The real witch hunt
I have read the article about the conversation with Kelly O'Dwyer the LNP person responsible for the damage to our pensions. Firstly it is an insult that she never answers a question appropriately but focuses more on attacking Labor and its policies, it is quite sickening to read her comments regarding the future direction of age pensions which causes me a lot of concern for the future.
Everything about the changes implemented by the LNP were about the budget which they wanted to bring into surplus, and the infamous remarks by Hockey about the age of entitlement are still raw in my gut as he puffed away on his fancy cigar.
The changes to the pension have been horrendous to a lot of pensioners and in particular to those like myself who cannot even get a pension or concession card, and I certainly am not a millionaire or any where near it, after several attempts to get a pension I realise now that the delay in processing a claim is deliberate and calculated, and I am still waiting once again after well over forty days.
I despair that even Labor has not made one official comment regarding pensions, they are very silent on this subject other than some sort of Tax affecting some pensioners on higher levels of income stream. The pensions in a lot of the European countries are far superior to ours, and even the much maligned UK pension is still far superior and the help given with other items such as power bills are not targeted like ours, the truth is we have lost the plot regarding the aged pension and it has been harshly targeted by the LNP and Labor before the LNP made all there damaging changes since coming to power.
What has happened to our voice, John Howard was afraid of losing our vote but now we are like a lap dog and just roll over each move on our existance, now is the time to remind Labor that the election is not a done deal and they need to be vocal about how they can reinstate the fairnes in aged pensions or risk losing the election to a mob of independants who couldnt do any worse.
Hi Radish, thank you for your reply, sorry if I misread your reply but I thought it was intimating that the pension was not a right for anybody, I now understand you would seem to believe it is for those who are not self funded or have sufficient income to meet there evryday needs, I in part also believe that as well, where it falls flat is where the means test has been altered to the point of eliminating a lot of Australians who do not fall into the sufficient funds catergory but for other circumstances like myself cannot get the pension as I explained earlier, thank you very much for your link as well, very interesting, pity Australia did not follow the UK model which is far superior in meeting the pension needs.