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Have Labor come up with a costed plan to keep the pension payments from 65? Without increasing taxes?

Maybe like the Chifley Welfare Fund?

'Once in government, the new Prime Minister John Curtin doubled down. When the first uniform tax case came before the High Court (which effectively eliminated state income tax in favour of Commonwealth income tax) Curtin promised the electorate that the Commonwealth's new power would not be used as an excuse to raise income taxes.

Labor's no-tax pledge was unsustainable.'

'So when Chifley announced that they would increase income taxes on rich and poor alike, they also announced a "National Welfare Fund" alongside it.

This National Welfare Fund would fund welfare measures like pensions, unemployment relief, child endowments, even health care. The fund is often seen as the launch of Australia's welfare state.

Unlike a contributory scheme, the fund would be financed by the new income tax increases. But there were two tricks.

First, Chifley said the revenue from the tax increase was specially earmarked for the National Welfare Fund. Thus Labor wasn't breaking its promise not to increase the burden on low income earners - they would be getting social security for their money. (Think of the fund like our Medicare Levy today.)

And second, most of the great new social services weren't to start until after the war. Cabinet agreed that only £5 million of the estimated £40 raised would be directed towards immediate social spending. Money is fungible. The rest could quietly be used for the war effort.

    The National Welfare Fund has long passed into historical obscurity. But the mythology of welfare contributions it engendered remains - one that imagines the welfare state as a giant piggy bank.

As the historian Rob Watts points out in his book The Foundations of the National Welfare State, what looks like groundbreaking Chifley welfare reform was really just a smokescreen for unpopular wartime tax rises on lower income earners.'

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-27/berg-chifley's-political-time-bomb-70-year...

lee wrote on Feb 24^th, 2016 at 4:31pm:

Compulsory superannuation 

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Retirement age for real Liberals is not impacted by the pension. They never claim one.

I once had a job for life, the problem was that in exchange for the security you accepted below market wage rates. Of course in the end they went away from the guarantee and forced people out.

Technically people could have stayed but it is a great company to not work for.

Dnarever wrote on Feb 25^th, 2016 at 7:28am:


Your beloved ALP increased the pension age to 67.  If you are going to lie, dont be so easily caught!