Introduction
For decades an urban myth has circulated
that accuses politicians of misappropriating funds meant to be set aside for
today’s pensioners. The myth weaves historical fact and misconception into a
story designed to reinforce claims the Age Pension is an earned entitlement
rather than a ‘welfare’ payment. In one version of the myth, former
journalist Brian Hale claimed:
… most pensioners worked and spent a lifetime paying for
their pensions. It’s not welfare and, when it was introduced, it was actually
meant to be an entitlement. A 7.5 per cent tithe was taken from wages to put
into a fund to pay their pensions. Just as workers now have superannuation
collected.[1]
At the centre of the myth is the National Welfare Fund, a
trust account set up by the Curtin Government in 1943 as a conduit for social
services spending. The Social Services Contribution was a levy set up by the
Chifley Government in 1945 to provide revenue for the National Welfare Fund.
Both the National Welfare Fund and the Social Services Contribution were real
but neither performed the roles given to them by the myth.
According to the myth, the National Welfare Fund was set up
as a kind of government superannuation fund where workers paid the Social
Services Contribution along with their income tax and this money was meant to
accumulate in the National Welfare Fund to pay for a non-means tested pension
when they retired.[2]
By falsely casting the National Welfare Fund as an early
superannuation scheme, the myth suggests that the Age Pension was funded in an
entirely different way to other social security payments, such as the JobSeeker
Payment. In doing so it implies older Australians have a special kind of
entitlement to income support. Some age pensioners may turn to the myth to fend
off claims they rely on a ‘welfare’ payment and are living at the expense of
today’s taxpayers.[3]
A common element of the myth is the claim that successive
governments have ‘stolen’ the National Welfare Fund’s accumulated balance and then
denied retirees the payments they were entitled to.[4]
Claims about ‘stolen’ funds turn the myth into a conspiracy theory. The myth
has circulated widely on internet forums and in letters to newspapers,
sometimes alongside much more extreme theories.[5]
Misunderstandings about the National Welfare Fund are not
limited to fringe groups and conspiracy theorists. Even members of Parliament
have become confused. For example, in 1984 former Whitlam Government Minister
Clyde Cameron said the fund meant:
… everybody would make some contribution and everybody would
then have the right to call upon that fund without a means test to entitle them
to a pension. Now in a way it was a kind of national superannuation scheme.[6]
The long-standing debate over the Age Pension means test
has added to the confusion. For many years the Australian Labor Party promised
voters it would abolish the Age Pension means test. Some may have thought this
had something to do with Labor’s creation of the National Welfare Fund.[7]
In reality, the major obstacle to removing the means test was always finding
the extra money needed to pay for it.
The history of the National Welfare Fund is both more
complicated and less dramatic than the myth suggests. The fund was set up to
pay for a range of social services including unemployment benefits and when it
was first created it did not include the Age Pension. But the most confusing
feature of the trust account is the way it held funds. The National Welfare
Fund was not a vault filled with pound notes, gold bullion or share
certificates. Instead, the fund’s balance was held in the form of internal
treasury bills. Unlike investment instruments such as treasury bonds, internal
treasury bills could not be bought or sold on the market. They were just a way
of moving paper balances between various government funds.[8]
When the National Welfare Fund accumulated a positive
balance, it immediately ‘lent’ it to the Government and received internal
treasury bills in return. If the Government wanted to ‘raid’ the National Welfare
Fund, it first had to come up with the money needed to redeem the internal
treasury bills.[9]
The National Welfare Fund was not a separate store of funds that existed
alongside consolidated revenue, it was a political commitment by a government that
it would spend a certain amount on social services in the future. It was a
bookkeeping arrangement where every dollar credited to the fund was cancelled
out by a dollar of liability somewhere else on the government’s books. Opposition
Leader Robert Menzies dismissed it as ‘a ledger account in the treasury-books’.[10]
Over the years several MPs and journalists have tried to
dispel the myth by explaining how the National Welfare Fund worked.[11]
This paper adds to these responses by outlining the myth’s key claims and then
providing a more accurate and complete history of the development of the Age
Pension and the National Welfare Fund.
