Retirement

“And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years”
                                                           Abraham Lincoln

We are grateful to all pensioners who worked hard to give us a better chance. We feel obliged to reward their efforts and let them enjoy the fruits of their work. Together with the established old-age pension and superannuation systems we shall introduce new initiatives, aimed at making retirement life a dream:

• Our new health care initiatives shall ease the stress many older people associate with hospital, dental and ambulance services (i.e. they shall be readily available and absolutely free). For more details see Health.

• Contrary to recent global trends we shall reduce the age for old-age pension entitlement for both sexes (this is how equality works...) to 60 years (same or similar to countries such as Austria, Czech Republic, France, Korea, Poland, Slovak Republic, Turkey, UK, etc.)

• The most important indicator of the generosity of our pension benefits is the replacement rate (which actually is the ratio of annual benefits to earnings just before retirement). Compared with many developed countries our pensions are pretty modest and well short of the OECD average. Our challenge will be to improve our score and exceed the average by at least a comfortable margin. We shall review and update most pensions in order to enable many older people to have a better share of our joys.

• All pensions will also be annually indexed in line with the CPI, and all factors affecting pensioners’ costs of living will be strictly monitored.

• We’re aware how difficult personal transport may be for many older people. Traffic jams, high petrol prices, health and many other problems often impose severe mobility restrictions badly affecting our quality of life. We’ll be happy to help all those people by offering free urban public transport (except peak hours) to every pensioner over 60. Increased off-peak loading shall have minimal impact on the public transport system and would require modest amount of additional funds.

• Today many people keep working well beyond their sixties. We’re proud of such “workaholics” and would like to share benefits from their passion, skills and experience by offering substantial tax benefits. Working persons aged 60 to 65 shall only pay half of their normal taxes, while everyone older than 65 shall pay no tax at all (for incomes up to A$1M).

• Many families migrating to Australia have to leave their grandparents overseas, and many of their children lack this vital link to grasp their new environment. Our Adopt a grandparent scheme will enable many older people to get much better care in return for basic childcare and love. Such a scheme will help both - migrant children will get “naturalized”, while many older people may get “young at heart”. It will unite our community and ensure we all learn the old wisdom at the right time.