Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Edwards for that question. There was some very good news in the Intergenerational reportvery good news for all of us, indeed. What the Intergenerational report shows is that all of us can expect to live longer than those who came before us. Of course, that is much better than the alternative, but it does have implications for our economic and fiscal policy settings. What it also shows is that the number of Australians in the traditional working age—the number of Australians aged 15 to 64—is declining in proportion to the number of Australians at the retirement age, 65 and older. In 1970, we had about 7.5 Australians of traditional working age for every Australian 65 and over. Today, there are 4.5 Australians, and that is expected to decline further.

What that means is that there is more and more pressure on taxpayers at a time when the related expenditure for an ageing population in social services, pensions, welfare generally, healthcare services and the like is expected to go up and up. So it is very important for our future, it is very important for our living standards into the future and it is very important for the living standards of older Australians in the future—which all of us will become over time, hopefully—that we get the policy settings right and that we get government spending in relation to those services on a fiscally sustainable foundation. The more older Australians that we have for every working taxpayer, the less revenue we have going around to fund a growing number of services. So we really need to address this by convincing people to work longer and also by making sure that government spending is on a more sustainable foundation for the future across all of these important social and health services areas.