As our population ages we should give more thought to the value of older Australians, and what contribution they not only made in the past, but what contribution they could still make in the future to the economy. The ever increasing burden of Aged Welfare needs to be addressed, now running at unsustainable levels, the taxpayer funded system of pensions and care provision very much needs an overhaul to guarantee long-term viability. Rather than simply upping the age for pensions would it not be more economically viable if those old folk who are still physically and mentally capable undertook some form of "light duties" to compensate for their taxpayer funded welfare. With a critical labour shortage in some areas a 'Seniors National Service' would go part way towards releaving that problem as well.

And what about those not physically capable of work? Collect them in vans with with the exhaust pipes turned back into their interiors like the people with your hatreds did to Jews and other 'useless' people in Nazi Germany? You could further cut costs by not bothering with concentration camps.

Paul pretends to respect those that have given the best years of their life to this country, to believe economy is the only reason for human existence. He does not believe in nursing homes as they are expensive waste of money. For him the covid 19 vaccine should not have been given to those over 70 but allowed to take out all the aged and weak in society. Because they cost money to maintain.

He is a Green supporting China's Communist take over of Australia.

Hi Paul,

It's a tricky situation.

Young people can't get jobs and the older ones have
to retire when they reach pension age in many jobs.
Finding the right balance for both generations is
not easy. Still, quite a few professions do allow older
people to continue working. Politicians, doctors,
many retail outlets, restaurants, aged care
facilities, health workers, and so on.

I think it is a matter of negotiation and how well
someone feels and can cope. People know when they've had
enough and when then can or can't continue working due
to their health. Our GP is over eighty and still going
strong. Friends of ours who have left their professions
are now busy volunteering in their community. Staying
active is so important health wise as you age. Most
people realize that. Not only physically but mentally.

The largest part of retirees are volunteer workers who work for charities without pay, and produce no taxable income. They serve the community with services - like Meals on Wheels to those who cannot prepare meals for themselves; or on boards of Community or sporting Clubs. They are still consumers buying product produced by the work force, which creates employment and income for the producers.

Paul should talk to his Green mates who want to put up the unemployment Welfare payments to be equal to a living wage. He might have a winge there.

Most grandparents play a part in family child care and sharing life skills training because they have the time and experiences.

It seems that anti-Semitism is not the only thing the Greens share with the Nazis. Before the next election they should be asked to explain their policies not just on the pesky 'old farts', but also the disabled and infirm, those who are unable to fend for themselves and pay huge energy costs brought about by their green schemes, those with no family to help them in old age. It's just as well we don't have any Gypsies in Australia. The 'final solution' seems to be raising its ugly head again in less than a century.

The majority of hard working Australians do provide for their retirement and future care through superannuation and investments and have no need to access public welfare. That does not only apply to highly paid professionals, but hard working ordinary Australians as well who also make provision for later life. Its only those who through poor circumstances, or bad behaviour during their working years require public welfare in retirement.

Only a silly old fool would talk about vans with the exhaust pipes turned back into their interiors gasing people. Too many treat aged welfare as a right, and not as a taxpayer funded handout which it is. With the ageing population this ever growing welfare is not sustainable in the long term, and a better system needs to be found, otherwise too many will be driven deeper into poverty, while some pensioners will continue to live hgh on the hog at others expence.

Dear Paul,

You're right we as a country do need as citizens to
be able to analyse questions on issues from a principled
perspective. Many people are disillusioned with the
current system yet are not willing to discuss alternatives.

"The majority of hard working Australians do provide for their retirement and future care through superannuation and investments and have no need to access public welfare" says the windbag who calls other people Nazis, but is the only one here who posts like one of those fiends.

Many, many of us worked a lot years before superannuation was introduced, with the result that by retirement, there wasn't much super. I think mine was about $70k. Such riches!

But, according to Paul 1405, the old folks should be kept working in accordance with 'Vernichtung durch Arbeit', meaning extermination through work. What a charmer!

