Oh dear, here we go again. Recycling Hitler's policies to get rid of the oldies so the youngsters can have all of it!
>Other advantages accruing to older Australians include free public transport and rate concessions.< It seems to me that these same benefits are available to the young, eg students. And oldies didn't drive up house prices as you seem to be implying - the younger generation did in its excessive demands for top-line accommodation. Your argument has a number of other flaws but I am sure others will respond to them. I for one am too sick and tired of the younger generations excessive demands and whinging to bother much now.

Wow,why don't we just give people the needle once they reach retirement age.Older people have paid their taxes,have bought houses(most of them older style)to live in for the rest of their lives.Most of us don't have significant amounts of super as super has only been compulsory for a relatively few years when you take into consideration the number of years a lot of older people have worked.We did not get any of the lurks and perks the younger generation have today.If the wages are as high as is made out let them save as we did.I bet a lot of the younger people drive nice cars and have plasma tvs etc.Not many of the older folk i know have all the fancy mod cons or can afford them.We raised our children on $2 a month endowment,what do they get now?Virtually free child care so both can work and all sorts of tax concessions which were never heard of in our day.This article is the biggest load of hogwash i have ever read.

A few things:
Well done to the writer....the largesse is getting out of control, it isn't even going where its most needed.
Students don't get free public transport, unemployed persons in Sydney pay much more for a day out on public transport than pensioners.
We spend billions of dollars on health care for oldies who have neglected their health through tobacco use, poor diet, obesity and excessive alcohol consumption.........to give them often only an extra couple of years before they go.
The grey set are conservative voters. Its pure pork barrelling. Those on disability pensions or unemployed vote the wrong way, so we get nothing.

It seems this set of our elders are ready to sell us down the river, spend up all the reserves frivolously, I suppose as long as someone else is paying for it they reckon its alright.

The Institute of Public Affairs is a right wing think tank that doesn't want taxpayers money spent on pensioners. Hell no, the money should be spent on tax deductions to high income earners and for tax concessions on coal fired power stations, compulsory ethanol in fuel, banning north west Sydney railway lines and allowing Gerry Harvey to import workers whom he can pay half the Australian wages.

Howard knows that the Aussie battler in receipt of sickness benefit or aged pension returned his government at the 2004 election. Both parties are shamelessly pork barrelling, while not addressing the real problems of global warming, peak oil, reduction in food supplies and the imminent global recession that is being heralded by the US subprime meltdown.

This is a bit like typical comments made by a writer who is a Labour Party publicity writer with the same Surname as the writer of this article

arcticdog, I'm afraid your post was utter rot.

An article comes along pointing out that policies that benefit one group inevitably detract from other groups, and you liken it to 'hitler' and 'getting rid of oldies'?!

What? so just because it doesn't support 'oldies' it's being likened to hitler?
Like I said, extremist rot.
You say you're sick of the younger generations demanding things, well I say I'm sick of the boomer generation that has used its large voting power to shape society to suit them personally. Notice how they got free education and are now being targeted for pensioner bonuses?
Gimme a break. If you want to make criticisms, fine, but please, try to keep them grounded in reality and remotely relevant to the article.

All that being said, I wouldn't want to scale back assistance given to pensioners, and of course there needs to be an appropriate level of assistance. I suspect the IPA would love nothing more than to promote small government to the level where they have almost no responsibility at all for its citizens, be they senior or otherwise, though this would evidently be going too far.

I just tend to think it's disappointing that in this election, the only groups that rate a mention are Rudd's 'working families' or the elderly. I guess the rest of us just don't matter.

It's a rare day when I agree with anything that's come out of the Institute for Public Affairs, but this article has some merit, though sadly I fear it's really just one aspect of a general desire to remove responsibility and services from government in general.