The stolen
pensions myth
The idea that the Age Pension is an entitlement earned
through a lifetime of contribution to the community is common in Australia. One
source of contribution is tax. According to a 2018 survey, around a third of
voters see the Age Pension as a repayment of tax rather than a safety net for
people who have not saved enough for their own retirement.[12]
Politicians and commentators have often endorsed this view. For example, in
1982 former Social Services Minister William Wentworth argued that retirees
should be entitled to a non-means tested pension because their taxes had been
invested in productive infrastructure such as schools, roads, ports and
telephone networks.[13]
These kinds of claims are opinions about what retirees are morally entitled to.
This paper does not attempt to take sides in that debate.
The stolen pensions myth goes beyond claims of moral entitlement.
Rather than just asserting that today’s retirees have earned a pension through
their past contributions to the community, the myth attempts to strengthen this
claim with a misleading account of legal and administrative history.
Most versions of the myth claim the Chifley Labor Government
set up the National Welfare Fund to accumulate funds that would later be used
to pay Age Pensions. The money for the fund would come from the Social Services
Contribution and enable the Government to abolish the means test as well as
increase the pension rate. The myth goes on to claim that governments have
‘stolen’ the contributions that were meant to accumulate in the National
Welfare Fund. As a letter published in the Burdekin Advocate put it:
Let’s get the facts straight. Pensioners are already being
robbed of their actual pension entitlements by a succession of governments that
have plundered the age pension funds that were collected as part of the
National Welfare Fund begun by the Ben Chifley Government. Robert Menzies as
Opposition Leader at the time insisted the funds raised by a levy of 7.5 per
cent be held in a separate trust fund.[14]
In another telling of the myth the anonymous writer argues
that the ‘theft’ of retirement savings from the National Welfare Fund is part
of a larger plan by government that ends with the privatisation of the income
support system and the suspension of the Age Pension:
Considerable public relations investment prepares Aussies for
this event; generally in the form of proselytising the myth that the younger
generation is being stuck with the burden of financing pensions for the ageing
baby boomers. The reality could not be more different. This is the story of a
different kind of privatisation… outright theft on a multi-billion dollar
scale; the appropriation of an entire age pension scheme. We don’t even know
where the money went.
The history of the Age Pension Fund is not-well-known and it
goes back to 1945, when Prime Minister Ben Chifley became aware of grinding poverty
amongst the elderly. He was shocked, and a referendum was put to the people of
Australia; and the outcome was a welfare fund contributed to by every Aussie
worker, at a rate of 7.5% of gross income (at the time, in Australia and New
Zealand, one and sixpence in the pound). This was a fund that was very
specifically owned by the workers and declared as such; a fund in which
government could not interfere; and from which it could not even borrow. Money
could only be paid out as an indexed and non-means tested pension upon
retirement at age 65 (60 for women).
To ensure the public was reminded of its investment, and so
no government could interfere with the Fund, the amount appeared at the top of
every income tax form and was calculated before income tax. Actuaries have
calculated that this fund should currently be yielding at $6000 per year more
than the current age pension.[15]
The writer goes on to claim that subsequent governments took
the money invested in the fund and ‘imposed means testing; on worker’s own
savings’.[16]
Part of the point of these stories is to differentiate the
Age Pension from ‘welfare’ payments like JobSeeker and to refute what Hale
calls ‘the disingenuous line that younger workers are paying tax to support
pensioners’.[17]
Most versions of the myth include a chronology that begins
with the creation of the National Welfare Fund by the Curtin Labor Government
in the 1940s and ends with the Hawke Labor Government’s abolition of the fund
in 1985.[18]
Some, like Hale’s, include references to the relevant Acts of Parliament. While
some of the material in these chronologies is accurate, it is woven into a larger
narrative that is misleading.
Entitlement
to the Age Pension
Safety net
or earned entitlement?
