I also heard Australia Talks. Did even one caller phone in to support the program guest Jeremy Sammut from the Center for 'Independent' Studies?

His statistics that 'proved' that old age pensioner had increased in real terms were shown to be utter nonsense by the near tidal wave of callers with harrowing stories of financial hardship. A good start to helping them would be to remove the tax concessional status of bodies like the C.I.S and put the funds saved towards increasing the pension.

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All that rental assistance will achieve, in the longer term, is to add to the unearned income of property speculators and landlords at taxpayers' expense.

It is time that we acknowledged that Australian governments' policies of winding back the publicly funded housing sector, beginning in Menzies's time, was a serious mistake.

the bottom line here is that if you heard it on "Australia Talks Crap" then it is cash for comment [even with Sandy McCrutch gone]

so plan is to flog the idea of increase "rental assistance" knowing that say 70% of pensioners actually OWN their house, hence no extra burden on public purse but votes to be had

This is a serious problem and it may take a number of measures, including rent assistance, to ensure that our most vulnerable citizens are cared for adequately.

As other posters have already stated most pensioners own their own home. By the time many pensioners take out essential medical expenses there is not much left to live on.

I listened in disbelief when on QandA the other night a couple of younger people made a comment about pensioners being a burden and "slugging our hard earned tax dollars". I could not believe the lack of compassion and understanding and hope that the comments made do not reflect the majority of the younger generation.

Many young people forget that compulsory superannuation and the idea of being self-sustaining in old age are relatively new concepts. Many of us in my age bracket did not receive Super until later in working life and if you take time out of the workforce to raise children you put yourself further behind.

Does this younger person realise that the infrastructure and education he now enjoys was paid for by those much older workers. Even HECS does not cover the real cost of a university degree.

My husband is older than me and is in the same position. I now work part-time and he earns a good income so we are trying to make up for lost time but many people (in our age-group) on lower incomes won't have the same opportunity.

(Great cartoon in today's Canberra Times but cannot find it online.)

Examinator, I'm glad you find the topics I'm throwing-up interesting. It's part of my job to keep the conversation going on the forum when it lags.

I think you need to look harder at the mechanics of the development industry. I don't know of one developer that "land banks". A few did in the 60s which led to the crash of Cambridge Credit, amongst others, as well as the near collapse of 3 Adelaide financial houses. That lesson has been learnt. Land is not income earning and so can't sustain a debt longterm.

What you are most probably seeing is broadacres that for one reason or another can't be developed immediately. Sometimes developers tie-up land on conditions, which actually leads to cheaper, not more expensive end-product. The reason for purchasing land conditionally is to decrease risk and put some of the effective financing cost onto the vendor. So the vendor gets more money than they would otherwise, but the developer has less exposure over a shorter period of time.

With conditions at the moment the way they are, most developers are going to be very keen to sell whatever they have, because the banks have dried-up with their lending. When developers risk going bankrupt, the last thing they would want to do is land bank!

Another reason land is often vacant is because it is at the end of the line for services. You can' sell land without water, power and sewerage as well as access to roads. There is a development queue as parcels of land wait for services to get to them. Councils won't just put in an arterial because someone has a parcel of land that might produce 10 blocks, or even 100.

GY,

Apparently the ABS does not collect data that outlines a CPI index for privately renting Age Pensioners who are on the full rate (rather than part-rate) Pension.

Well you won't like me for this but the fact is that a senior that does not own their own home today really only has them selves to blame.

Now I accept that there are some sad cases where they have been forced into poverty through little or no fault of their own but the reality is that they have worked in an environment whereby they had little or no restrictions impossed on them by way of unfair taxes such as capital gains tax until the arly 80's. So for someone in their 70's today, they have had ample opportunity to secure their financial nest egg in their time. Poor financial management is not societies fault you know.

My mother is a sole pensioner, owns her own house and car and has a reasonable saving account, but still does it tough from day to day however she does not drink, smoke or play the pokies.

I have always said that the pension for seniors it to low but I would be relucent to give more to those who are not capable of managing their money otherwise the goverment will just collect it back in the form of pokie, tobaco and grog taxes.

I am approaching 50 and knew for the past 20 years that I would not get a pension so I have invested in my future and in time when it is hard to invest due to taxation restrictions.

I realy think it's about time we stopped handing out cash to people and gave them provisions instead.

Try jamming a ginger nut into a pokie slot.