Rhosty,

I just wanted to thank you for your immediately identifiable writing structure, which allows me to completely skip all of the BS and twaddle you produce on these pages.

Oh god NO!

Not another independent authority. Is Everald looking for a job?

What the hell do we elect a government for. It would appear so it can stack highly paying independent authorities with their mates.

Surely we elect governments to govern & make bloody decisions, rather than pass the buck to some group of academics who are highly regarded by other academics. That alone should disqualify them from the public purse. Just look at the human rights commission for a view of stupidity in independent authorities.

We have to decide on how much pension we can pay oldies, single parents or dolies by what the economy can afford, not by what will guarantee a comfortable lifestyle for the recipient.

With the possible dramatic reduction in our earnings with a slowing demand from china, we could find these handouts have to be halved if we are to avoid a Greek future. Much better to make reductions in our expenditures ourselves, than have them dictated by our creditors.

Why do these articles ALWAYS assume that everyone spends their entire working life in a full-time permanent wage-earning position?

I can't give exact statistics, but at least one in two people do not fit this scenario. The present superannuation system is outrageously unfair to non-earning adults (carers, homemakers), the self-employed, the underemployed and casual and part-time workers. Under the present system, the chances of these people ever becoming 'independent retirees' is minimal to zilch. Every time our hyper-superannuated, 6-figured salaried politicians put the retirement age up, these mostly non- or under-superannuated people are the ones who have to desperately find a way to survive yet another few years.

Also, why do these articles always assume that all people over 60 have a 'choice' to retire? While loving to yakkety-yak about raising the pension age to 70, and now 75 (now doubt soon it will be 80), these articles remain stubbornly unwilling to consider the horrific unemployment situation many people over 60 are facing.

In ten years, the number of over-55s on Newstart has doubled and the chances of them ever finding another permanent, full-time job are bleak. I know 7 people over 57 who have lost their jobs since 2011 (3 of them due to Campbell Newman's Qld public service hatchet job) and none of them have found permanent work. Other than the dole, they get by on the occasional casual or freelance job. All of them have gone through most of their savings, sold off most of their investments and drawn down much of their super just to survive. All of them have become clinically depressed and two of them admit to having contemplated suicide, despite never having considered it before.

Yet all these articles ever seem to care about is the macro-economic picture. They don't give a flying rubber duck about people's lives or dignity.