Debates over entitlement to the Age Pension began even
before the scheme was created. Politicians and commentators argued about
whether the scheme should be seen as a safety net for the poor or an
entitlement earned through years of contribution to the community.
Supporters of the earned entitlement approach did not want
recipients to feel they were receiving a ‘charity dole’ or that the pension
stigmatised them as ‘paupers’. This position was difficult to square with a
means test that excluded many retirees who had worked and paid taxes all their
adult lives.
An early supporter of the earned entitlement view was the Bulletin.
In an 1897 editorial the magazine insisted:
Even though the applicant for a pension may have contributed
toward it as a taxpayer for a period of 50 years, the suggestion that it should
only be payable to him if he is poor and of good character makes him a pauper.[19]
Western Australian MP John Forrest took the opposing view
arguing that the pension should be restricted to those unable to maintain
themselves. During the debate over the 1908 Invalid and Old Age Pensions
Bill, he said:
… under this Bill no one is to receive an old-age pension
unless he is unable to maintain himself. That provision means that old-age
pensions are to be paid to the deserving poor who have served their country
well, and whom Australia will not cast aside, and neglect in their old age.[20]
Some Labor MPs resisted this approach, with James Catts
objecting to the clause restricting the pension to a person who is ‘unable to
maintain himself’ and arguing that it stamped the pension ‘as a charity dole’.
While the clause was removed from the Bill, the means test remained.[21]
Similarly, Labor member Josiah Thomas took a stand on the
means test arguing the only way to remove the stigma of charity was to make the
Age Pension universal. He argued ‘unless old-age pensions be made
universal—unless they apply to rich and poor alike—there must be a tinge of
charity’.[22]
In 1908 Parliament passed the Invalid and Old-Age
Pensions Act and the first Old-Age Pensions were paid in 1909.[23]
The scheme included income and assets tests. While Labor members and senators voted
for the Bill, they continued their criticisms of the means test.[24]
However, cost was a major obstacle to removing the means test in the
foreseeable future.
The cost of the Age Pension became an even more pressing
issue during the Great Depression. The Depression rekindled debate over whether
the pension should be seen as an earned entitlement or a safety net. According
to TH Kewley, between 1912 and 1930 spending on invalid and old-age pensions
increased from £2.1 million to £10.8 million.[25]
The Auditor General, CJ Cerutty, questioned whether this level of spending was
justified. In his 1930 report he suggested that the pension was sapping the
independence of the people, discouraging thrift, and placing an unfair burden
on those who saved for their own retirement. He regarded many recipients as
undeserving of support.[26]
In contrast, Labor leader James Scullin continued to defend
the earned entitlement view:
… the old-age pension is a right earned by the old people who
have worked for and served this country. It may be asked— if the pension is a
right, why should it not be paid to all persons of eligible age, irrespective
of their income? The answer is that Commonwealth finances could not provide for
such an expenditure; but the right is there, and we should not lose sight of
it.[27]
Cerutty’s argument was that not everyone who received an Age
Pension had served the country. He claimed some had ‘led dissolute and lawless
lives’.[28]
One way to limit the Age Pension to those who had worked hard all their lives
was to link eligibility to a history of contribution to a pension fund.
The debate
over contribution
While many Labor MPs wanted to keep the tax-funded pension
system but remove the means test, some of their opponents proposed replacing
the existing Age Pension with a contributory scheme.
Contributory, or social insurance pension schemes are
usually financed by payments from workers, employers and government. In a
purely contributory scheme, if a worker has made the required level of
contributions to the scheme, they are eligible to claim benefits when they
reach retirement age. In a contributory scheme, the amount of benefits a person
receives may be linked to their earnings and contributions. There is no means
test in a contributory scheme.
One of the major arguments against the means test was that
those who had contributed through taxes were denied benefits from the scheme.
