Since Saturday, Australians have been required to wait until the age of 67 until they can get the age pension. It has happened with little protest — a stark contrast to the demonstrations and riots that have rocked France, writes Peter Whiteford.
Unfortunately for us, we've developed a culture that is against anyone that can be seen as a 'whinger'. Anyone who has complaints about how things are run is generally seen as lazy or entitled, and the mentality of 'my life sucked so yours should too' is extremely prevalent.
I think a bit of the "eh" attitude is that we have a pretty damn good superannuation system in place, which means that most people should have enough money put away without them lifting a finger to make it to 67 just fine.
France's pension pays more than the minimum wage. Here the aged pension is almost half of minimum wage. A lot of people there have planned their retirement assuming that they'll get that nice pension.
In the future, most people here will be living off their super. Aged pension will be for people who haven't worked much and the self employed because they don't have compulsory super. The aged pension won't affect too many people in the future.
Probably because our overlords are too busy distracting us by having us fight over whether people who have been colonised and have had everything taken away deserve a louder voice on their stolen land?