Pensioners are Centrelink recipients. The term pensioner is, IMO, just a more diplomatic way of defining them as elderly or life-long centrelink recipients.
If you are talking about "deserving" in the sense of natural justice - then neither they should be both be cut. If you are talking about "deserving" in the sense of post-work entitlements promised by your employer/Government - then that should depend on what you were promised (including spousal promises) at the time you were working. My Grandads promises were different to my dad's which are different to mine. If you are talking about working age centerlink recipients then you are talking about your insurance policy benefits - in which case the cost of the policy needs to be spelled out (which it currently isn't) and similarly the current (which they are) and future (which they are not) benefits that you will be entitled to if you make a claim. Consequently, the extent that anyone "deserves" a rise is completely undefined in our current system.
Are you a politicIan? You have some great insights for someone who lIves near Canberra, do you work for the gov in some dept.? Stats or ABS? Just asking...... Cheers
Old age pension should be increased to compensate for recent utility price hikes etc no doubt. I think people born in Australia pre 1/7/76 are eligible?
Both, it's impossible to live on what they get. Newstart just has to policed far more, that's the real problem here.
Thanks, me heaps smart Thankfully even though I live in the ACT I'm happy to say that I'm one of the rare people who are in private sector (small business). Living in ACT is essentially an accident of history and most of my clients are actually interstate/international.
I guess if we live in a red tape jungle designed to stifle innovation and enterprise, the opposite side of that coin is a welfare dependent population not unlike what we have here in Australia and throughout most of the 'developed' world. My wife is from South East Asia, where there's virtually no red tape to set up a business and absolutely no welfare system. You fall off the tracks it's up to your family to catch you. No family, and your begging on the streets and living in some shitty little shanty town. It made for the most enterprising place I'd seen with my own two eyes.
Aged pensioners and disability IMO , on the one hand the aged are more vulnerable to price hikes and also more deserving as they have helped to build the country through their working lives, mostly without the benefit of the social welfare mentality so abundant in the economy today. Welfare is supposed to be a tool for helping the genuinely disadvantaged , not as a way of life or as a tax break for those who know how to and willingly rort a flawed system. Negative gearing your second or third home for example while the wives of those who fought and died for this country eat crap food and go to bed at sundown in order to pay electricity cost's is abhorrent to me.
No, it doesn't. Our welfare fraud rates are actually tiny and some of the lowest in the world. The information is public and you can find it on the Australian Institute of Criminology's website. The overall rate of fraud compared to the amount of money paid out in welfare was 0.09% in 2009-20010 (latest figures available). By contrast, the typical annual "shrinkage" (shoplifting) rate at a large department store is 1.5%-2%, making Centrelink around 20(ish) times more efficient at stopping people from ripping them off than David Jones or Myer are. Today Tonight and A Current Affair might come to a different conclusion in their *cough* reporting *cough*, but all the available data says that fraud isn't a problem worth paying much attention to.
Set a time limit and then half the dole (unemployment) payment for those under thirty. 12 mths would be fair in metro , 18 in rural areas. Even a basic dead end job pays more than the dole and if you keep the rental assistance aspect there really is no excuse for people not earning their own way.
^^^ Thanks for the stats Big A.D. Good to get perspective on some things. Should look up the cost per unit service as well some time (if I could ever be stuffed, that is). On the flip side I know who I'd prefer to deal with when they make an error in the favour of the customer
Disability support pension should be raised. Not for the sore back group, the real ones with acute chronic illnesses. Plus they should be compensated for travel to and from the hospital. Eg.i know a guy who travels 400km per week to and fro from hospital. Without hospital treatment he will be dead within 7-10 days. He has huge medication bills, he takes 30 somthing pills a day. He gets the same payment from centre link as some one with a sore toe who has no outgoings. After paying for pills and travel he is left with $62.00 per week to live on. If not for his parents he would be destitute.
The available data is BS, I have been unemployed, used employment agencies in the past and seeing the people that showed up made me angry. I immediately accepted a school course centrelink/CVGT offered that put us into work placement by the end of the 2 weeks, the course was offered to well over 50 people in the area. We were told that it would lead to a guaranteed job at a newly opened food processing plant nearby that payed above award rate. No brainer, course was fully paid for and a $740+ a week job lined up. First day, I show up to the Uni and there were only 2 others. We both got work placement out of it, I got a job shortly after. No BS, there were more lecturers than there were people taking the course by the end of it. When I went to CVGT to let them know I had full time employment I saw the same bludgers that turned down the course, chatting away on the computers not even looking for work. Great system.