Means testing was unpopular and advocates of a contributory system promoted
their plan by arguing that it would be possible to remove the means test by
funding the scheme through contributions rather than taxes.[29]
Together with advocates of a universal tax-funded system,
supporters of a contributory scheme argued that the means test was stigmatising
because it marked recipients as poor and needy as well as subjecting them to
humiliating investigations of their private affairs.[30]
For example, in 1911 the senior Opposition member Joseph Cook told the
Parliament:
The more I think of it the more convinced I am that we must
come ultimately to a form of national insurance which will give every man—the
millionaire as well as the poor man—who has subscribed to his own insurance
fund the right to receive that insurance, without taint of pauperism or
charity, in his old age.[31]
Advocates of a contributory scheme were not always clear
about how they would remove the means test. Whether it was done with taxes or
contributions, meeting the cost of a non-means tested Age Pension would require
more money. One solution was to raise revenue from lower-paid workers—people
who paid little or no income tax under the existing system but would pay a
social insurance contribution under a contributory system.
Proposals to
replace the Age Pension
Coalition
proposals
In 1923 the Bruce-Page Government announced plans to develop
a comprehensive social services system that would ‘remove altogether the taint
of pauperism’.[32]
A royal commission looked at options for a new national insurance scheme and
recommended a flat-rate contributory superannuation scheme.[33]
The Government introduced a Bill for national insurance in 1928 but left office
without making it law.[34]
In the late 1930s, the Coalition Government headed by Joe
Lyons introduced legislation to create a contributory social security scheme
that included a new Age Pension. Although Parliament passed legislation for the
scheme in 1938, the Government later abandoned it.[35]
The Labor Party opposed the scheme arguing that the burden of paying for the
scheme fell unfairly on low-income earners.[36]
The Curtin Labor Government introduced a more comprehensive
national welfare scheme that included payments for widows, unemployment and
sickness and promised health benefits.[37]
The Liberal Party under Robert Menzies continued to advocate a contributory
model for social services.
The Liberals went to the 1946 federal election promising to
introduce a contributory social insurance scheme.[38]
The party’s newspaper advertisements pledged that ‘The Liberal Party will
maintain pensions without the means test’:
The Liberal Party maintains that the Means Test is
humiliating, and a penalty for thrift. It contends that social benefits should
be enjoyed by all.
When social services are placed on a contributory basis, the
Means Test can be abolished.[39]
Another advertisement portrayed Chifley as an ‘illusionist’
who took people’s taxes but unfairly denied them benefits (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: ‘Chifley
the greatest social service illusionist on earth’, Liberal Party advertisement,
15 September 1946
Source: Liberal Party of Australia, ‘Chifley the greatest social service illusionist on earth’,
Liberal Party advertisement, The Sun, 15 September 1946, p. 10.
After losing the election to Labor, Menzies seemed to lose
enthusiasm for the idea of a contributory system of social security. Ahead of
the 1949 election he continued to insist that a contributory scheme was the
only way to abolish the means test but promised only to ‘further investigate
this complicated problem’.[40]
Sometime between winning office in 1949 and contesting the
1954 election, the Coalition decided it could not abolish the means test. In a
1954 campaign launch speech, Menzies explained:
Without increased production the earning groups just cannot
go on carrying the enormous burden of age benefits which accrue to an
increasing proportion of our population every year. We have therefore decided
that it is not practicable completely to abolish the Means Test, but that we
will continue vigorously the work of modifying it …[41]
In his 1965 history of the Australian social security system,
TH Kewley suggests that part of Menzies’ motivation for moving to a
contributory system was to ensure that those who benefited from social services
also paid something for them.[42]
In 1943 he argued that the ‘idea that you are to divide the community into two
sections, those who pay and those who take, is utterly destructive of democracy’.[43]
It may be that the extension of income tax to lower earners helped alleviate Menzies’
concern. In addition, from the beginning of 1946, the Labor Government had separated
the income tax into two levies, naming one the Social Services Contribution. This
would have created the impression that low-income earners were paying for the
social services they received.
