I have not in the past made comments on the statements of welfare agencies about Pension related matters. This is probably because I worked at the agency distributing welfare payments for some time in the past. I'm afraid that this article, attributed to the Brotherhood of St Laurence no longer enables me to stay silent.One of Australia's leading welfare groups says at least 400,000 millionaires are receiving the aged pension.
The Brotherhood of St Laurence is using economic research it commissioned to push for changes to the pension's eligibility criteria.
Spokeswoman Nicola Ballenden says the single biggest asset, the family home, should no longer be exempt from asset tests.
"Fourteen per cent of people who are receiving the aged pension are living in the wealthiest 25 per cent of households, where their net worth is around $1.6 million," she said.
"We think it is time to start discussing including the family home as an assessable asset for the pension."
In blunt terms, what a load of crock.
There are too few Australians these days who are able to afford the family home and most of those who do have a family home have struggled for years to pay off the mortgage whilst raising a family on whatever form of income they could manage. The family home is the single largest asset that most people have. It's their nest egg, it's what they hope to be able to rely on in economic times that are changing seemingly for the worst on a daily basis when the worst case scenario presents itself.
What is that worst case scenario?
It's one where they no longer can manage on their income from superannuation for example as the capital they have stored away through all their years of work is reduced daily, as the price of food and clothing starts to skyrocket when the effects of floods, drought, bush fires all come to bear on the ability of farmers to produce enough food to sell so that they can meet their increasing bills. When the price of clothing rises as overseas firms - seemingly the only ones making clothes and shoes for people in this country raise their prices
If those who made the comment in the Brotherhood of St Laurence were to look at current superannuation losses incurred by aged people, then perhaps they might take a different attitude to people receiving the pension.
Most people who would now have a family home which is worth in excess of $1 million purchased their home some considerable time ago when the prices for real estate were much lower, but when interest rates on mortgages were much higher. Most of these people spent most of their working lives chipping away at their mortgage over a 20 + year period. All this, while they raised their families, provided for their children, tried to make sure that their own lives were secure with some form of income from savings or superannuation etc. All the time knowing, that in a worst case scenario, if all their planning for the future went down the drain, at least they had a home that they could call their own, and income from the aged pension - again if all else went bad. This is what the governments of all persuasions had promised for decades now.
Now, the Brotherhood of St Laurence wants to penalise people who have spent most of their working lives acquiring perhaps their sole remaining asset by giving them no access to a very small income called the aged pension. At a time when whatever other assets have been drawn upon, when other amounts of income from whatever source (eg superannuation) that these people have had is disappearing along with consumer confidence as the share markets disappear into a black hole. The people in the Brotherhood of St Lawrence seem to want to reduce people who have done their best to provide for their own futures in their old age as best they could, to penury.
Personally I think it's disgraceful that an organisation like the Brotherhood of St Lawrence which in the past has supported those people who are in need, no longer recognises that it is not possible to eat one's home or to buy ones clothing from tiles and roof trusses or to purchase medication and health protection based on the walls and ceilings of one's family home.
It is true, a lot of people were fortunate, the homes that they purchased have risen in value as time has passed and as urbanisation has continued. A little shack at Batemans Bay in say the 1950s is now probably worth in the vicinity of $1 million, a real house there, probably more. What was it worth when the family purchased or built it? That's really the question, not what it is worth today. Furthermore, by trying to force people who have a family home to sell it so that they can have money to buy necessities because they no longer have access to the age pension, is to ignore the reality that those same "rich" people, forced to sell their family homes to have some form of savings and income would be unable to buy into the housing market where they have the roots and ties that family homes usually create. They would have to buy property that is perhaps miles away from where their family lives have developed and where their connections are.
In short, the Brotherhood of St Laurence now wants to punish all those Australians who worked hard, paid their taxes and their bills all their lives, as well as keeping Australia out of recession by being good little consumers.
These are Australians who built and developed this country since the 1940s onward and would now like to manage their retirement years as best they can in the home that their hard work has managed to make available for them. These are the Australians who paid their taxes all their lives on the understanding that the Aged Pension would be available to them, even if if all else went wrong with their planning for the future, with their budgeting, and with their savings plans.
Shame on you Brotherhood of St Laurence