Sounds like the Socialists are running out of other peoples' money !

ttbn, don't come the raw prawn with me. You are a self confessed fascist, having joined the so called Australian Conservative Party, a party that was fascist in every way but name. When people like you take to calling me a Marxist or some other derogatory term, and only then do I feel entitled to call you NAZI. Do you have a problem with that. If Hitler was to come marching down the street you would be the first to fall in line behind, just as you did with Australia's answer to Oswald Mosley.

Josephus, another one, you were content to agree with the violent actions of the extreme right, Washington 6th Jan, so don't come that clap trap with me.

Well Indy yuu have been living off other peoples money for years, ever since you graduated from the dole to aged welfare.

Back to the topic, when I started this discussion I expected the Forums pension elite would be up in arms that anyone should question their right to their privileged welfare position. Why not, many of these welfare elites are living high on the hog in their million dollar mansion, flash cars and more money than they need stuffed in the bank. All supported by an unsustainable system.

One area that needs to be looked at is assets, particularly family homes. This as a minimum should be means tested when assessing eligibility for aged welfare, and as a base used to fund aged welfare. No one should be kicked out of their home, but upon their death that's a different story. Repayment of welfare should be a priority before any beneficiaries receive their windfall, just as is the case with aged care now.

Paul1405,
As a pointless & even less useful bureaudroid you should refrain from throwing stones in glass houses.
Your racist tendencies don't exactly endear you to any thinking people with integrity.
I think you're just starting to get worried about your Pension because you're waking up to the fact that you've done nothing to deserve one.
I hope it makes you wake up !

Paul as a spokesperson for the socialist Greens, We will work hard that they never rise to rule this Nation. You want control of peoples lives, instead of government serving people. You are the very totalitarian view that terrorises those of meagre existence. A pretense of compassion but promoting elitism that only the wealthy survive in your reality.

Dear Josephus,

We shall have to wait and see for the next election as
to who gets elected into parliament. As the old joke goes
( capturing the distrust most people feel for BOTH right
and left):

"It doesn't matter who you vote for, a politician always
gets in.

Achtung, Herr/Comrade Paul,

There is no difference in attitudes and inhumanity between Nazis and Communist; they are the enemies of all people. And, if you knew anything at all, you would know that the people you sneer at for being conservative were the first to get the chop under Hitler and his National SOCIALISTS. But, of course, you do not know anything. You will never learn anything. You will continue making a fool of yourself, just like your Green heroes are doing in parliament.

You admit that your ratty posts are meant to get people "up in arms". That's why most of us do not think they are worth reading: you just need a reminder every now and again of what a fool you are.

Nobody with a modicum of sense would say that Age Pensioners were in a "privileged welfare position". There is nothing 'privileged' about living on any pension. Only people like you, totally detached from reality, think that it's a privilege to struggle to pay for the necessities of life. Get onto SBS on demand, look at 'Could you survive on the breadline'.

Try coming up with examples of, "these welfare elites... living high on the hog in their million dollar mansion, flash cars and more money than they need stuffed in the bank. All supported by an unsustainable system".

And try to get through to your uneducated brain that the system is NOT "unsustainable". The system has been operating for 80 years, in times when Australia was a lot less wealthy than it is today.

You could also forgo your obviously elitist lifestyle for a while and live on a pension to see how "privileged" it is.

I must say, though, that you do us all a favour by showing us just how bad and nasty people of the Green persuasion are, and why they get only 8% of the vote

And the tone of this discussion
plummets once again
It would be great to see civility -
But who knows where and when?

On the subject of age pensions, I seem to remember that there was a fund set up to cover this cost to which all taxpayers contributed.
Anyone remember it and what happened to it?

Hi Issy,

There was such a fund set up, but it was short lived as there was no clear allocation of funds to it as in the case of Medicare. It was not until the introduction of 3% compulsory supa that things started to move in the right direction. From earliest times Labor has supported some form of worker retirement plan, conservatism opposed on the grounds of it being an unjust cost on employers.

