Fix Pension Poverty
Improving the standard of living for older Australians reliant on the Age Pension.
The issue
The Age Pension doesn’t provide enough for older Australians.
What we're calling for
An Age Pension Tribunal to independently set the Age Pension rate, an increase to the Commonwealth Rent Assistance and an expansion of basic dental care for pensioners.
The benefits
Improved standards of living for older Australians reliant on the Age Pension.
Key Points
- It fails to provide a decent standard of living for approximately 1.5 million older Australians who rely on it as their main source of income.
- More than 250,000 pensioners don’t own their own home.
- On average, a pensioner receives only 1/3 of what is needed to pay the rent.
The Age Pension doesn’t provide enough for older Australians so we're fighting for a fair go for those on the pension.
The cost of essentials, such as health, housing, transport and energy have increased far quicker than non-essentials and people are struggling.
Age pensioners who are renting, in particular those who are single, are the worst off. Many of these are women without superannuation or other savings. Urgent measures are required to redress the profound levels of deprivation experienced by this group of pensioners.
An assessment of pensioner living standards
This report examines the adequacy of the Age Pension both qualitatively, through focus groups and town meetings, and quantitatively, through analysis of social survey data.
We fought hard and won a historic one-off increase of $30 per week to the maximum Age Pension rate in 2009.
But more needs to be done.
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We hosted a webinar which included expert panelists Dr. David Knox, Dr. Deborah Ralston and Noel Whittaker and our Chief Advocate, Ian Henschke. Hear from three of Australia’s leading experts on our retirement system. We talk about the big questions: Should we have a universal pension? Why do we penalise pensioners who work? Is the pension fair.
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As a not-for-profit organisation, your membership directly funds our Advocacy and Research work. It helps us fight to fix pension poverty, tackle the cost of living and health care, improve aged care and fairness in retirement income.
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Your gift today can help fix pension poverty, rebuild the retirement income system and provide more home care places so that older Australians can live safely and make ends meet.