Penalising the people
I have for some time represented Telstra retired technical staff both in Victoria and mainly NSW on problems arising from superannuation, social security, and changes in government legislation in these areas.
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In the 2014 budget the then Minister for Social Services Scott Morrison and Treasurer Joe Hockey introduced cuts to the pension assets test, and for couple homeowners this was reduced to a cut-off point of $823,000.
After that point, no part pension would be received. Similar cuts were made for single people, either with a home or not, as the case may be.
However, the changes were to be implemented on the first of January 2017 and in early December 2016 a letter was received from Mr M Adamson of Centrelink by all those affected by the changes across Australia.
That letter referred to the changes previously outlined in the 2014 budget except that one additional change had been made, that was to couple homeowners only, and it was to further reduce the previously outlined limit to $816,000, a further reduction of $7000 from the 2014 budget quoted figure of $823,000.
Do you detect a cover up? I then wrote a letter to Mr Adamson and asked two questions:
- When was it decided after the 2014 budget to alter the cut-off point for couple homeowners, who sanctioned this change?
- Is it the intention to index the new asset test figures into the future, as has been the case in the past, by using a percentage of average weekly earnings?
The result was a “cone of silence”. No reply to this letter was ever received. I checked to make sure the letter had in fact been delivered to the Canberra office, and it had.
I decided to take this up with Lisa Chesters. I contacted her office and spoke about the above problem, and she said she could help by contacting Centrelink political liaison, which she said she did on two occasions. No answer.
I then asked for an interview with Lisa Chesters to be organised and suggested that as going to Centrelink was getting absolutely nowhere, why could she not talk to the present Minister for Social Services and ask him what was going on?
No interview with Lisa Chesters achieved, no contact with Minister for Social Services as far as I know, and no correspondence. No contact was ever achieved personally or by correspondence with Lisa Chesters.
I am very upset with the standard of our politicians, who are far more interested in their own income and other financial advantages. They are not thinking how best they can do the right thing for Australia and their constituents. People who are pensioners, part pensioners and self-funded retirees appear to be the target of all major parties. It appears if you have saved wisely for your retirement, the government wants to take it.
Barry Nankervis, Golden Square
Questioning the legality of conducting in-store bag searches
Interesting reading your editorial and article about Kmart (“Shopper slams Bendigo Kmart’s bag search policy”, Bendigo Advertiser, February 15).
I retired just on 10 years ago and to be honest have not kept up with legislation, but up to the time of my retirement the mere display of a sign stating bags can be inspected was a furphy.
The law required the store to ensure that the customer was made aware of the conditions and simply displaying a sign was not sufficient.
In other words, the store had to point this out to a customer in case they were not aware.
Failure entitled the customer to refuse and legally entitled to walk away.
To restrain a person could be considered a violation of their rights and the store liable for prosecution.
