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Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release  Tuesday, 15 April 2014

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au
 

Isherwood: Bank gambling is unsustainable, not pensions

Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood today accused Treasurer Joe Hockey of scheming to balance the budget on the bodies of Australia’s pensioners.

“According to Hockey, pensioners who are living longer are blowing out the budget, so his solution is to stop them from living too long,” Isherwood said.

Isherwood charged that the three major changes to the pension that Hockey is considering are all fraudulent:

Raising the pension age to 70—Isherwood pointed out that manual labourers have a lower life expectancy than professionals; also, with real unemployment already very high, and Australia’s industrial economy collapsing, “Where will the jobs come from?” he asked.

Asset test for pensions—much is made of the fact that around 80 per cent of retirees with assets of over $1 million receive the pension, but the major asset of most pensioners is their family home; all residential real estate is grossly overvalued due to the property bubble, so it would be a cynical fraud to use such asset values as the excuse to slash pensions.

Index to CPI—the Consumer Price Index is arguably the most manipulated statistic that economists use, which for the past two decades in Australia has registered only a very low inflation rate, when in fact the real cost of living has zoomed to crisis levels. The CPI is kept artificially low, not just by ranking luxuries alongside necessities so that the often 20 per cent increases in foodstuffs is offset by large decreases in LCD TVs and computers etc, but through ruses such as the “Hedonic Index”. This index values electronic goods even higher than their actual price, to account for technological advancement, so that an actual 20 per cent decrease in the price of LCD TVs will be measured as a 30 or 40 per cent decrease, claiming that accounts for the value of the advance in technology.

Isherwood said, “Hockey is using the European austerity playbook, to make pensioners pay for the financial crisis that bankers created.

“The banks are looting Australia to death, through the property bubble that has turned everybody with a mortgage into a debt slave; through starving farms and small businesses of credit to funnel even more into the property bubble; through the trillion dollars or so in foreign debt they have booked up to inflate the property bubble even more; and through the $23 trillion in derivatives bets they have made on mortgages and their foreign debt.

“Since bank deregulation, Australia’s economy has degenerated from one oriented to agro-industrial production, which could afford to pay pensions, into a financial bubble economy, which can’t.

He concluded, “The ‘structural reform’ that is required is not Hockey’s plan to stop pensioners from living longer, but to revive Australian agriculture and manufacturing through grand water, power and transportation infrastructure projects that will create millions of high-skilled, high-wage jobs.

“To do this, the banks must be put on a leash, through a Glass-Steagall banking separation that separates the banks that service the real economy, from the gamblers and predators. To fight against European-style cuts to pensions, fight with the CEC for Glass-Steagall.”

Click here for a free copy of the CEC’s new pamphlet, Glass-Steagall NOW!, which shows how Glass-Steagall is the only way to protect your livelihood and your savings from the banks.

Click here to join the CEC as a member.

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