I have the time so I will humour you with a response.
You have no chance to draw down a tax free pension!
However what this does show that politicians are afraid of doing the really hard thing and that is a complete overhaul of the taxation system. Why because they will loose elections by doing so, and that applies to either side.
So what we are left with is political parties playing around the edge to plug small items that only affect marginal parts of the electorate. And that's OK until it affects the individual who may have paid tax for 40 years plus, was never ENTITLED to the welfare benefits now thrown around like confetti, has planned and arranged their retirement savings to get the maximum benefit to live comfortable post retirement.
The annoying part is the constant changing of the rules. The proposal by labor may be in essence fair if you were designing a new taxation system because there would be counter regulation to once again create a balance, but I see no such attempt in the current case it is specifically targeted at the poorer end of the retiree population because we don't have access to the fancy, and expensive, advisers and planners that the mega industrial funds have access to, and they will find a way to get around the imputation credit loss.
And I take exception to the fact that labor says its the wealthy that will be hit - then PLEASE define wealthy! If wealthy is defined as having $800K in my super fund and getting a return of $24Kpa due to some rebates well then I'll have to admit I'm wealthy, but I don't see it that way. I'll just have to find a way to blow a couple of hundred K and claim a pension, something I DON'T want to do!
But I do hope interest rates go back to 17% like they were when I purchased my first house because then you can stick the shares where they fit and I'll happily get a return of $136,000 and in pension phase there is no tax on that!
