We've Been Dudded: Angry Couple
The Age
Wednesday March 21, 2001
SYDNEY
John Cormack and his wife Pat have stopped going out for dinner. They dropped their hospital and home contents insurance. They catch more public transport and live a quieter life; anything else is too expensive under the GST.
``Everything we touch is GST, just the same as if I was Kerry Packer," said Mr Cormack, 73, who gets a pension of around $400 a fortnight with his wife.
``We know the GST is not on food, but there are many other things that make up a household. There's things like paint for the house, blades for the Victa, and my wife's hairdressing."
``Don't get old," Mr Cormack said, ``it ain't worth it."
After nearly nine months, pensioners have delivered a verdict on the GST. And they're not happy.
They picked yesterday - the day they got a 2 per cent rise in pensions, rather than their hoped-for 4 per cent - to protest, rather rowdily, outside Prime Minister John Howard's Sydney office.
Mr Howard wasn't there, he was in Queensland telling Brisbane radio that the Labor Party was frightening ``elderly vulnerable" pensioners with a GST scare-campaign.
But the 50 who protested were looking anything but elderly or vulnerable. Angry and agitated, they shouted: ``Indian giver!", ``Cruel con!" and ``It's a swindle" while waving placards for an hour.
At one stage, a fight broke out as a pensioner used his anti-GST sign to hit the placards of two Liberal Party supporters who came bearing ``ALP Rent-A-Crowd" signs.
One Liberal Party supporter, who refused to be named, said the protesters were ``unpleasant and downright violent" and she resented people complaining about pensions when she had saved all her life to support her retirement.
Many of the protesters said they were just surviving on the pension, but knew friends or acquaintances who were struggling. Australian Pensioners and Superannuants Federation president Edith Morgan said she knew many pensioners who were forced to ask for charity just to feed themselves. ``We've been dudded by the Prime Minister and we've been dudded by the Democrats," she said.
Her federation colleague, Joyce Clarke - who belongs to the branch in Mr Howard's electorate - said she knew of pensioners who could no longer afford new clothing and ``some of them are embarrassed to come out publicly".
Bruce McLeod, 68, a pensioner from Sydney's eastern suburbs, knows the GST trims his weekly finances because the $40 he gets from his wife for ``incidental expenses" only lasts five days rather than seven. ``The bottom line", said Mr McLeod, ``is that pensions are now being taxed."
© 2001 The Age
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