Seniors grill candidates on election topics
Over-50’s consumer lobby group National Seniors launched its federal election campaign activities in Brisbane this week with the first of four public election forums.
More than 100 people attended the first National Seniors election forum.
Candidates for the marginal seat of Brisbane copped some heated questions around superannuation, aged care, health and mature age employment from more than 100 older people.
Labor’s Pat O’Neill, The Greens’ Kirsten Lovejoy and Liberals’ Trevor Evans were each keen to lay out how their parties were deserving of seniors’ votes for the House of Representatives, while former rugby league great Glenn Lazarus argued his case for another term as Senator.
Mr Evans told the forum that the government was making changes that would impact between one and four percent of superannuation holders but 96 percent would be unaffected or better off.
Moderator National Seniors chief executive Michael O’Neill said Labor created super so people could ‘retire with dignity’ but there were ‘a lot of grey areas’ around such issues as transition to retirement, while Ms Lovejoy said super had to be made fairer, particularly to those at the lower end of the income scale.
But seniors greeted the comments by Mr Lazarus with applause when he said whatever government came to power was likely to ‘change the goalposts’, that many people would be affected and it did not appear that either of the major parties cared.
There was also anger in the room over pension assets tests with many seniors unimpressed with Mr Evans’ responses on questions about pension assets test changes – due to come into force in January – and whether or not receiving less than an Age Pensioner was a disincentive to contributing to super.
National Seniors will be running three other forums in the lead-up to the 2 July election.
These will be held in the Melbourne electorate of Chisholm on 16 June, the South Australian seat of Hindmarsh on 22 June and the final forum in the Perth seat of Hasluck on 23 June.
Find out more about the National Seniors election forums on nationalseniors.com.au/seniorsvote
