A well-considered article on the topic of retirement incomes. As a baby-boomer, I have benefited from education and health services and am happy paying income tax for as long as I earn. Providing for income streams beyond the age of retirement is the responsibility for all of us with the means and ability. Raising the retirement age to 70 is inevitable. The only objection to the increased age is in consideration of those who rely on a fit, strong body to earn a living. The article's note on disability support pension addresses that question.

Well I am proud to say that I did not vote for Kevin 07, nor Julia, nor Kevin again, so I DO NOT take responsibility for the blow out in the debt.

I was very happy with our position before big Kev came to town.

There is no point in buying a home if you can't leave it to your children. People can hardly be blamed for the housing boom which turned modest family homes into million dollar assets.
Most couples worked extremely hard to buy these homes whilst raising children without the help from government that parents receive from government these days.
The costs of buying and maintaining a home far outway the expense of renting privately or depending on government housing.
If family homes are to be counted as an asset fewer people will buy them, rather spending their money on holidays and entertainment, leaving them dependant on public housing after their superannuation has run out.
So, on top of providing an aged pension, the government will have to provide more housing for the elderly as well.

So the only reason for buying a home is so you can leave it to your children?

rehctub, the debt's continued to blow out under Abbott, so your protestations of innocence are meaningless! The debt's mainly due to the economic cycle rather than government policy.

>So the only reason for buying a home is so you can leave it to your kids< What rubbish! One buys a house to live in it, pay it off and leave it to the kids.

After all that's the only chance many of them will have to own a home and or get out from under the greedy price gouging landlord.

If welfare is just for the needy, why is so much being given to the greedy! i.e., negative gearing, millionaires tax concessions on their super, and family trusts, which by the way, also go to the kids, allegedly!

I paid tax at the top rate and in part helped to pay for Telstra, Qantas, T.A.A, Dozens of power companies and insurance companies and banks, with the CBA still remaining the biggest and most profitable.

Had government not sold these things, that we oldies paid for; the combined return would have paid all of the old age pensions.

And there were only sold because successive government gave away the mining boom, and far too much middle class welfare as pork barreling/vote buying.

And now pensioners/home owners who worked hard all their lives for their humble abodes, are expected to pay for what?

What about those who are so called pensioners, able to play the pokies live in veritable mansions,take an overseas trip every year and still collect a full or in part pension.

Someone on David's income and with his generous pension entitlements should have to pay fr his own retirement.

But particularly if he get a federal parliamentary pension/super; and a state one as well?

On one thing we can agree welfare is for the needy, not the greedy!
Rhrosty.

Are you a fool, a smart ass, or just poorly informed Aidan? Which ever, you must know that the debt is continuing to grow because the senate won't pass any of the government efforts to reduce it.

Get used to it, while we have a senate that is only interested in politicking. Their grandstanding & Gillard's cost time bombs, like Gorki & the NDIS ensure the debt will skyrocket, if they continue this instructional actions.

I can see no reason we should not be expected to finance our retirement with our accumulated assets. However I would resist like hell doing this while Rhrosty "needy" were living off the fat of the land drinking all the milk & honey they were too slack to provide themselves.

When the bludgers are provided with something more suitable to their personal effort, a tent in a camp ground, I'll be quite happy to do more for myself in retirement.

Equal handouts would be a good idea to start with. Don't forget, I paid a levy to go towards my pension when I was younger. The fact that they changed the name has no effect on that.

David. For the greater part of my life I gave a very large component of my fortnightly salary to the government who, through John Howard, Keating and Gillard/Rudd chose to spend it I ways I did not necessarily approve, I am a self funded retiree, have raised 5 children, seen vast sums of money swallowed into giant government ventures, supported increasing numbers of unemployed, covered myself for medical needs etc etc etc. Spleaking personally, I consider I have contributed slightly more than my fair share. My salary has been constantly re-distributed. I am not enclosed to contribute 1$ more.

I do take your point however.

It is a pity that we have a senator, and many who make comments, who understand so little about the financial situation of a currency issuing (sovereign) government.

