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- Budget winners and losers
- Families, pensioners face budget pain
Meet Zara Grayspence - she's 92, sassy and knows her situation.
She is the classic asset-rich, income-poor older Australian, living frugally on the full age pension in her million dollar home in the Sydney suburb of Mosman, one of Australia's most expensive suburbs.
Ms Grayspence convinced her mother to buy the then-rundown tennis court from an elderly woman for "about 200 pounds" and as an architecture student, drew the plans herself to transform the plot into the two-bedder house it is today.
She has lived there for 60 years and has no intention of downsizing, despite offers from real estate agents.
They have no idea what it's like to be a pensioner. It's not easy.
"That's the carrot the developers hold in front of my face … they say they can find me a very nice smaller apartment near a bus stop. But I don't want it!"
"It's an empty nest now, everyone's left, but I am here and I want to stay here," the former Mosman Councillor said.
Australians are less reliant on welfare than they were a decade ago, though the aged pension remains the main source of income for most retirees.
Ms Grayspence receives about $800 a fortnight from the government and says it's fair enough that a person's residence isn't included in the means test for the pension.
Too easy to qualify
Economists are divided on just how generous the Australian pension is. Grattan Institute chief John Daley told Insight the eligibility requirements for the pension are “drawn ridiculously widely so it's far too easy to qualify”.
“The way it’s set up at the moment, you can qualify for the pension even though you have one million [dollars] in assets and a big house. A very large number of people under 35 can’t even buy a house."
“There’s this idea that we have to share the pain equally, we’ve seen a rapid growth in entitlements for people over 60 in the last 30 years, and a decrease in unemployment benefits and so on."
"The amount that the government has paid out in unemployment benefits in the last 11 years, has shrunk in real terms, whereas aged pensions have increased faster than GDP,” Mr Daley said.
Ben Phillips, research fellow at the University of Canberra, argues the pensions aren't generous enough.
"A single pensioner will take home just over $20,000 per year - that's just above the poverty line."
A report released this week revealed that just 18.6 per cent of Australians aged 18 to 64 receive weekly welfare payments, down from 23 per cent in 2001.
Associate Professor Roger Wilkins, the report's editor, told ABC News Breakfast that Australians are less reliant on welfare than they were a decade ago, though the aged pension remains the main source of income for most retirees.
Someone with a $2 million house is much, much wealthier than someone with no house
"The last few years following the GFC we saw a little bit of a rise again in welfare reliance, but broadly speaking the general trend is down."
"It is hard to reconcile that trend with the current public discourse, particularly coming from the Coalition Government, you certainly couldn't argue that there is a welfare emergency or welfare dependency emergency that's recently emerged," Mr Wilkins said.
The former Employment Minister in the Howard government, Amanda Vanstone, says there is a case to be made for people who have a significant asset to get a reverse mortgage and use some of the asset to look after themselves.
“I think it's fair enough to say well, what about the person who doesn't have that asset? Someone with a $2 million house is much, much wealthier than someone with no house or who's in a housing trust accommodation,” Ms Vanstone said.
“If (the money) was in the bank you'd say she had to use it. Why is it that we say because it's a house that you can't say well, get a reverse mortgage and start to use that income?”
Australian National University’s Peter Whiteford is not sure whether the debate should be about the “age of entitlement” but urges everyone to look at the concept of sharing the wealth.
“What we're after as a society is that we do things efficiently, we do things as fairly as possible and we want to, you know, be as prosperous as possible."
"So the age of entitlement makes it a debate about, sort of who, you know, whose money is it, where did it come from, whereas what I think we should think about is how does society produce the greatest prosperity that is as widely shared as possible?”
But Ms Grayspence says her home is "not an asset" and feels that politicians have no clue how tough pensioners have it.
"They have no idea what it's like to be a pensioner. It's not that easy. I’m getting a bit frustrated about this whole thing," she said.
"People trying to tell us that we don't deserve to live in our house. I feel more sorry for people paying rent though. That's what I'm worried about because I couldn't get any less than what I'm living on now."
In the lead up to this year's Federal budget, Treasurer Joe Hockey said "the age of entitlement is over." Tonight on Insight, Jenny Brockie asks – do we have a culture of entitlement?
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