So one works hard for forty plus years, pay their taxes and is prudent with their earnings so they retire owning their own home, which just happens to be worth millions many decades latter and now some are suggesting they should now count this in their asset eligibility pension test.

Such a move is typical of under achievers and is likely to (if adopted) see many sell off their million dollar homes, buy the likes of boats and expensive cars with their tax free money, then retire on the pension. And who could blame them because like me, they have been conned all along.

BTW, I have known for a decade or more that I wont qualify for the pension, so its not a topic that's relevant to me however I will most likely seel off my assets prior to my retirement in ten plus years, as well as my family home if this ridiculous shirting of the goal posts come to bare.

Yes Rehctub, but the car and boat is taken into account in the asset test.
Best buy them as presents for your children.

I can see really big problems with the suggestion.
Two identical houses, one in Bourke and one in Point Piper, totally
different values, the aging widow forced out of one but not the other.

A crash in housing prices comes, and make no mistake it is coming,
does the government force the restoration to the dispossed widow of
her previous home ?

If they could peg the value of houses, it might just work.
Also the government has to guarantee that there will be no inflation.

No, it has more thorns than any public servant could handle.

Well the rules even stop wholesale gifting but as a person who "tracks" all such retirement issues to assist others in their planning, I can say there are always "suggestions" floating around in the political mud but they never happen.

Essentially the govt is happy as part of BigSuper that as I said in my article here last month [as reported in the Murray Report] that 85% of Oz folk are "not able to have an informed conversation on retirement".

And the main tool BigSuper uses is to keep throwing in red herrings SO the people do not actually GET informed about their OWN money.

Hence the $10 billion p.a. heist on 1 Jan 2015 affectionately called "grandfathering" slipped by along with Xmas lunch to be long forgotten, meaning the govt LEGALLY got away with it.