Hi Foxy,

Unfortunate yes, as you can see from the immediate two posts under my first, disgusting claims that I want to gas people NAZI style, or I want to deny people vaccines so they die. When attacked I retaliate in kind, I'm not saying that is the right thing to do. How long have we been chatting on this Forum, over 10 years now, and I have seen the huge amount of abuse heaped upon you, with little retaliation on your part. Your participation on the Forum is far harder than mine, you being sanative to abuse, and I'm not, remember the 'Armadillo Principle', easier said than done.

Here I am questioning these Old Farts personal privileged pensioner position, of course I expect abuse, par for the course for these old coots. Pensioners are not a homogeneous lot, at one end of the scale are the poor and destitute doing it very tough, barely getting by with no assets. At the other end of the scale are the elite with assets, owning a million dollar house, hundreds of thousands in the bank etc, people who can afford to top up the pension to the tune of thousands per year, and still afford to be buried in a gold coffin. This is funded by an inequitable and unsustainable system.

Eighty percent of people over the age of 65 receive some Age Pension. That's around 4 million voters politicians are not going to mess with, just because of a few anti-social, ageist, Green, haters.

The Age Pension is less than 3% of the total welfare bill, and it is easily sustainable.

People now on the Age Pension, in their working years, also paid taxes to support retirees.

Little Iceland, Holland and Denmark have better Age Pensions than Australia; all with much smaller GDPs than Australia's.

There will always be nasty, mean and grudging people. It's a damn good thing that they represent only about 8% of the Australian population. Although, unlike their angry acolyte, Paul 1405, the Greens Party does claim to believe that: "All older Australians are entitled to a guaranteed adequate income".

Angry Man Paul would quite likely enjoy the MSM story currently doing the rounds about an 80 year old man who has worked here for 58 years, but has been denied an Age Pension, or part thereof, because he changed his name from Youssef to Joseph. He ticks AMPs boxes: ethnic, still working at 80.

It has been announced that the Morrison government will foolishly, in my opinion, increase permanent immigration to 160,000 in the lazy man's way to grow the economy. That will help pay for pensions. Pleased about that, AMP? Lots of new foreigners and ethnics for you to fawn over while you continue rubbishing Australians.

Yes ttbn, each migrant, even those who stay on welfare for years increase the gross domestic product a little, while reducing the individual domestic product a little.

Every one makes the current population a little less wealthy, apart from those running big business.

Hasbeen,

Dick Smith, who knows how to make money far better than politicians and bureaucrats, has been telling them for years that mass immigration makes the general population poorer, but they don't want to know. It is also accepted wisdom among economists and demographers.

Surely everyone knows that if you have unemployment because there are not enough jobs to go around that bringing in more job applicants will solve the problem.

Labour will NOT back the government's lazy anti-Australian scheme to increase immigration by 160,000 each year, preferring to train Australians who are unemployed or underemployed, of whom there are 2 million, already here in the country.

because there are not enough jobs to go around
Is Mise,
By that you mean not enough cushy jobs. There's plenty of work available but it's not the work most people are after, only the job & the pay that comes with it !
The pointless but high paid positions in the Public Service have caused much unemployment.

I don't know that there are "plenty of jobs" available, but there are jobs 'plenty of' unemployed people who think that some jobs are below them because they have a degree in women's studies or some such. Until people are required to work in any job that they are capable of doing, or there is no dole, we will never know the truth, and cowardly governments will continue to cover up their cowardice and laziness by increasing the problem with mass immigration.

This has nothing to do with older people, who have done their bit, and who are no longer capable of doing the jobs that are vacant. Employers don't want to employ them anyway.

This topic is absurd, and only here because of someone who hates people and resents the fact that he can't get what he imagines is the good life of people on the pension. As has already been said: if he thinks it is a doddle, be should try it.