With a floating exchange rate, and not much borrowing denominated in a foreign currency, a sovereign government is not constrained the same way a citizen is constrained. Such a government can pay for anything it wants to buy that is available for sale in exchange for the currency it issues. The principal constraint it faces is inflation and its only contribution to consumer good inflation occurs when it continues to try to buy too much when the economy is booming.

Paying interest on borrowings by such a government is a political choice that favours the already wealthy.

Such a government contributes to asset value inflation when it deregulates the financial services industry or allows too much money to remain in private hands, rather than taxing it out of existence. That problem is evidenced by the inflation of home prices caused by negative gearing and inadequate prudential restraints on financial institutions. George Souris described that situation as Reflexivity - put an excessive valuation on a house (or other asset), lend a high proportion to the excessive valuation, and the valuation becomes fulfilled (until the market runs out of mugs). Hence the housing and CDO bubble in the USA.

Some writers seem to think that Howard and Costello knew how to operate the economy. Fiscal space diagrams I have prepared show that together they indebted the average citizen far more than any other government in the last fifty years.

It is well known by competent economists that, with persistent Current Account deficits, a sovereign government cannot achieve a budget surplus without causing damage.

The article author will no doubt enjoy his excessive pension provided by less well off citizens.

Unfortunately the Senator's ideological position runs well ahead of his understanding of economics, or even the proper role of government. The present system is both fundamentally unfair and also bad economics. Superannuation concessions overwhelmingly favour the wealthy. Removing those concessions would make some inroad into the deficit in government revenue. There are many other areas of foregone revenue that should be addressed, including more efficient resource taxes, the removal of tax sweetheart deals that have foreign corporations paying only a tiny fraction of their profits in tax, and many more examples. A Tobin tax is also an area of revenue raising that should have an honest appraisal, as is a rationally based GST.

On the expenditure side there needs to be an honest debate about a number of areas, including but not limited to so-called "defence" such as submarines and F35 fighters, the rationale for either being elusive.

As for pensions about which the Senator lacks even a basic knowledge, one step would be to treat it as income (as does NZ and the UK) and tax it accordingly. For most high income earners the effect would be to recover most if not all of the amount paid. It is also much more cost effective than asset testing which any clever accountant can easily avoid.

What is really missing is an honest debate free from the ideological baggage evident in so much commentary and comment.

<<Are you a fool, a smart ass, or just poorly informed Aidan? Which ever, you must know that the debt is continuing to grow because the senate won't pass any of the government efforts to reduce it.>>
if that's what you think, Hasbeen, then you are very poorly informed. Although the senate is blocking some of those budget measures, they've passed others. But even if they did pass the entire lot, it wouldn't solve the problem as austerity would weaken the economy, reducing tax revenue.

David, if you have ever bothered to read it, the OAP is enshrined in our constitution.
I know many people have no clue to its contents, but its existance has resisted change for a long time. It is the ONLY thing we have left to protect our rights.

6. Military engagement in Iraq
Annual cost at least $500 million.
7. Anti-terrorism
An extra $630 million has gone to security agencies to deal with the threat of "home-grown terrorism" which Australia’s involvement in Iraq foments.
8. F-35 joint strike fighters
$12.4 billion has been allocated for these problem-plagued American stealth jets. Not the most cost effective option.
9. Marble for Canberra buildings
Defence is spending more than $500,000 on marble panelling. Carrara marble, from Italy.
10. Other bizarre defence outlays
These include celebrity speakers and a full tendering process to acquire a multipurpose knife for camping out.
11. Futile search for missing Malaysian aircraft 370
Estimated at $1 million per day.
12. Royal commission into the pink batts
This vindictive political witch-hunt cost an estimated $20 million, discovered nothing new and failed completely to explore the real questions demanding answers.
13. Royal commission into trade unions
Another political vendetta squandered an estimated $61 million.
14. Direct Action Plan
This pays some businesses to reduce carbon emissions but frees others to increase theirs. The waste is about $2.55 billion over four years, plus costs incurred thereafter.
15. Religion
Money is now available to train priests and other religious workers and for school chaplains, while funding for non-religious counsellors is cut.
16. Pseudo-sciences
Federal funds are now available for homeopathy and Bach flower therapy.