Labor
proposals
As Prime Minister, Ben Chifley was sceptical about the
Coalition’s plans to abolish the means test on pensions and benefits and
challenged opposition members to explain how they would pay for it. Speaking on
the 1945–46 Budget he said:
I should like any honorable member who advocates the abolition
of the means test to get down to tintacks, and show me a method by which his
object could be achieved. It should be perfectly clear to honorable members
that pensions and other social services must be paid from revenue. They cannot
be paid from bank credit.[44]
However, Chifley had his own plan for removing the means
test by creating an entirely new national superannuation scheme, along with
increases in taxation to fund it. In a speech to the Australian Labor Party
Conference in November 1945 he said:
I believe that the objective of the Labor Movement should be
to work steadily to have universal superannuation. If there is to be a
universal right to all the benefits, then there should be a universal
contribution …[45]
‘Universal contribution’ involved further raising taxes on
low-income earners. Chifley pointed to New Zealand where ‘there is collection
of a great amount of money from persons who are not even taxable in this
country’.[46]
The idea was to introduce a flat rate tax that would apply to all earnings.[47]
Although mostly forgotten now, the plan was widely
reported in the newspapers. According to The Telegraph (Brisbane),
Chifley’s ‘ultimate intention’ was ‘to jettison the present old age pensions
system with its objectionable means test …’[48]
Figure 2: 1947
newspaper headline on Chifley’s superannuation fund proposal
Source: L McDonnell, ‘Chifley Plans National Superannuation Fund’, The Telegraph (Brisbane), 8 March
1947, p. 2.
In 1947, Chifley asked an interdepartmental committee to
look at options for setting up a national superannuation scheme.[49]
It was clear from the committee’s draft reports that the existing Social
Services Contribution would not be enough to fund a non-means tested scheme.[50]
According to a 1948 report in The Mercury, the new scheme would cost an
extra £48,000,000 and ‘The experts had estimated that an additional 10d in the
£ flat rate tax would have to be imposed on all income earners at present
paying social services contribution.’[51]
Before the 1949 election Chifley made it clear that abolishing
the means test could not be funded by the existing Social Services Contribution.
In his budget speech he said ‘It is of no use attempting to fool the people
with promises. These things can be done only by the imposition of additional
taxes’.[52]
According to a later media report, Labor dropped plans for a national
superannuation scheme because the cost was too high.[53]
Removing the
means test
Labor lost office in the 1949 election and failed to regain
it in 1951, after which Chifley was succeeded by HV Evatt. Under Evatt, Labor
adopted a different policy on the means test. In his speech on the 1953–54 Budget
he announced:
We shall pursue the objective of total abolition of the means
test within the shortest space of time. I confidently believe that we can
terminate all its vicious and evil features within the lifetime of a single
parliament.[54]
According to academic Geoffrey Sawer, this ‘represented a
change in Labor policy, since their tendency would be not to redistribute
wealth from upper to lower income brackets, but to maintain existing
inequalities beyond the retiring age’.[55]
Under Gough Whitlam, Labor took a policy to abolish the
means test into the 1969 and 1972 election campaigns along with a promise to
introduce a new National Superannuation Scheme.[56]
In 1972, Labor was joined by the Coalition in opposing the
means test. Ahead of the 1972 election the Liberal Party announced ‘The means
test is to be completely phased out within 3 years and considerably eased now’.[57]
The Liberal Party also announced ‘the possible introduction of a national
superannuation scheme’.[58]
After winning the 1972 election, the Whitlam Government began
phasing out the means test on the Age Pension starting with those aged 75 or
more.[59]
However, the change was short lived. In the 1978–79 Budget the Fraser
Government began to reverse these arrangements.[60]
While the means test was never abolished, it was eased. Between
1946 and 1980 successive governments made changes to the means test allowing more
of those of pension age to receive at least a part pension. According to previous
Parliamentary Library analysis, around 32 per cent of the aged population
received an Age Pension up until World War II. That proportion rose to a high
of 77 per cent in the late 1970s before dropping back again.[61]
In 2019, around 65 per cent of people over Age Pension eligibility age received
the Age Pension.[62]
The National
Welfare Fund
The Curtin Labor Government’s rationale for creating the
National Welfare Fund had nothing to do with the Age Pension means test. The
fund was announced as part of the Government’s National Welfare Scheme, a major
