From Gerard Rennick, People First
In 2016, Turnbull entered into the Australia-India social security agreement.
Within this agreement, Australia and India would provide RECIPROCAL Medicare and Social Security benefits between the two countries, INCLUDING the Aged Pension.
Why was a reciprocal agreement needed when the flow of migrants was entirely asymmetric towards Australia?
At that time, Indian migration was less than 40,000/year and generally working aged. It’s now clipped over 100,000 bringing the total Indian population to over a million in 2025.
Since that deal in 2016, India has been the largest source of migrants for the last 10 years.
A simple look at the maths shows that the social security deal was never going to add up.
Taxes on ten years of a median wage of circa $80,000 is $20,000 p.a. or $200,000.
The pension over the next 17 years assuming median age of death of 84 is $510,000 before free health, pension supplement’s and housing costs.
Fast forward to today, with just 12% of all migration being “skilled”, the balance exist on various visa including families and the aged parent visa, which allows parents to stay indefinitely.
Citizenship is not required, nor is Residency. Just a permanent visa, including the aged parent visa subclass 804 which also entitles Medicare access. You only need prove you’ve been here for 10 years or as little as 1 if you paid into an insurance pension in India.
There is no Newly Arrived Resident’s Waiting Period (NARWP) specifically for Age Pension.
Further to this, the NDIS scheme is also open for Indian migrants, including permanent visa holders.
Essentially, immigrants who have paid NO TAXES are entitled to aged pensions that AUSTRALIANS have paid taxes their entire life for.
Why are Australians being forced to pay welfare costs to people who NEVER contributed to our tax base?
