BUDGET EVE

I don’t normally put out a newsletter the day of the Budget, but am pressed for time this week as I’ll soon be leaving for a week-long speaking tour of North Queensland – in any event it would seem that the contents of the Budget have been mostly leaked.

The older I get the more I become disillusioned with the whole political process.  There is now more emphasis on spin than outcome, and the staged photo opportunities of Abbott and Hockey have been so false that anybody could see through them in a flash.  And thanks to the adversarial nature of politics, the Opposition is already attacking the Budget even if they don’t know the details.

It’s an absolute joke, which is why I’ll focus today on superannuation and pensions.

Both pensioners and superannuants are under attack from all sides, but we need to clearly differentiate between the two.  The age pension has long been regarded as a right, but rising life expectancies and the sad state of our finances mean the emphasis is shifting to welfare.  The question is now at what level of financial resources should a person become eligible for welfare.

It’s totally different to superannuation.  This is OUR money, which we’ve been diligently accumulating in terms of the rules of the day, and in the expectation that superannuation would be a vehicle that would enable us to build up a portfolio that would become large enough when we retire to make it unnecessary for us to apply for welfare.