Australia - Julia wants you to keep working

JULIA Gillard used an international forum to deliver a tough message to Australia's workforce: you'll have to keep working beyond retirement age.

But there will be tax benefits from doing so.

At an APEC business leaders' forum in Honolulu, Ms Gillard fielded questions on a range of topics from the Qantas grounding and the future of work as economies modernise and trade becomes more borderless.

On the workforce of the future, she said: "I think it will be a workforce increasingly mobile, it will be more and more common for countries to have guest worker arrangements.

"It will be more and more common for people to choose to live part of their life in another nation."

For many middle-aged and older Australians, the PM warned they will have to keep earning.

"For government, I think the big thing we have to do and we've started on some of this is our universal platforms like the pension system, the taxation system, the superannuation system, (we) have tended to make the assumption that there's work and you're working full time and . . . then you hit drop dead date and then you don't work at all," she said.

"I think we're just re-gearing our universal platforms to recognise that it's not going to be the shape of the future."

Ms Gillard said while some people will go from full-time work to part-time or casual, "for some time it will never be at zero".

The government increased the official retirement age from 65 to 67 in 2009 to address the drag of too many retirees for the number of productive taxpayers.

Ms Gillard's comments suggest that even the 67-year-old threshold is in danger of being extended as government manages a greying population with increasingly expensive healthcare and specialised accommodation needs.

Meanwhile, a Eurozone-style Asia-Pacific free trade block moved a step closer yesterday when Japan joined the negotiating table.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Japan will join Australia, US and other countries in talks for a Trans-Pacific.

The Sunday Telegraph

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