Noel Whittaker joins retirees in the fight against a Labor tax change that hits them hard

OPPOSITION Leader Bill Shorten now has one more headache to deal with as the Longman by-election rapidly approaches: A growing army of angry retirees.

OPPOSITION Leader Bill Shorten now has one more headache to deal with as the Longman by-election rapidly approaches.

Noel Whittaker has lent his support to a newly-formed group which aims to stop Labor from implementing its plan to abolish refunds of excess franking credits for an army of retirees.

The Brisbane-based personal finance guru helped launch The Alliance for a Fairer Retirement System and its new website yesterday with nine industry players gathered high up in the 111 Eagle Street tower.

Whittaker predicted the “ridiculous’’ policy, if enacted, would be about as popular as the widely-loathed mining tax, which was eventually scrapped.

The group plans to flood email inboxes in Longman with real-life examples of how the plan could see plenty of retirees suffer a 30 per cent drop in their incomes.

Noel Whittaker believes many batter retirees will be hard hit by Labor’s proposed tax change.

Under the scheme, announced by Shorten in March, a couple who have no age pension but $1 million in their self-managed super fund would be worse off than those who have only saved $300,000.

Labor argued that the current policy, which costs the Budget more than $5 billion a year and allegedly affects only a small number of retirees, had grown rapidly and now become unaffordable.

But Whittaker said plenty of battlers were certain to get caught out by the unfair policy shift, which would undermine certainty and act as a disincentive to save for retirement.

SMSF Association chair Deborah Ralston and her Alliance colleagues met last week with shadow treasurer Chris Bowen, who she described as “immovable’’ in his commitment to the change.

Yet, in a noteworthy coincidence, news emerged during the launch that Shorten had backflipped on his surprise “captain’s call’’ to ditch tax cuts for medium-sized businesses. So much for being immovable!

RTA MELTDOWN

THIS week’s item about staff transfers inside the Residential Tenancies Authority and a union revolt which saw a vote of no confidence in the new boss Jennifer Morgan has prompted quite a bit of chatter.

Current and former employees have alleged to City Beat that the problems go much deeper, with a toxic corporate culture permeating the RTA and morale at rock bottom as plenty head for the exits.

One senior staffer who recently left said he was “driven to despair under the nepotistic, bullying and intimidating culture that had been allowed to thrive’’. He said an IT upgrade project shepherded by several CEOs turned into an appalling disaster that went massively over budget and over time before failing to meet expectations.

“Meanwhile, staff endured slashed budgets, increased workloads and high levels of stress while funds were channelled away from important service delivery to the sector and relentlessly into this IT white elephant, which internally was ridiculed by staff as an out of control major f***-up,’’ he said.

Another high-ranking RTA player told us that a gutted IT department and general understaffing had resulted in chronic mistakes in refunding bonds, with clients having to wait weeks for errors to get sorted out.

“With increasing workloads and low staffing the RTA no longer check signatures or details on refund forms and pays refunds out causing mistaken payments,’’ he said.

“There have been several cases where the RTA has had to pay families thousands of dollars in compensation to relocate them as we released the new address to ex-partners when police domestic violence orders were put in place.’’

Your diarist forwarded these comments and a list of questions to the RTA yesterday but all we got in response was a brief statement that answered none of the specifics.

RTA operative Cassandra Rolfe would only note that a growing Queensland rental market presented “both challenges and opportunities’’.

“Management at the RTA has been and continues to work to
support staff through this period of transition, ensuring the workplace environment is safe and productive for staff to work in,’’ she said.