It is reported that the Australian Age pension will not rise this September. (2020).
The Aged pension normally increases every 6 months, based on the increase in the cost of living.
Unfortunately for Pensioners the current cost of living has actually reduced this year.
The annual inflation rate dropped to a negative 0.3% for the year to June 2020.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics put the negative rate down to free childcare, a fall in pre-school and primary education and a drop in the price of fuel.
So Aged pensioners do not need the increase, as they are saving on their petrol costs for driving to work, their reduced costs of childcare, pre-school and primary education costs for their young children…
Umm.. I am having trouble understanding that… How many, over 66 year olds, have pre school children?
UPDATE from pm.gov.au
JOURNALIST: Can you give us a bit of an explainer on the reasoning behind the aged pension and other pension being frozen in September?
PRIME MINISTER: That goes to how they’re indexed. And this is one of those issues that comes in a pandemic, you don’t expect those indexes to go negative. And as a result, budgets and others haven’t been prepared on the basis of them going negative. This is new information that has come through yesterday. You’ll know that some $1,500 dollars in additional payments have been made to pensioners this year on top of their base pension as part of the pandemic response. And that was done in July and in April. So already pensioners have received two bonus payments so far this year. But the Treasurer and I will work through those issues. But that wasn’t, it was not intended and nor will it be the case that you’d see those payments reduced. And we’ll work out the exact response to the circumstances and will announce that when a decision has been made.