I recently received a package from the tax department that must have cost a fortune to produce. It was to do with my pension and proclaimed that because I had lived and worked in Australia, Australia was going to have to pay me a pension.
On first glance it implied that I had won Lotto. I had a good read and it turned out that it was more like a reason for the NZ government to cut my pension. Mercifully I had not spent 10 years in Australia, so it doesn’t apply to me.
My point is that they already had the dates when I lived and worked there, which is why I got the package. So the NZ government is just wasting money trying to get off the hook. But what a hook it was!
How was I supposed to remember who I worked for and the dates and amounts from a decade or more ago? The package clearly stated that if I did not apply for an Australian pension, deductions would be made to mine — yet there is no way in hell I could have filled in the documentation that the NZ government required.
I see the sentiment involved, but the cruel follow-through and the money spent delivering my package is representative of bureaucracy gone mad. You can’t just sit in an ivory tower and make these things up!? Apparently you can.
We are pensioners trying to enjoy our well-earned retirement — not accountants with a file full of records and access to Australian systems. Governments are the ones with all the records, so governments are the ones who should be tasked with the responsibility of sorting things like this out.
I see these forms as a deliberate attempt by government to make life harder for pensioners.
Peter Jones
