Abbott stirs last year's budget turd

A tiny baby step in the right direction by Abbott is about it, coupled with it being a broken promise and no action on the super welfare rort enjoyed by the most wealthy Australians which costs the gov a whopping $30billion yr.

The taper rate under the Keating government was $3 a fortnight cut from the pension for every $1000 of assets held over the threshold. Mr Howard changed that to $1.50. 

The reversal means a couple will lose the part pension when their assets - family home excluded - exceed $823,000, which is down from $1.15 billion. 

The threshhold for singles will drop from$775,000 to $547,000. 

For non-homeowners, the threshold will fall from $922,000 to $747,000 for singles and from $1.3 million to $1 million for couples. 

"The idea you can be a liquid assets millionaire and still get the part pension think is problematic," Mr Abbott said. 

Mr Morrison said the dumping of the indexation plans would also spare the pensions for veterans, war widows service personnel and carers. 

He said it was better than Labor's proposal to "smash superannuation", a reference to recently announced tax changes at the high-income end of the super tax regime proposed by the Opposition. more

Gutless tinkering at the edges. In effect people like me live in poverty so the rich can get welfare from the gov. 

For a start, WTF does someone who has liquid assets of half a million $ or so doing getting a fuckin pension? When I got my redundancy of around $40,000 a few years back I couldn't get any more than a part pension of the DSP until it was all gone. Yet someone with half a million can get a full pension? WTF? The pension should be paid to people who need it, not to people who demonstrably don't. The system is right out of whack.

Furthermore, WTF are the top 10% of earners doing getting gov welfare in the form of 41% of all superannuation tax concessions? Totally unsustainable and totally unfair. Yet Abbott has refused to lift a finger over it. Again, welfare for the rich so I struggle.

Finally, it's another broken promise. Abbott said "no changes to pensions", he didn't say "no changes to pensions in this term". What a mess they've made for themselves....

Summing up, they should have chucked last budget's turd out, not tried to stir it up. They're just stirring shit now and won't be able to please anyone.