18. Travel expenses for ministers, staff and families
These have been rorted shamelessly, with flights to a wedding claimed. Total blow-out is unknown because the Government is withholding the information.
19. VIP jets instead of commercial flights
Ministers spent about $900,000 in just two months in late 2013. Education Minister Christopher Pyne’s blithe assertion that VIP jets were “probably cheaper” was shown to be blatantly false by an ABC fact check
21. Salary for nothing
A department axed by the Government continued to pay the top bureaucrat $7,000 a week for months until another role was eventually found.
22. Public service hand-outs
Fat cats receive outrageous bonuses on top of already bloated salaries.
23. Lease termination
Charges of $65,000 were incurred when Abbott refused to live in the Forrest house rented for him during the 2013 election caretaker period.
24. The Lodge
Lavish renovations costing a staggering $6.38 million were approved in December. That is double the original estimate and more than the cost of demolition and rebuild.
25. Department of Industry and Science
$10,827 went on a coffee table.
26. G20 table
Treasury spent $36,005 on a conference table for the November summit in Brisbane.
27. Table transport
That conference table was made in the ACT. So the Government spent another $26,298 shipping it to Brisbane. Why did the tender not stipulate assembly in Brisbane?
28. Chairs
After the table had been built and transported to Queensland, chairs were also bought in the ACT – for a staggering $68,525.
29. Koalas
$24,000 was then blown in a few minutes of G20 koala diplomacy.
30. High tech theatrette
Taxpayers paid almost $330,000 in September 2013 for a Canberra space for Scott Morrison’s border protection briefings. It was fitted out, including with an $800 door knob, but not used. Briefings were held in Sydney until discontinued in December 2013.
31. Perks for MPs
These include $15,442 for Attorney-General George Brandis’ bookcase.
32. ‘Obscene’ long lunches
Joe Hockey spent $50,000 to fly a celebrity chef to Washington to cook one meal.

Gawd, obsessive much?

6. Media blitz
Trying to defend the widely resented university changes cost $14.6 million.
37. Damage control
The strategic communications branch of the PM’s department employs 37 spin doctors in a forlorn attempt to polish the PM’s image. Cost to the taxpayer: $4.3 million per year. That is on top of the 95 communications staff engaged on border control, costing at least $8 million annually, and many other spin merchants elsewhere.
38. News media monitoring
According to Fairfax, just seven departments spent $1.2 million on "market research" in four months last year.
39. Interest on government debt
This is up from $12.2 billion in 2012-13 to $14.7 billion in 2014. With more to come.
40. Commission of Audit
And finally, as if to underscore this administration’s grinding incompetence, the commission set up to help cut Government waste not only utterly failed there, but blew out its own $1 million budget by 150%

579, what is your incomplete pasted list doing in this thread?

I hold the Senator in high regard after reading his various pieces here. James O'Neil says tax pensions as if they were income? Yes lets especially the Public Service ones and especially the politicians. I appreciate the Senator is not getting the solid gold political pension but others are so fix that now.
No pension paid until you reach your legal pensionable age and taxed as income when you do. Who will give me odds that will ever happen?
I also say O'Neil is right about our wasteful and stupid defence spending too.
O'Neil is wrong about the debate we need to have however, Leyonjhelm is on our side but sadly a lonely voice.

As a Senator David gets a huge pension indexed for life while he berates those who want a paltry $30O per week pension and in the past paying taxes all their lives to keep parasites like him.

David is the reason why I have no respect for pollies.

don't worry David its quite likely with the immigration policy of the last few decades that getting a pension will be the least of many peoples problems. From Malcolm Fraser to the Greens/Labour we have this to look forward to.

http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/do-not-stop-sharing-this-until-every-person-who-cares-about-women-sees-this/

Well I think a vote of thanks is due to 579. I am thinking of making the list into a framed presentation and sending it to the very next politician who says something stupid. I shouldn't have to wait too long.

runner, I clicked on your link and got a picture of a man with a rather large gun.

WWJD?