As a bleeding heart I usually share the pain of all wronged creatures (everything from asylum seekers to threatened orang utans). And yet I have failed, this week, to share the declared pain of a retiree couple, the Patersons, of Western Australia.
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The octogenarians have been among the aggrieved oldies winkled out by the media to gnash their teeth about the aged pension changes that have got underway this week. The federal government has deemed that some 330,000 emeritus well-off Australians can well do without all or part of the aged pension. The doubloons saved by this, the government says Robin Hoodishly, will go instead to weaving better safety nets for those who are really, truly battling.
Hitherto the Patersons, winkled out for an edition of Radio National's Breakfast current affairs program, have felt well entitled to a part-pension of $400 a fortnight. They are aggrieved (speaking out from the "modest home" that they own outright) now that the government's Robin Hood and Will Scarlett (some know them better as treasurer Scott Morrison and minister for social services Christian Porter) have reduced this to just $200. Feeling grateful for that $200 doesn't seem to have occurred to them.
Back to the Patersons and the others aggrieved by the pension changes in just a moment. First, though, a shy meditation on why so many of us feel so entitled to so much while some of us scarcely feel entitled to anything.
It would be nice to believe myself more moral and less greedy than the entitlement-hungry. And yet my inner-sociologist diagnoses that it is just a matter of socialisation. Lots of you will know the pre Monty Python sketch The Four Yorkshiremen in which the grown chaps reminisce unreliably about the extreme poverty of their childhoods.
"There were 150 of us, livin' in a shoebox in the middle of the road," one laments/boasts.
My postwar English childhood was just like theirs. The men of my family were traditionally mere molecatchers although from the age of six I broke with this tradition when I was sent to sweep factory chimneys (from within).
But my point is that perhaps those of us who never expected anything as children have grown up to feel (perhaps tragically, mistakenly) inordinately grateful for anything that ever lands in our laps.
When, in my teens, the Australian government paid my fare to Australia (enabling me to migrate and put factory chimney cleaning behind me) I felt a spasm of working-class gratitude that has never quite ebbed away. Should the Turnbull government ever offer me an age pension (for the moment my consort and I are quite rightly judged not to need it) I think I will say "That's very kind of you but, really, I've already had more than my share of taxpayers' money. Mr Menzies flew me to Australia, by B.O.A.C., in 1965."
Perhaps it is because of my being from the struggling, molecatching classes (sometimes the moles were all we had to eat) that the wealth of some of those Australians somehow still eligible for government pension shekels seems breathtaking. A couple may wholly own a home of any value (even one of those 20-bedroom monstrosities of O'Malley) and have assets of $1.15 million and still receive a part pension.
The aforementioned sleek-sounding Patersons wholly own what the ABC reporter described as their "modest home". They have what dear old Mrs Paterson said were "some investments". Mrs Paterson mused that with the atrocity of the reduction of their part pension she and Mr Paterson may have to "think more carefully" about their overseas travels.
It was kind of the ABC reporter to be so soft on Mrs Paterson but some of us might have liked a little more probing into the Patersons' circumstances and attitudes. How plump are their "investments"? Just how much overseas travelling do they do, and has the $400 a month the taxpayers have been donating them been spent on lubricating these excursions? What unspeakable overseas travel hardships will the reduction of their pension inflict on them? May they henceforth (the horror of it!) even have to fly Economy?
For this story Trish Power of SuperGuide said that she is finding the burghers affected by the pension changes understandably "very angry".
She thinks it "quite distressing" for the aggrieved to have to do some sums now to see if there are some things they can no longer afford.
"Distressing"? Really? There is a puritanical buzz to be had from putting aside extravagance. I am just semi-retired and am revelling in the challenge of exploring new frugalities.
Sandra and I like to sally forth from our modest home (I bet ours is more modest than the Patersons') and go out a bit (me dressed in my $5 op shop Hawaiian shirt). We find Canberra can be an endearingly affordable city. The Canberra Symphony Orchestra sounds almost as good from the cheap seats as from the Dress Circle.
It is true one can longer expect to have the best Norwegian smoked salmon with every brunch, every day. But then since sons of molecatchers never felt entitled to salmon (or to brunches) in the first place we cannot get angry with the government about this minor disappointment.
