*So the needy not the greedy benefit.*

Sharkfin, that line of Belly's kind of sums it up for me,
I fully agree with him.

Personally I don't think that paying out a baby bonus
is going to mean less unmarried mothers, dependant on
a pension. They are all competing for $ with the oldies,
carers, genuine invalids etc.

As to the standards for receiving an invalid pension,
some years ago it was fairly common and simple. If they
have tightened up the system, that means more money for
genuine cases. What I do know is that there are still
so called invalid pensioners out there, who will work
for cash, if I needed casual labour.

My point remains. 111$ billion for welfare is a huge
chunk of the total federal budget, given that income tax
collections from individuals only bring in 120 billion.

Money has to come from somewhere.

from my book in Oct 2007 http://www.ablokesguide.com [this is in FREE Centrelink chapter]

seems Howard was told increase to 67 for OAP was worth less than $1 billion pa, so who gets the other $110 billion?

"DAVID BYERS: We're not looking at any sort of changes to the current
framework until 2015, that's eight years away. But I think it's
a discussion that we need to start to have now so that we can
ensure that we sort of think through exactly what this means,
give ourselves time to adjust, but at the same time we do that
against the reality of people living longer and wanting to live
more productive working lives.

1.6.5. So one might ask would a person of 65 years "life
experience" not be able to make up their own mind about
retirement? Also, no matter your intelligence level, I don't need to
tell you that this whole argument is self defeating as women live
much longer than men, suggesting [to me] men stay at 65 and
women bunny hop to 70, with about $20 billion saving. But I am
getting ahead of myself, so to move on, going backwards and then
going forward to the Smirk matters, we have:

PETER RYAN: So what sort of saving or additional money would
this push into the overall economy?

DAVID BYERS: It would save the Federal Government around
about $800-million a year in pension payments."

or see my UTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOBZcN-j1KM&feature=channel_page

so never DID get my pension at 60 as Nashos are not "real" veterans

nor did I get it at 63 as my applic for sex change was "not funded"

but now only 7 months to go and YIPPEE I am an OAPensioner

It is also a question of the value of yr pension.

How far does it go? What can you get for it?

Well, here in Indonesia, even with their inflation problem and their one price for white people and one price for local people system, the $AU goes about 5 times further, excepting those things that carry a fixed INTERNATIONAL price, say airfares, and is of course why there are so many pensioners of all description arriving here.

You see, even though unbridled greed, incompetence and their general free market concept has just crashed the world economic system, the guvments of the world largely continue to refuse to regulate appropriately, and in this regard I speak of the necessities.

Water, food, shelter, medicine, law.

In this manner, publicly displayed - "On this day, month, year the price per kilo of x is $AUn, drinking water per gallon $AUn, the ozzie standard house $AUn, doctors and lawyers on tap regulated to a fixed rate for service.

But no, it advantages the career professionals not to do so.

A real world example - I have an old friend. He is a partner in a law firm. He charges out at $AU500 per hour. His firm won't even work for the public, only corporates and guvment departments who bring a minimum $AU25,000 per year. And their work contracts - all practitioners are expressly forbidden from pro bono in good conscience.

They do Centrelink's "dirty work" aswell.

Again, he walks out with $500+ per hour + perks.

No, law is not rocket science. If trained, I reckon just about anyone without an intellectual disability can wield it.

..

I'll say it again - if you think this is an unreasonable situation, vote for the Greens or someone who will put an end to the dirty little monopolies in this country. You most certainly should not expect anything other than more of the same from the red or the blue.

Yabby, you have gone into your PC shell

"See the reality. Govt income from individual taxation is
around 122 billion $. 111$ billion of that is spent on
social security and welfare. Health takes another 51 billion,
education another 35 billion and so on.

So what is our problem? Simply too many pensioners in Australia, .."

Howard experts said OAPensioners cost less than 1% of the $111 billion

So why are you bashing us rather than chasing the $110 billion?

and while we are on maths, please explan

in a single year, whilst using Red Herring of "we can't afford to pay OAPensioners", Costello just took $65 million to pay HIMSELF and Mates to put in FF, STILL paid OAPs AND had a surplus

gosh, so 1 + 1 does not = 2 any more?

we now use smoke and mirrors, KNOWING you PC Freaks will simply bark back the govt dogma - and the band played on

*Howard experts said OAPensioners cost less than 1% of the $111 billion
So why are you bashing us rather than chasing the $110 billion?*

DD, frankly I think that you have your financial knickers in a
knacker here, for even a rough guess would prove you wrong.

Right now I can't be bothered to chase the exact figures for
old agers in that 111 billion, but if I feel like it and get time,
I'll have a look through the file