets test. Given it is and folks living in homes worth more than a million, may need to downsize!

That someone as diabolically disingenuous could even conceive of a millionaire so arranging his financial affairs so as to claim support designed for folk in poverty through no fault of their own, speaks volumes about a demented deranged mindset?

And in good company in almost any Australian privileges personified Parliament! And possibly explains why we went from the third wealthiest nation and a creditor one at that, to one hopelessly mired in record and exponentially expanding foreign debt, as well as, record domestic debt coupled to hopelessly unaffordable housing as the real parasites, drones and leaners have wrecked what was once a fair and equitable society, that gave everyone a fair dinkum, fair go!

David, if you see an ugly demented face glaring back at you from the mirror? Don't blame the mirror!
Alan B.

A politicians refrain: "where the votes are, someone waits for me".

Means testing pensions will not win the votes of the influential.

What this situation highlights re the article, is the compromised position politicians operate from.
It's the exact same problem applicable to the Chinese influence over politicians and their decision making.
It's the exact same problem applicable to a social disaster of a housing market geared for profit alone, which removes the societal necessity from the equation, of housing the population as a priority, replaced by capitalising on people's need of a roof over their head to achieve it.
The compromised personal positions of politicians is actually the extreme pain of the general population.

The game a pension is to the wealthy, is actually a critical necessity to those without the means of self support, drawn increasingly from the numbers unable to enter the property market under its current structure, (notably the younger generations, re post above ttbn), forced to pay huge slabs of their pension in rent.

There is absolutly no sign on the horizon, any political compromising will change under the current status quo.

Dan

Alan B.

I'm amused how often I find myself on the same page as yourself.

An easily achieved research into the Dublin inner city tenement slums, which existed from the late eighteenth century and right through to the late twentieth cenruary, was entirely due to decision making of compromised politicians who like our modern day Australian equivalents, as it turned out, actually owned the vast majority of them, and used the proceeds of the plunder of desperate in their community, to support their own pensions.
Nothing changed under those conditions of ownership, until the ramshackle buildings began to spontaneously collapse from neglect, killing many of the poor residents.
We are always ruled by arseholes!

Dan

"The thought of the government taxing the family home after it has already messed endlessly with your super, and is now trying to make you work into your seventies, is beyond galling ….. " (Paul Collits, Quadrant Online 21/11/19).

Collits points out that people over sixty, perhaps even over fifty, can’t get jobs.

He also indicates that if the government short of money for pensions, it should take a hard look at the money they are wasting on 'such hare-brained schemes as “climate action”, renewable energy, make-work universities, subsidised child care and endlessly upgraded infrastructure to support the hordes of migrants that we never consented to receive.'

Made some good points David however I would be very interested in how much you get from the public purse as an ex pollie? What is the value of your house? Or are you just like the warmist who expect everyone else to sacrifice while being a 'parasite' on the system. Or do pollie pensions fall from trees.