FiftyUp Club goes to Canberra

A small but hardy group of FiftyUp Club members which gathered outside Canberra’s parliament house made the point eloquently.

As a significant part of the community representing one in three Australians we each have more power together than apart.

We have more economic interests in common than those opinions which might divide us.

 And it makes sense to listen to each other.

Among them was the softly spoken Gordon. He worked in the insurance industry and had forgone holidays and more earthly delights to save diligently for retirement.

At the last budget, along with 325,000 others, he learned his entitlement to the pension was going to be somewhat less than expected.

Gordon was sanguine but in coming to the meeting and in comments to the Fair Go For FiftyUps campaign he wanted others to know what had happened to him and might happen to them to.

His story was but one we were able to tell politicians and their staffers on the promised visit to the nation’s capital to present two significant documents to the decision makers.

In the words of one key person we met; “Don’t underestimate how significant this kind of research can be, we circulate it and it can be pulled out to help formulate policy.”

The first document was the results of the survey more than 20,000 of you filled in complete with vivid comments about your cost of living pressures.

In the past few weeks we have shared elements of the results.  The final report can be seen below.

It’s full of some home truths such as private health insurance being the most painful of bills and only 15% of respondents confident they had saved enough in super for a comfortable retirement.

One of the most memorable findings, in the same vein, was of another 11% who said they hadn’t saved enough but were hoping to win lotto!

We visited the offices of both Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten and shared your ideas and opinions with their most trusted of advisers.

There were as usual many comments to include and interestingly many of them concerned MPs’ generous and sometimes abused travel and business perks and expenses.

There were so many contributions, and the anger and disappointment was so tangible, that when an independent review into MPs entitlements was announced your voice had to be heard.

So the second document we presented in Canberra was a selection of the best advice you had for those who are reviewing the best way to reform the whole entitlements system.

In all we fulfilled our promise to take your voice to Canberra and in more ways than one. It was also great to connect with that small group of members and hear each others’ stories.

You can read the two reports here:

Being 50 and Up in Australia: An investigation into the Cost of Living Pressures for the Over-50’s in Australia - https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/fiftyup-club/misc/FiftyUp_Fair-Go-Report-Cost-of-Living+(3).pdf

Submission into Review of Parliamentary Entitlements - https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/fiftyup-club/misc/151021FiftyUpClubSubmissionPoliticalentitlements+(1).pdf