expansion of the social security system that included new payments including unemployment
and sickness benefits. The Government also planned to include more spending on
health.[63]
Planning for the National Welfare Scheme took place during
World War II when consumer goods were scarce. As historian Rob Watts explains
in The foundations of the national welfare state, the Government was
concerned about inflation and sought to limit the amount of money consumers
were able to spend.[64]
The Government also needed to raise money for the war. The solution to both
problems was to raise taxes on lower-income earners.[65]
According to Watts, the National Welfare Fund was created to
manage the political difficulties caused by imposing income taxes on
lower-income earners—something the Curtin Government had promised not to do.[66]
By transferring a share of this additional tax revenue to the National Welfare
Fund, the Government was able to say it was setting the money aside to pay for
the planned National Welfare Scheme. In the meantime, the funds would not sit
idle while waiting to be spent, the Government would borrow these funds and use
them to meet the costs of the war. Watts called it ‘a scheme of taxation tied
to a smokescreen of a social security system’.[67]
The National
Welfare Scheme
Before World War II the Australian Government’s social
security system was limited to age and invalid pensions and maternity
allowances. In February 1943, Treasurer Ben Chifley announced a major expansion
of social security and health services—the National Welfare Scheme.[68]
The Government’s plan was to progressively build up payments and services starting
with maternity allowances and funeral benefits and expanding to include
unemployment and sickness benefits and comprehensive medical services.[69]
Chifley argued that one of the advantages of funding social
security from general revenue was that a progressive income tax system meant ‘the
burden is being distributed in strict accordance with ability to bear it’.
While higher income earners paid a higher proportion of their income, Chifley
argued that everyone contributed something. Even those paying no income tax
contributed through indirect taxes.[70]
This meant ‘benefits under the National Welfare Scheme are not in any sense,
therefore, to be looked upon as a charitable dole; all have contributed to the
Scheme according to their individual capacity.’[71]
Rhetorically, Chifley was drawing on the principle of
benefits earned through contribution but combined it with a commitment to
redistribution. As Labor MP Charles Jones put it in 1959: ‘We believe that the
principle to be observed should be, “From each according to his ability, and to
each according to his need”’.[72]
The creation
of the National Welfare Fund
The National Welfare Fund was created in 1943 as a trust
account under the Audit Act 1901. Initially the fund was created
for spending on ‘health services, unemployment or sickness benefits, family
allowances, or other welfare or social services’.[73]
This was spending the Government planned to do after the war. Existing payments
such as the Age Pension were not included.
The National Welfare Act 1943 stipulated that money
for the National Welfare Fund would come from consolidated revenue.[74]
As Chifley explained, it would be ‘an annual sum of £30,000,000, or a sum equal
to one fourth of the total collections each year from income tax on
individuals, whichever is the lower’.[75]
The Government announced that it would raise the money for the National Welfare
Fund by increasing income taxes. Lowering the income threshold at which tax
became payable brought lower income earners into the income tax system.[76]
According to law professor Geoffrey Sawer, Chifley’s tax increases faced strong
opposition from the Labor left.[77]
Chifley made no secret of the Government’s intention to
spend the money credited to the National Welfare Fund on the war. In announcing
the fund he said:
In its early stages the fund will build up some credit balances
which will be used later when the welfare scheme reaches full operation. For
instance, in the first year a substantial credit may accrue. These balances
will not be allowed to remain idle but will be invested, and will thus provide
a useful source of temporary finance for war purposes, which will be replaced
by long-term borrowings when the moneys are required later for welfare
purposes.[78]
Prominent Opposition MPs regarded the arrangement as a trick
to allow the Government to avoid admitting that it had raised taxes on low-income
earners to fund the war effort.[79]
Liberal Party MP Percy Spender described the Government’s funding arrangements
as ‘shadowy and nebulous’ saying:
A trust account is to be established into which £30,000,000
is to be paid. Apparently the next day the money will be drawn out of the
account. In other words, the Government will lend the money to itself. This is
the first time that I have ever heard it proposed, among reasonable men, that a
trustee shall be entitled to lend trust money to himself. Apparently, the trust
