Paul1405,
Unfortunately, Medicare has been hijacked & exploited by the "Professionals" from Day 1.
The Pension is paid for in advance & is continued paid for by omni-taxes.
The old age pension is not free nor should anyone ever claim it to be so. Superannuation on the other hand should be a voluntary contribution investment based system for the higher salary earners.
I suppose once the scales start dipping too far towards Unsustainabilty, the whole show will be remodelled.

Many of those on the Aged Pension contributed to super funds but those funds died if they left the job or the firm went kaput.
Compulsory super is relatively new.

The ageing population will see aged care expenditure grow from 0.9 per cent to 1.1 per cent of GDP. Expenditure on the Age Pension is expected to grow in nominal terms to $72 billion in 2025–26 but not as a percentage of GDP. Expenditure on carer payments is also expected to rise, partly as a result of population ageing, from 0.5 to 0.6 per cent of GDP (from $7 billion in 2014–15 to $18 billion in 2025–26)." 2020 Budget.

Indy you said; "The Pension is paid for in advance & is continued paid for by omni-taxes. The old age pension is not free nor should anyone ever claim it to be so."

There is no evidence to support your claim that the aged pension is paid for in advance. Its paid from this years revenue and/or borrowings. The worry is the exponential cost blowout. If real action is not taken to reform superannuation, then the aged pension will inevitably decline in real terms. With 60% of Australians over the age of 65 on a full government pension this is not sustainable. Too many Australians treat the Aged Pension as a entitlement, when it should be nothing more than support for the most needy.

Paul1405,

Will we still get a pension when China takes over or will we have to wait until we vote them out of office?

//individual:"The old age pension is not free nor should anyone ever claim it to be so."

Yep, at last you've got some right. The old age pension is not free, especially for people like me who are wealthy. The wealthy don't get a cent of it, indeed we're the ones who pay for the majority of it.

// "The Pension is paid for in advance..."

So you're back on this old trope again. As has already been told to you often before (in fact paul1405's last post did it again)- this is not true!

The is no special back-account where the government stores a portion of tax the tax-payer future old-age pension. Today's tax payers plus new government debt pays for today's pensioners as other's and I have previously told you.

I've give you an analogy why it is wrong for the older generation to demand that the younger generation pays the older generation's pension:
Imagine a suburban street with nice houses and lawns. Now house numbers 2 and 1 get together and out of the generosity of 2's heart, 2 mows 1's lawn because number 1 has a crook leg. That's fine and dandy and nothing wrong with it, a nice bit of neighbourly spirit. However, now 2 rock's up at 3's door and DEMANDS that 3 mow his (his=no. 2 lawn) simply because he (he=no. 2) has mowed 1's. That to me is wrong- 3 has no right to demand such a thing. And I suspect that most people would agree with me.
But that's not all, the situation is even worse. Because on this street each house has a lawn is larger than the previous one and not only that 3 demands that 2 mow his lawn twice (and not once like he did) as well as fertilize it. The analogy here being that the country's population is growing + people live longer + pensioner's keep asking for more perks.

Mr O,

The normal Chinese pension age is 60 years for men, 50 years for blue collar women and 55 years for white collar women. The basic pension pays 1% of the average of the indexed individual wage and the province-wide average earnings for each year of coverage, subject to a minimum of 15 years of contributions. The Chinese have a national superannuation scheme.

Better than the Indian aged pension. Retirement age DEATH, payment ZILCH.