The age pension is firming as the target of budget spending cuts with Treasurer Joe Hockey hinting at reducing access to the payment and declaring welfare should be a "safety net, not a cargo net".
Mr Hockey told an audience of G20 finance ministers in Washington that successive governments have ignored the impact of an ageing society for too long and he warned that without changes, the cost of providing healthcare and pensions would rise by $93 billion a year by 2030.
Labor's shadow assistant treasurer Andrew Leigh said it was a "pretty rough" move to further raise the pension age, which is 65 and due to rise to 67 by 2023.
LISTEN: Hockey signals rise in pension ageThe government would cut into a scheme set up to deal with poverty amongst older Australians, while it was giving superannuation tax concessions to the rich.
"That's a really cruel blow," Dr Leigh told ABC radio on Friday.
"That doesn't strike me as fair to say to a cleaner that they have to work to 70 while you're telling somebody who's getting a tax concession of ... maybe half a million that you're not going to rein that in."
He accused the coalition of having its priorities wrong in sounding an end to an entitlement culture while at the same time introducing an "entitlement" paid parental leave scheme.
Opposition families spokeswoman Jenny Macklin said Australia's pension payments system was targeted and affordable compared with those of other developed countries.
She said changes to the payment would be a "total betrayal" to pensioners who had been assured prior to the election there would be no cuts.
National Seniors chief executive Michael O'Neill warned the government off any move to raise the pension age if it did not tackle mature-age unemployment first.
"Raising the pension age is a simplistic approach to a deeper problem, and it is not a solution to the national welfare bill," he said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews referred inquiries to Treasurer Joe Hockey.
Comment was being sought from Mr Hockey.