account is to be established, but it may be extinguished the next day. I cannot
imagine any parliament in any country, agreeing to such a shadowy and nebulous
scheme.[80]
According to Sawer, an ‘element of deceit was present, but
the National Welfare Fund was far from being a complete sham’. The Government did
intend to expand social services after the war and the fund ‘constituted a
political promise of considerable weight’.[81]
How the
National Welfare Fund worked
While critics like Spender were broadly right about how the
National Welfare Fund worked, there was nothing unusual or improper about the
way it operated. The National Welfare Fund was established under Section 62A of
the Audit Act 1901 (Audit Act) which allowed the Treasurer to invest funds
held by the trust account in Government securities and to close a trust account
and transfer any credit to consolidated revenue.[82]
When funds credited to the National Welfare Fund were
invested in government securities, these were not securities like Treasury
bonds that could be bought and sold outside of government. Instead, the fund
held its investments in the form of internal treasury bills. As critics of the
fund pointed out, these were essentially IOUs where only the Treasury could
‘buy’ them back. Country Party leader Arthur Fadden argued that:
The fund is bankrupt, because it has been used for the
general purposes of finance, and the amount withdrawn has been replaced by
Treasury I O U's. I concede that it is neither illegal nor improper for the
Treasurer so to act, because the Audit Act provides that such funds may be
represented by government securities, which are defined as including
treasury-bills or the I O U's to which I have referred. Nevertheless, I
ventilate the matter so that no one will be deceived as to what has happened to
the fund. The fact should be made clear to the public that the money contributed
to the National Welfare Fund has been used for purposes other than those
intended. In fact, the taxpayers will contribute twice for the social benefits
which ultimately they will receive.[83]
Funds credited to the National Welfare Fund were not an asset
the Government could draw on as an alternative to taxing or borrowing. To spend
these funds, the Government would first need to redeem the internal treasury
bills with cash. To do this, it would first need to find the cash.[84]
The balance of the National Welfare Fund had no effect on social
security claimants’ legal entitlement to payment. Entitlements to payment are grounded
in social security legislation. Parliament could change these entitlements or abolish
the National Welfare Fund at any time. The funds credited to the National
Welfare Fund did not belong to future social security claimants in any legal
sense. Chifley freely admitted this when he said:
… when the Commonwealth Parliament decides that certain
moneys shall be placed in a trust fund it pledges itself to ensure that that
decision shall be carried out. I do not deny for one moment that it is possible
for Parliament at any time to alter the laws of its own making or that a pledge
made by legislation can be broken by other legislation. No Parliament can bind
its successors.[85]
As US public policy academic Eric Patashnik notes, government
trust funds establish a political contract rather than an economic one.[86]
The Curtin Government attempted to establish such a contract when it linked tax
increases to entitlements under the new National Welfare Scheme. Because voters
had been told that they had already paid for benefits under the scheme, it
would be politically difficult for any future government to refuse to pay them.
1944–45
changes
Creation of unemployment and sickness benefits
In 1944 Parliament passed legislation for unemployment and
sickness benefits.[87]
These payments were a key feature of the Government’s National Welfare Scheme. Chifley
had insisted that benefits under the National Welfare Scheme were not a
‘charitable dole’ because everyone had contributed the scheme through taxation.[88]
However, during debate over the Bill, Leader of the Opposition Robert Menzies disagreed,
arguing that any tax funded system with a means test was ‘pauperising’.[89]
The implication of this was that the Age Pension was also a dole.[90]
Inclusion of
the Age Pension in the National Welfare Fund
In 1945 Parliament passed legislation to include the Age Pension
as one of the payments to be made out of the National Welfare Fund. Amendments
to the National Welfare Fund Act added invalid and old-age pensions, widows
pensions and child endowment.[91]
Before this change, invalid and old-age pensions had been
paid from another fund created under the Audit Act—the Invalid and Old-age Pensions
Trust Account. This had been created to allow the Commonwealth Government to
retain surplus revenue and avoid having to return it to state governments.[92]
Creation of
the Social Services Contribution
That same year the Chifley Government separated income tax
into two levies, a general income tax and a Social Services Contribution.
