Editorial: Tighten timeframe for super changes

Bill English doesn't strike me as a gambler ... far too sensible for anything more than $10 on the Melbourne Cup.

But he may have gambled his political career on his punt of raising the age of eligibility for state superannuation to 67.

It is a policy that will divide opinion across the nation and, of course, it already has Opposition parties salivating wildly as they get the smell of blood in their nostrils.

None of which makes it a bad policy. In fact, it is a good and sensible idea to address an aging population, mushrooming pension entitlements, longer lifespans and longer working lives by raising the retirement age.

But it is one of those snakepits into which only the brave or foolish would tread.

Former prime minister John Key was neither of those things and insisted it would not happen on his watch; Labour ran an election campaign with 67 as one of its key platforms and got such a good stuffing that it won't have a bar of it now.

So, it's political back-flips at the double.

But the idea remains a sound one and it perhaps says something about English's big-picture vision which goes beyond the latest opinion polls. One thinks of his long-term strategy to address welfare dependency in this same light.

However, that does not mean there are not fish hooks with the policy as presented this week.

There is the question of those in hard, manual labour (fewer of them every year, to be sure) for whom two more years will be two more too much.

And there is the little matter of super at 67 not coming into full effect till 2040 - a particularly popular way-into-the-future date with this Government. Those 66-year-olds who cannot get a state pension in 2040 may at least be able to get a dip in a swimmable river.

It's a bit like saying: "We'll get round to it some time."

The plan needs to be brought forward a decade - and that goes for clean rivers, too.