[BITList] Hidden Levy from 1946 - Thieving Govt!

[FA]

> ​*Opinion: Arrogant politicians should be ready for a pensioners’ revolt*
>
> http://pixel.tcog.cp1.news.com.au/track/component/article/4d1511dbf579d8e58261d1fa4d328be5?esi=true&t_template=s3/chronicle-tg_tlc_storyheader/index&t_product=CourierMail&td_device=desktop
>
> Brian Hale, The Courier-Mail-January 11, 2017
>
> “THE stigma of charity should be removed from the age pension. It 
> should be an entitlement earned by the person’s personal contribution 
> to the fund,” said a very famous Australian long ago.  Who? Former 
> Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies. When? At the time the current 
> pension scheme was introduced. Fund? What fund and what personal 
> contribution?
>
> You wouldn’t know about it listening to the major parties’ politicians 
> or Senate crossbencher David Leyonhjelm who, echoing former Treasurer 
> Joe Hockey, told the ABC he wants Australians to drop their sense of 
> entitlement to the aged pension, which should only be paid to poor 
> people, and receiving it should be “nothing to be proud of”.
>
> Well, no David, most pensioners worked and spent a lifetime paying for 
> their pensions. It’s not welfare and, when it was introduced, it was 
> actually meant to be an entitlement. A 7.5 per cent tithe was taken 
> from wages to put into a fund to pay their pensions. Just as workers 
> now have superannuation collected.
>
> What a good idea! Unfortunately (for pensioners) the Labor Party 
> insisted the contributions shouldn’t be kept in individual accounts as 
> in the UK and the US where retirees get the entitlement earned by 
> their contributions. Instead, it all went into one big pot, the 
> National Welfare Fund. And when the pot got really big, the 
> politicians took it.
>
> They won’t talk about the historical facts because these days 
> politicians have developed a new “ending the age of entitlement” 
> narrative while pushing the disingenuous line that younger workers are 
> paying tax to support pensioners.  Menzies was opposition leader when 
> then prime minister Ben Chifley announced a National Welfare Fund to 
> pay for pensions, unemployment relief, child endowments, even health 
> care with a 7.5 per cent tax increase.
>
> Menzies insisted that the Compulsory Contribution (levy) should be 
> kept completely separate; that it should be paid straight into a trust 
> account and not mixed with the general revenue.  The levy and the 
> National Welfare Fund began on January 1, 1946, and contributions were 
> shown separately on workers’ personal tax assessments for 1946, 1947, 
> 1948, 1949 and 1950, with the money paid straight into the special 
> fund from which claims were paid out.
>
> *In 1950 the balance in the fund was almost £100 million or $200 
> million – in today’s money the equivalent of several trillion dollars.*
>
> http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/b7c947973d6dc0568d71c4db359e1c65?width=650
>
> But the pot was too big for the politicians to leave alone. Menzies, 
> supported by the Australian Labor Party, amended the Acts governing 
> the fund so the compulsory contributions levy was lumped in with 
> people’s income tax and the whole lot paid straight into consolidated 
> revenue. But the compulsory 7.5 per cent “levy” was still collected 
> and spent.
>
> In 1977 Liberal PM Malcolm Fraser transferred the balance left in the 
> welfare fund account (by then almost $500 million, or several trillion 
> in today’s terms) to consolidated revenue. But still the 7.5 per cent 
> was taken out of everyone’s pay packet every week.  Then in 1985 the 
> Labor Government repealed Acts No. 39, 40 and 41 of 1945 (The National 
> Welfare Fund Acts) and introduced income and asset testing, thus 
> excluding millions of levy and taxpaying Australians from receiving 
> the pension for which they had paid.
>
> *But still the 7.5 per cent levy continued to be collected (while 
> hidden in general income tax revenue.) And to this day it still is 
> collected.*
>
> There have been estimates that the trillions of dollars stolen from 
> the fund and the money paid and similarly stolen (sorry, transferred) 
> since 1985 would be enough to pay a non-means-tested pension to every 
> retiree of far more than $500 a week. If it had been invested, like 
> the Future Fund, the pension might be $1000 a week. Small beer 
> compared with the politicians’ pension deals but a huge leap for older 
> Aussies, 420,000 of whom had their age pensions cancelled or reduced 
> from January 1.
>
> Ironically, they are the very pensioners who would have the highest 
> pensions if their personal contribution to the “fund” was the 
> yardstick as in the UK and the US.  They probably generally have been 
> Coalition voters. But no more.
>
> Spend time in the RSLs, bowling clubs, voluntary organisations and the 
> like, where these people gather and it is clear they are 
> Liberal-National voters no more.  In lieu of an Australian Trump, they 
> see no alternative but One Nation.
>
> The Coalition, supported by Labor and the Greens, has turned 180 
> degrees from Menzies’ view the age pension is “an entitlement earned 
> by the person’s personal contribution to the fund” and portrays it as 
> charity.  For many Australians this alone shows how far the parties 
> they once supported have strayed from principle.
>
> The arrogant politicians think they can hypocritically and 
> sanctimoniously speak condescendingly of older Australians.  They are 
> in for a shock.
>
> *Brian Hale is a former business editor of *
>
> /*The Courier-Mail */*and */*The Australian*/
>

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