BAH, HUMBUG!
 
Talk about the Grinch who stole Xmas.The way the Federal Government has treated 80-year-old Ted Carver they may as well have put arsenic in that slice of cake for Santa Claus. It’s bureaucratic rule-making gone mad. Cruelly mad. And it again makes me think that the politicians and the other pointy heads in the Canberra clouds have forgotten one Hinch Law:

The only difference between old people and us is that they got there first.
 
Listen to this and tell me I’m wrong.
 
Every Christmas 80-year-old Ted gets a short-term job.  He’s a Santa for the kids at Myer. Apparently they call him the Singing Santa because he has a habit of breaking into Christmas Carols.
 
He loves it. The kids love him. Like fellow Santa Ivon Culver. He’s 83. As Ted says: ‘I’m 80. There’s not much else to do. And Santa is a classic job.’
 
Playing Santa is hardly a year-round job. For six week’s work the men get about $3000. And that is well below the threshold of  $6448 a year they are allowed to earn before their pension is affected.
 
So where’s the problem?  Well, Scrooge, alias the Federal Government and Centrelink, has changed the rules. They don’t do it annually and let you amortise a good week. They now do fortnightly checks. Why? I cannot fathom.
 
And because the ageing Santas earn more than $250 in those few Xmas fortnights their pensions are now cut. They lose about $700.
 
You wonder which brown-nosing penpusher in a cushy Canberra job came up with that way to squeeze a few dollars out of people who probably paid taxes for longer than the bureaucrat has been alive.
 
The Minister for Families, Jenny Macklin, says that only 3% of pensioners earn income from employment and even less have irregular pay patterns like Ted and Ivon.
 
Well, let’s hear it for the three-percenters. This is unfeeling and unfair.
 
Men of that age earning a few dollars while bringing joy to kids should be applauded not penalised.
 
And neither should their wives. Jenny Macklin… have a heart. Show a smidgeon of Christmas spirit.
 
Thursday, February 25, 2010

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2010