PM’s pension delay remarks ‘cruel’ on aged

This lifted the single pension to around $280 per week. For those who rent, pay for food, power and phone bills and run a car, it’s beyond impossible to expect $280 to stretch to giving them any kind of worthwhile life.

On Queensland’s Gold Coast, where I practice, there are regular media reports of how tough pensioners are doing it. One 66-year-old lady reportedly has only $2 left over after paying her bills every fortnight. She says she lives on the ragged edge of disaster and a broken washing machine or other unexpected repair bill would tip her over the edge.

Elsewhere there are reports of pensioners who cut back on food to pay unexpected bills. For those who rent, the singled aged pension is stretched beyond breaking point in rent, power, phone, petrol, food, insurance and medical bills.

So when the politicians who have the power to make change taunt pensioners by saying they know the pension is too low, but we won’t do anything yet, then such widely reported remarks are cruel and insensitive.

In the meantime are retirees supposed to exist on fresh air and scenery? It’s heartless to promote yourself with an image of someone sympathetic to the plight of retirees, while at the same time telling pensioners they’ll just have to wait until next year for a decision. That’s just exploitation.

What’s worse is that this issue is becoming a political football with political parties trying to dump blame on one another. The fact is, we know the single aged pension is woefully short of a realistic minimum level, yet we just get excuses as to why nothing’s being done to fix it.

Why does it have to wait for some formal bureaucratic review next year?

As a lawyer arguing for the rights of the aged I believe the government should backdate any eventual pension rise, perhaps backdating it to when the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increase kicked in late September.

The 2.8 per cent CPI increase, calculated over the past six months, lifts the single pension by around $15 a fortnight to around $560, or around $280 a week.

Mr Rudd’s remarks that his government is tackling the issue through the Henry Review on taxation, due in February, would be of little immediate comfort to pensioners struggling from day to day.

The government could - if the willingness was there - make an immediate interim increase in pensions, to carry retirees through the Christmas and New Year period, and sort out final figures after February.

However this idea too was doomed by a late September announcement by Federal Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner, who rejected an interim handout to pensioners, saying it would inevitably become permanent.