We’ve had big wins for older Australians over the past five decades. We’ve won campaigns to improve retirement income, aged care, home care, healthcare, and generally improve the lives of our members and older people across the nation.

We’re now in the home straight with our Let Pensioners Work campaign and getting expert economic modelling could help us win what has been our biggest campaign ever.

Almost 15,000 people have signed the Let Pensioners Work petition on our website.

If you haven’t signed, you can do so here.

Each signature gets us one step closer to one of the most important changes to the Age Pension in Australia’s history.

We need to let pensioners work without constantly dealing with Centrelink, losing 50 cents in every dollar earned and paying tax on top. We need a fairer, better system—especially with the record national workforce shortage.

There are 500,000 job vacancies, including more than 45,000 in aged care and 100,000 in hospitality. Not having enough staff in a café is very different from not having enough carers or nurses in a nursing home. One is inconvenient, the other is cruel, neglectful, and costs lives.

I recently appeared on TV with 75-year-old Heather. She’s a dementia care nurse on a pension who wants to work more but usually only works one day a week because of the present punitive system.

She’s one of tens of thousands of pensioners and veterans willing to work, but won’t until the system changes. National Seniors research this year found 19.8% of pensioners are considering working, but the big barriers are Centrelink bureaucracy and ageism.

A recent newspaper poll found 90% agreed with our call to get rid of the harsh Centrelink penalties and paperwork, letting pensioners like Heather work as much as they want and just pay a fair rate of tax.

This has helped to raise the importance of this issue and gained National Seniors some influential supporters. 

With a new parliament, we’re now getting action. MP Rebekha Sharkie put a motion before the House of Representatives calling for our change and Senator Dean Smith has introduced a private member’s Bill.

The federal government is also holding forums and calling for submissions where we will continue to put forward our case for change. 

Although we’ve got widespread support, we still need to convince the federal government of the overall benefits.

To win the argument, we’re paying for independent economic modelling. This will look at the specific economic impacts of changing the way we treat pensioners who work. It will help prove to the government that older Australians, businesses, and the overall economy will all benefit.

Economic modelling is costly to produce but it’s the key to successfully prosecuting our case. Therefore, we need your help and support.

If you want to help us get these changes across the line and help pensioners who want to work, please give what you can. Every donation, no matter how small, helps us get closer to our goal.

It will be a win for all pensioners and veterans affected by the present punitive rules. It will be a win for businesses, including health care, aged care, home care, childcare, and disability care. It will be a win for everyone.

Thank you to all of you who have already generously donated, and I look forward to telling you about us winning this change for the better in an upcoming edition of Our Generation.