Kerre Woodham: Pension promise fades

Garth George. Photo / Rotorua Daily Post

I'd like to think I could still be working long past the retirement age.

As a broadcaster, columnist, book reviewer and public speaker, there's no physical reason why I shouldn't still be churning out increasingly right-wing diatribes through various media channels.

The jobs I do are technically and physically possible to be done by people of advanced years - look at Garth George. Or Gary McCormick. Or John Hawkesby.

And while I acknowledge that these are all men, and I can't think of a single crone still in the public eye after 60, maybe I can carve out a niche for myself as time goes by.

But it's one thing to have an enjoyable, well-paid and interesting career and quite another to be eking out an existence doing low-paid manual labour.

No doubt there were thousands of people who were horrified at the suggestion from the Retirement Commission that the age at which you can collect the super should kick in at 67, not 65. If you've worked a poorly paid, physically strenuous job all of your adult life, collapsing on to the superannuation would be the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

I know there are good reasons behind the commission's suggestion. Figures from Work and Income show that paying single pensioners costs 4 per cent of the economy right now, but as the baby boomers march reluctantly yet inexorably into their twilight years, that will rise to 9 per cent of the economy by 2050.

The young ones - struggling to find the money to pay their student loans, buy their homes and start their families - may well wonder whether a significant chunk of their taxes should be going to prop up a bloated demographic who were out smoking pot behind the bike sheds when the making-do and economising classes were being held back.

John Key has stated that the raising of the retirement age won't be happening on his watch - he gave that undertaking in the lead-up to the election and he'd resign rather than renege on his word, he says. So that seems to be that for now.

But the ageing population isn't going anywhere and they'll be needy little buggers in their dotage.

And just in passing, in the discussion around the super, I was stunned to learn that if you are 65 and your partner is younger - be they 64 or 24 - they, too, can go on the pension. It's means-tested, asset-tested and income-tested, so you'd have to be on the bones of your bum, but surely that's a loophole that needs to be tightened up given that there are 9000 people in the North Island currently receiving it.

I've no doubt it was introduced for good reasons - a woman who'd spent her life supporting her husband and raising children and who had never worked outside of the home would be left bereft if the sole breadwinner suddenly retired, but times have changed.

People are hooking up with much younger partners and being one half of a shared super brings in a whole lot more dosh than the unemployment benefit.

It shouldn't be given as a matter of right - people should have to prove that they are unable to work or they're needed to care for a partner at home. Bonking wrinklies should not be a job scheme subsidised by the taxpayer.