Federal treasurer Peter Costello's superannuation plan is just what you would expect from a government that does nothing for workers, unless it first means a profit for the bosses.
Costello wants a flood of cut-price pensioners who "choose" to continue to work, because they don't have enough retirement income and have to rely on their super. To allow this to happen would be a disaster for pensioners and for those who still (somehow) manage to have regular employment.
But now federal Labor under Mark Latham has come out in support of Costello's "basic principle" on super. This should sound alarm bells for anyone who doesn't think that working for a wage till the day they drop dead is their ideal retirement scenario.
If Latham is really so out of touch with the realities of life to think that this is what we want for our retiring years, then at least he is giving us fair warning. Giving us warning that the day after we vote out Prime Minister John Howard and the Liberal mongrels, we had better be on guard that Labor in power don't try to fix us up with something just as diabolical, but that the Liberals didn't dare try when they were in office.
Latham likes to shoot from the hip — apparently that's his suburban straight talking style. For Labor and Latham's information: We do not want to be made to work until past the current retirement date. We don't want to be put in a position where bosses can use the threat of a super-funded retiree taking jobs at a lower rate, in the same way as the unemployed are used as a tool to keep workers and wages under pressure.
If Labor is serious about getting unemployment down it should be helping more young people to get into education or jobs with decent wages, and to get off the unemployment scrapheap. It should be kicking the Liberals about their work for the dole schemes. These encourage bosses to undercut real wages by taking on subsidised workers on the dole. Similarly, keeping retirees at work does not decrease unemployment.
Latham is keen to be seen as a family friendly new-age nice-guy (just don't mention the taxi driver). Keeping Gran and Grandpa at work for the rest of their naturals just doesn't seem to fit with this image. Why doesn't he do what they did in France — shortening the working week to share the available work with all working-age people rather than targeting those who have already done their fair share over their entire lives.
Retirement is the fruit of a lifetime of work and contribution. We work to live — not live to work.
Costello and his business mates might stay up at night sipping their Chardonnays and thinking of ever more ingenious ways of squeezing another quid out of working people. But the unanimous conclusion is that we don't want any of it.
We will have to get rid of Howard and Costello to stop this immediate proposal, but now Labor seems to be indicating that that might not be the end of the problem.
[From Voice, the newsletter of the NSW Australian Manufacturing Workers Union rank and file group.]
From Green Left Weekly, April 21, 2004.
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