The UK pays all its citizens who worked an aged pension. By all accounts their aged pension is more generous than Australia's and there is no talk about whether recipients are deserving or whether the country can afford it because your aged pension contribution is deducted from your pay with your tax and has been saved for your old age. By contrast Australian pension and superannuation system is by and large employer based and unscrupulous employers and enough fund managers have not made the payments or stolen contributors funds so that the government has to fund aged pensions for those whose super contributions end up being insufficient to support them in old age.

Like JSMill I have spent 3 month stretches in the late 1990s living on less than the dole but I didn't make mortgage or car payments, visit a dentist and had no health problems that required prescription drugs. However these days prescriptions cost $33 to fill without a health care card and Newstart recipients don't get a HealthCare card. I don't know how the cost of living index is calculated but my domestic cost of living index is way higher than the CPI calculated by the ABS so I guess I better eat less and buy more electrical goods.

Anecdotally the administration of Newstart penalises recipients for taking up seasonal work or supplementing their income because they are financially penalised when Newstart [inevitably] stuffs up their payment, penalised if the individual doesn't notify Newstart correctly - easy to do if those intrusive micromanagers fall behind in opening their mail or clearing their in tray.

Newstart would be cheaper to run if the administration was streamlined and the agency didn't operate from the premise that it was being ripped off and that its recipients were low life scum

I wondered why there was a fall in the unemployment rate in the [spurious] statistics released on Thursday 'til I realised that the budget is published tomorrow.

It may be long past time that people stop talking about how matters immediately affect them.

I'm 55 YO and for the majority of that time have been stuck in what, geographically/societally amounts to the armpit of the universe.
I was born in Bundaberg and have to endure living here.
What a Klutz of a name of a town!
God - how I'd like to become an important person and decree the name change to something sexy like "Boilyerbillie' or 'San Bundero'. Anything'd be better than the name of your home town that sticks in one's throat like undercooked dough - as does Bunder - bloody-Blunder - burggggggg - yeck!

Despite that I care about what others, around here, tell me of their circumstances and their problems in this nonentity of a town.
I am not particularly greedy, nor introverted, nor overmuch concerned about self-interest.
In that regard, I suppose I am a very stupid person.

It is about time some out there began playing the rules of altruism themselves.
Let's just say that enough is really enough.
I add a little more to what I said above.
All those speaking afterwards, my last, keep griping about immediacy and greed.
No big-picture issues occupy their minds except how their immediate situation is either okay or somehow impinged upon.
No-one seems overly concerned about their neighbour.
In short - what I'm aware of and report as happening here is but a reflection of the big picture.

To J. S. Mill. As a rough approx. the cost to revenue of all the super tax concessions is about the same as the extra it would cost to pay the full pension to everyone older than 65. It is a lot simpler and provides more encouragement for oldies who are willing and able to keep working longer.

If this pension income was taxable it would reduce the cost of the pension to those still earning serious money thus providing the money required to give a boost to the after tax income of those who are totally dependant on the pension.

The only losers will be high income earners who have been using the super tax concessions to rort the system.