Barry Soper: Latest pensioner payment brings means testing back into focus

The winter energy payment of between $20 and $30 a week kicked in yesterday. Photo / File

The country's pensioners will be able to turn their heaters on, knowing their power bills won't be quite as expensive.

But for some pensioners they'll be able to fire up the spa pool without worrying at all about the additional expense.

The winter energy payment of between $20 and $30 a week kicked in yesterday with attention drawn to it last week when political pensioner Winston Peters was asked whether he was going to apply for it. He was caught off guard by the question and obviously embarrassed, indicated he didn't know.

To know the answer he would have had to have read a letter sent out to recipients of the winter energy payment.

In fact no one has to apply for it, they can simply opt out if they don't think they need it but it does raise the whole issue of what has over the years been a political football, superannuation and the fact that everyone's entitled to it when they hit the magic age of 65, regardless of how wealthy they are.

There were many dramatic economic reforms in the 80s but you could be forgiven for thinking at the time that one of the most hated was a superannuation surcharge, or surtax as it was more widely known, because of the megaphone outcry from the oldies.

In reality just 10 per cent of them, given it was a graduated means test, got no pension and just 13 per cent had their pension reduced.

So hated was it though Jim Bolger campaigned on it in 1990, promising the pensioners that there'll be no ifs, no buts and no maybes, it'll be gone when he came into office.

It wasn't, lasting through his term until the Clark Government scrapped it and brought in the so called Cullen superannuation fund.

It's not worth talking about the age of eligibility, that's now off the political agenda after this Government undid National's plans to raise it to 67 from 2034 when most of the current crop of pensioners would have kicked the bucket anyway.

But it is worth talking about whether the pension should be universal, which gets back to Winston Peters, among thousands of others, getting cheaper electricity bills even though they can well afford to pay them.

Surely it's time to look at whether pensioners who're earning a good income should have it boosted by the taxpayer.

But it'd be a brave Government to go down that track again and this one isn't brave enough to tamper with what is seen by the oldies as an entitlement rather than a benefit.

It's worth remembering though it was introduced back in 1898 as a payment for those who didn't have enough money to look after themselves - yes it was means tested!