Getting the aged back to work needs shift in attitude

The call by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg about getting older Australians back into the workforce paints them as a burden and an easy target. To get them back to work needs a shift in attitudes about who gets a job.

Solutions around the age pension and how to make it sustainable should be embraced. One key is encouraging self-funding via highly-priced city homes where residents are on the age pension. This is about changing how older people see retirement and being prepared to embrace a change that would open up life to new paths.

A shift to a regional lifestyle village should be given incentives and made an attractive option. Moving from the city to self-funded living in the country would be a stimulus and ease the pressure on the age pension budget.

Stuart Davie, Corowa, NSW

Listening to Josh Frydenberg trot out the line that the elderly work till they drop, so to speak, I note nothing is ever said of the sustainability of paying pensions to retired, rejected and sacked politicians.

Has Frydenberg ever considered carpenters, plasterers, concrete workers, bricklayers who, by the time they reach their mid-fifties are all suffering work-relate pain — and he expects them to work till their seventies. Taxes paid were supposed to fund the pension. It’s time our politicians came into the real world.

B. Molloy, Rockingham. WA

Today, it’s non-working older Australians; tomorrow, who will Treasurer Josh Frydenberg blame for our struggling economy? When will the Morrison government calm down on its surplus obsession and look at their own short-term policies?

Where are its plans to encourage productivity improvements? When will it act on the Reserve Bank’s advice to stimulate the economy? When will it tackle tax reform? When will it curtail super concessions to the rich?

Kevin Burke, Sandringham, Vic

Josh Frydenberg’s desire to make would-be retirees remain in work is typical of an economist who only sees things in terms of balancing the books in dollar terms. Every would-be retiree who is forced to remain in work means a young person trying to get into the workforce fails to find a job.

Apart from the financial cost of supporting the unemployed, there is the damage to their self-esteem and resulting mental health issues, and the increased risk of being unemployed in the long term.

We already know that there are more unemployed than there are job vacancies, so surely encouraging the older employed person to retire would be beneficial to the young.

In dollar terms, many retirees have superannuation and would cost the taxpayer nothing while the unemployed could need welfare payments for the long term. Admittedly, older workers pay more tax, but that focus is shortsighted when compared to the social costs of increasing unemployment figures. Let’s not forget that this government were happy to hand back tax money in the hope of increasing spending.

Roger Bridgland, West Hobart, Tas

Judith Sloan’s article on not including the home in the asset test illustrates the present problems. She says this government will not include the value of the family home — even part of its value — in the age pension asset test. Neither will the next government, nor the one after that. In fact the home is now included at $210,500. She also says that spending on caravans and cars reduces your assets for the test. In fact, they are counted. Spend $500 on a TV and it is counted in the test; spend $50,000 on a tennis court at home and it is not. Even giving to the grandchildren only counts if it was more than five years ago.

People waste a lot of time trying to understand the test and to avoid it. ANU research is that $6.4 billion in age pension payments goes to 225,000 pensioners living in homes worth more than $1m. As Sloan says, one can design fair reverse mortgages to protect their cash flows. What’s not to like if it is included?

Anthony Asher, UNSW, Sydney

Scott Morrison may be right with his policy to fast-track infrastructure as a means of boosting the economy. In partnership with this, the government could get over its rejection of increasing Newstart and lift this vulnerable group out of the poverty into which they have been locked.

Such a move would also give an immediate boost to the retail sector which is needing a boost as well.

Graham Reynolds, Soldiers Hill, Vic