Campaign on pension age launched

Retirement Commissioner Diane Maxwell is launching another campaign to try to convince New Zealanders to raise the retirement age.

It won’t be an report.

This time, her office is producing a series of videos with key messages embedded in them.

One of the proposals would raise the eligibility age to 67 at a rate of three months a year over 10 years.

The number of older people was not only increasing but they were often in better health and more active than previous generations, Maxwell said.

The commission also wants an extension to 25 years’ residency for immigrants before they receive benefit entitlement.

This would be in line with OECD countries, instead of New Zealand’s 10 years.

Indexing of payments to inflation is another area Maxwell wanted addressing.

A challenge remained how to fairly treat people who had hard physical jobs.

Maxwell would encourage training people to change careers while still in their 50s, and ensure they received all health benefits such as hearing aids to help them participate in the workforce.

She also wanted the Government to resume the KiwiSaver kickstarter.

Although nearly 20 per cent of people over 65 continued to work – and the number is growing – one of the commission’s hardest tasks was to break down the bias against employing older people in the mistaken belief they may be taking a younger person’s job.

The commissioner’s latest campaign came against predictions the cost of NZ Super would cost taxpayers twice as much by mid-century.

Even so, Prime Minister John Key has vowed not to touch entitlements while in office.

The retirement commissioner had a mandate to review retirement income policy every three years and report to government. academic written