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Keywords: Pension

  • AUSTRALIA

    Super concessions rob the poor to pay the rich

    • Lin Hatfield Dodds
    • 04 October 2011
    11 Comments

    A third of taxpayer-funded superannuation concessions — around $10 billion a year — are directed to the top 5 per cent of income earners. People living on or below the poverty line get no such support. This week's Tax Forum must ask: Are we proud of how we redistribute our national wealth?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Mixed Budget blessings

    • Paul O'Callaghan
    • 11 May 2011
    7 Comments

    The Budget contains a number of positive measures to promote mental health, employment and training. But without greater investment in individualised support for job seekers and those on disability support pensions to assist their transition to work, we are not likely to see major change.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Thinking positively about getting a job

    • Lin Hatfield Dodds
    • 18 April 2011
    6 Comments

    Prime Minister Gillard's speech to the Sydney Institute last week, and Tony Abbot’s policy announcements two weeks ago, drew unanimous response from the community sector — that getting people into work is a sound objective, but it's harder than it looks.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Why Tony Abbott is right about welfare

    • Frank Quinlan
    • 03 April 2011
    34 Comments

    In a recent interview on ABC radio, Abbott argued that work isn't just about the economy, it's also about individual welfare and the social fabric. He's right to point out that the Disability Support Pension focuses too much on what recipients can't do and not enough on what they can.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The future shock of aged care

    • Martin Laverty
    • 07 February 2011
    8 Comments

    One of our most daunting challenges is how to look after the baby boomers, who are fast approaching old age. The cost of aged care, and the number needing it, is skyrocketing. Funding has not been committed, and there's a train wreck in sight. Doing nothing is not an option. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    France shows Australia how to protest

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 26 October 2010
    6 Comments

    In Australia a mass strike is unimaginable. The bureaucratic hoops required before a strike can be considered a legal 'protected action' are Kafkaesque. Therefore strikes have become small, localised and limited to issues of contractual entitlements.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The problem with prosperous Australia

    • John Falzon
    • 18 October 2010
    5 Comments

    There's something disquieting about quietness imposed from above in the heart of a democracy. Anti-Poverty Week is a good time to reflect on how, as a nation, can hear the revolutionary stories of the oppressed and abandoned in our midst.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Timor Diggers' guerilla war

    • Paul Cleary
    • 24 August 2010
    3 Comments

    Kevin Rudd's failure to embrace the Timor legend with more imagination and substance was a missed opportunity to connect with Labor's Second World War legacy. Wartime Prime Minister John Curtin saw the guerilla war in Timor as a unique and significant part of turning back the Japanese tide.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    MySuper's justified paternalism

    • Michael Mullins
    • 12 July 2010
    5 Comments

    Channelling people into a default superannuation fund could be compared with the indignity of income management. But MySuper is geared to protect the human dignity of Australians in retirement against their own indifference, and also commercial exploitation.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Hard days of not working

    • Barry Garner
    • 09 June 2010
    11 Comments

    I used to be a worker. I left school at 15 and worked till I was 45. But it now seems that I was someone else then. Am I disabled? Or just lazy? Down the street I see workers in overalls, and for some reason I can't look them in the eye.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Abbott and Australia's new poor

    • Brian Lawrence
    • 08 June 2010
    9 Comments

    Tony Abbott told ABC radios's AM program that 'low and middle income families with kids are Australia's new poor'. He is half right. Yet this year's national wage review failed to address the needs of low income working families.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2009: The homeless poet

    • John Falzon
    • 15 January 2010
    3 Comments

    A Japanese homeless man was sending the most exquisite poems to a popular newspaper. There is nothing extraordinary about a person experiencing homelessness producing great poetry. Yet the scenario was regarded with astonishment. October 2009

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