Adam Creighton for The Australian 21/03/2015
AUSTRALIAN historian John Hirst
recalls that when he met his future father-in-law, Bernard, in the early
1960s, the 50-something boasted he had saved and arranged his
financial affairs so as not to receive the age pension.
“It used to be a matter of shame for people to claim public benefits,” Hirst tells Inquirer. “Now I read in The (Australian)Financial Review articles laying out in detail how to obtain a part-age pension. It’s shameless.”
When
Bernard was born in 1910, only one-third of Australians over 65
received the age pension, then only one year old. Today 80 per cent
receive it, despite unprecedented growth in living standards and real
average incomes in the intervening years.
This growing army of
pensioners is just part of a welfare explosion that risks setting
Australia’s public finances on the road to fiscal disaster; it also
risks sapping political parties’ will to resist the journey with any
sense of commitment.
THE return of Kevin Rudd to the Labor leadership signals the return of a PM obsessed with the media and manipulating the daily message, coupled with manic work practices that alienate his colleagues and the public service.
