The report into 'Retirement Income Review' by former Treasury official Mike Callaghan found broadly that Australia's retirement income system "is sound, is sustainable and is effective and it's well placed to deal with economic volatility as well as the aging in our society", according to Treasure Josh Frydenberg. The sustainability of retirement incomes very much depends on growth in superannuation and private retirement savings and investments, whilst at the same time seeing a decline in government pensions as a proportion of GDP. With pressure to withhold super guarantee increases, government sanctioned drawing down of super entitlements during the pandemic, and loss of savings, plus the ever aging population all contributing to unsuitability of payments in the form of government pensions at the present levels. With the single aged pension @ $944.30/fortnight, the elephant in the room is, is this level of payment sustainable into the future? Should steps be taken now to lift the burden of aged pension payments off the taxpayer through other mechanisms for providing retirement income incentives?

Yes Paul.

The answer is simple. If Governments step in and guarantee the security of home loans for young families, giving them a foothold into the housing market at an early age; by retirement age those families would own their properties outright and have no need for pensions at current high levels.

Reason that won’t happen, is the innovation will be an unpopular wealth distribution, and have the effect of reducing capital gains by cooling housing market, by removing the opportunities for property investors to gain from rental properties.

A more immediate short term innovation, would be to reduce current pensions by half, to pensioners who own their properties outright, and have no need of the current high pension rate.

Dan

Do people know that the Chinese in Australia who are not Australians can get the aged pension as long as they have held a permanent residency visa for 10 years?

PS

And it seems that Chinese who are not Australians might account for about 15% of the population i.e., about 3.5 million non-Australian permanent residents who will qualify for the aged pension after 10 years of residency.

And Soot and Dazza's gal Gladys want to open up the international border asap in order to bring in more millions of them.

Wow, Mr Opinion has finally said something that is factually true and not just personal anecdotal confirmation-biased opinion. This hasn't happened in a long time...

However, he has omitted an important detail (probably due to his pathological fixation on the Chinese). Namely that it is not just the Chinese who can get the pension, but permanent residents from any country with just a measly 10 years of residency.

But worse yet, it is even possible for some of them to return back to the the country that they are citizens of and still collect the Australian Age Pension. This applies to those who are citizens of particular countries that have such a social security agreement in place with Australia.

In my opinion the 10 years criteria is woefully weak and makes it far too easy for non-citizens to get the age pension. Personally I would make it such that ONLY citizens may be eligible as well as having either a longer minimum qualifying time period or for those who have contributed significantly to the economy a minimum of tax paid requirement. (There should be a special exmeption to these requirements for those who have made outstanding non-financial contributions, such as for example people who've put their lives on the line for us for security/defence reasons or other heroic/praise-worthy community benefiting non-selfserving acts/achievements. But unfortunately such an exemption would be open to abuse and corruption.)

As a start, Australia could invest the current $300 million given in aid to Indonesia in a scheme to back up pensions.

Look after our own people first.