The Australia Institute

While we are talking about the housing issue and retirees, we need to acknowledge that just raising rental assistance is not going to fix it.

Worth pointing out re the Housing issue and retirees that rather than just raise rental assistance as Grattan that

The problem is our entire tax system is geared towards benefiting the wealthiest.  $20bn worth of superannuation tax concessions go to the richest 10% of Australians. There concessions are notionally to help people save for retirement so they are not reliant on the age pension. Except of course the richest 10% are never going to be eligible for the age pension so instead the govt is giving the richest Australians a tax cut for no good reason at all.

The government is trying to reduce the tax breaks for the 80,000 people (about 0.5% of everyone with a super balance) with super balances of more than $3m, but crossbenchers and the LNP are against them because of some pretty spurious concerns about ‘farmers’.

Australia has the second lowest age pension in the OECD, and that’s a big reason why Australia has the 5^th highest level of retirees living in poverty.