Magenta Appel-Pye, Mullumbimby.
This year they are implementing a pension assets test for the hoi polloi whilst the fat cat bureaucrats sit back for the rest of their lives, licking the cream with their excessive, non-means tested pensions. I guess there’s little we can do about that.
Then there’s the Chinese multi-billionaire who bought the Victorian electricity distributor. Every time a Victorian turns on their lights, he makes more money. Unfortunately, as reported by Four Corners, he shirks paying tax and when looked into offers the ATO a tenth of what he owes, and they accept and are silenced.
This is the perfect example of why owning our own power company is so important. Enova is doing an excellent job and will keep growing. They are to be congratulated on the excellent business model they have incorporated. They will make money, as business must, but they also have ethics and invest heavily back into the area in which we live.
This model of business is what is needed to change the world from rampant greed and capitalism gone to it’s worst extreme where the very rich are prospering and everyone else is floundering.
Thank you Enova for giving us the chance to make powerful choices that directly influence our families. This enables us get the power back into the right hands and ensures a prosperous community.
Let’s hope one day this model is incorporated everywhere and money, the power-god of our times, is more equitably spread.
Magenta
It is unclear what you see as the relationship between the pensions of former public servants and the new assets test. Australian public servants who started their Commonwealth employment before 2005 receive a pension that is a form of superannuation. Those who joined the APS after 2005, which would include many if not most of those advising the Government on retirement issues, receive superannuation contributions of about 15%, the extra 6% over other people’s super reflects that the former PSS nd CSS schemes were a bit more generous than the 9% compulsory contributions, but not that much more. Like any other superannuation, or pension that you fund from your superannuation, it is not means tested – it is something they earned as part of their work (unlike other superannuation pensions of post 60 retirees it is taxed albeit concessionally). The pensions do count as income for the aged pension income test. Many lower level members of the old CSS who retired or were packaged-out on the nineties have found their superannuation pensions, which were not indexed to the fast wage growth in the following years, and find their superannuation pension is less than the old age pension. You could ask the government to cut those defined benefit pensions pensions if you think they are excessive, but why not ask the government to appropriate money from other peoples’ superannuation accounts -it would amount to the same thing, taking money that people earned as part of their employment.