Mr Bowen said while Labor agrees with Treasurer Scott Morrison’s suggestion that if older Australians want to downsize they should be supported and encouraged to do so, this idea, as put forward by the Liberal party, ignores the fact that the Liberals cut a Labor program designed to do the same thing.
“Labor introduced the Housing Help for Seniors measure in the 2013 budget. This measure was designed to help pensioners downsize their homes without it affecting the rate of their pension,” said Mr Bowen.
“The Liberals took the knife to this almost immediately after the last election.”
Labor will, however, look seriously at “any sensible proposal put forward by the government”.
“But Labor does not support including the family home in the pension assets test,” he said.
Mr Bowen also urged Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Mr Morrison to “stop the endless talk and actually make a decision on retirement incomes policy”.
There is currently outrage from some quarters that a person can potentially have a $2million home and still get an Aged Pension. Under one of the proposals to exempt the proceeds from downsizing a person could downsize to a $500,000 home, have the proceeds of $1,500,000 in a bank account exempt from the assets test and still get the Age Pension. I’m not sure this proposal is fixing any perceived problem.
Giving money to someone to downsize their home is just another handout to people for decisions they’re already making. We’ve been having babies for years, but now get a baby bonus. We get a bonus for staying home for 6 months after a baby is born. Seniors get a tax offset to keep working, but all my parents and aunts and uncles were going to keep working anyway. Who pays all the tax for this. How about instead having negative tax/benefit outcomes for doing different behaviours – the same outcome is achieved but Governments collect money instead of spending it. That’s the good part of the Libs idea compared to Labors.