KEY POINTS:
Pensioners will be better off in New Zealand than in Australia from October this year, if you ignore the exchange rate.
The elderly are among the biggest winners from yesterday's Budget, with a package of measures including:
* A $23 a week rise in the after-tax married pension
to 51 per cent of the before-tax average wage, compared with 39 per cent in Australia.
* Free public transport at off-peak hours, compared with only discounted fares in Australia.
* A jump in the subsidy for hearing aids, which audiologists describe as the biggest increase in decades.
* A promised rebate on power bills to take effect when electricity enters the proposed emissions trading scheme.
* A long-promised increase in allowances for grandparents raising grandchildren (see separate story).
Grey Power vice-president Bob Buchanan said older New Zealanders would be "very pleased" with the package.
"With petrol and food increases, people on fixed incomes that are relying on New Zealand superannuation are feeling the pinch, and any aid they can get to this group of people Grey Power is right behind."
He said buses were almost empty at off-peak times, and it made sense to let superannuitants ride in them.
The net married pension, paid universally to everyone from age 65, was raised from 65 per cent to 66 per cent of the net average wage after the last election as part of a deal with New Zealand First.
It will go up again, from $439.80 to $462.74 a week, or 51 per cent of the gross average wage, on October 1 to keep pace with the increase in the net average wage resulting from the Budget tax cuts.
In Australia, the pension is means-tested and income-tested, and the maximum married pension is A$456.80 ($560.32), or just 39 per cent of the before-tax average wage.
The new subsidies for off-peak public transport, hearing aids and power bills will be limited to people aged 65 and over with "SuperGold Cards" - a new discount card that was also an NZ First initiative.
The scheme was criticised when it was launched last August because it failed to include significant discounts for either public transport or power, which attract discounted fares and a A$500 ($612) annual utility allowance in Australia.
But NZ First leader Winston Peters has effectively trumped even the Australian scheme by negotiating an $18 million a year payment to public transport providers to fund completely free, off-peak travel for superannuitants.
The starting date for the scheme is still subject to talks with bus, train and ferry operators and regional councils, but the Budget tables assume it will start on April 1 next year.
Mr Peters said the subsidy for hearing aids would rise on October 1 from $198 to $500, again for SuperGold Card holders only.
The head of audiology at Auckland University, Dr Grant Searchfield, said $500 would cover the cost of an "entry-level" hearing aid, although there could still be consultation fees on top of that.
Mr Buchanan said specialist hearing aids could cost up to $5000.
Dr Searchfield said the subsidy had been fixed at $96 for many years and despite being doubled a few years ago, had fallen well behind the cost of modern hearing aids.
"This is the most significant increase in hearing funding that we have seen for decades," he said.
The chairman of the National Foundation for the Deaf, Professor Peter Thorne, said many elderly people could not afford to get hearing aids at present, and the higher subsidy would allow them to do so.