Rather than being funded from consolidated revenue, income for the National
Welfare Fund would now come from the new Social Services Contribution and
payroll tax.[93]
The Social Services Contribution was not a new burden placed
on taxpayers, nor would it be levied on the lowest earners. As Chifley
explained in his 1945–46 Budget speech it was offset by income tax cuts:
… the Government has decided to make special provision to
meet the cost of social services by introducing a social services contribution
entirely separate from the ordinary income tax and, at the same time, to reduce
the rates of income tax so that the combined charge on individuals, including
members of the forces, for income tax and social services contribution will, on
the average, be about 12½ per cent lower in a full year than the present charge
for income tax alone.[94]
In his second reading speech on the Social Services
Contribution Bill 1945, Chifley again made it clear that ‘no person shall be
required to pay as Social Services Contribution an amount, greater than he
would have paid in income tax at present rates after receiving the income tax
reduction that has already been announced’.[95]
Changes by
the Menzies Government
When the National Welfare Fund was first established, the
Government expected spending from the fund would soon grow to match receipts.
However, a strong economy resulted in higher tax revenues and fewer claims than
expected, and the implementation of some new payments was delayed. As a result,
by 1950 the National Welfare Fund accumulated a substantial balance.[96]
Within Treasury, there was concern about the size of the
fund’s balance. Treasury official Richard Randall wrote to his superior, Frederick
Wheeler, about the future of the National Welfare Fund. Randall was an influential
official who would later go on to become Treasury Secretary.[97]
He argued that politically the fund had to continue, however ‘… the existence
of the Fund and the size it has reached create a standing temptation to lift
social service rates and set up new services, and official resistance to such
moves is weakened’.[98]
To limit the size of the fund Randall suggested it might
be possible to allow it to ‘waste away’ over time, ‘but if that happens it must
seem to come about through natural causes’. The Government was considering re-combining
the social services contribution with income tax and this raised the issue of
how to feed the fund. Randall’s preference was against allowing the balance of
the fund to grow. He remarked, ‘we should not mind taking a risk that ten years
hence the Fund might have ceased significantly to exist’.[99]
1950—Merging
the Social Services Contribution with income tax
In 1950 the Menzies Government merged the Social Services
Contribution with income tax. This was part of a plan to simplify the income
tax system. The Treasurer announced that the then new single levy would be
called ‘income tax and social services contribution’:
This title will serve as a constant reminder to taxpayers
that a substantial proportion of their payments will be devoted to Commonwealth
social services. Provision will be made in a separate Bill for special
appropriations from the single levy, to ensure that the element of social
services contribution in each person's payment shall be appropriated to the
National Welfare Fund, and that that fund will have an assured income to meet
its purposes.[100]
This was the end of the Social Services Contribution as a
separate levy. In his book, Social Security in Australia, Kewley argued that
the Social Services Contribution had served a useful political purpose by
enabling the Menzies Government to impose income tax as far down the income
scale as the Social Services Contribution.[101]
1952—Changing
the way income is credited to the National Welfare Fund
Absorbing the Social Services Contribution into income tax
simplified the tax system but created a new problem: how to allocate revenue to
the National Welfare Fund.
Between 1949 and 1952 the balance of the National Welfare Fund
had grown from £99 million to £185 million.[102]
The Government may have shared Randall’s concern that a large balance would encourage
political demands for increased spending on benefits. As Kewley notes:
This substantial annual increase would not be without some
embarrassment to the Government in that it provided a regular reminder that the
Government was not spending on the social services the amount it was allocating
for that purpose. The Government may thus have formed the opinion that, if the
Fund were allowed to continue to build up credit balances, demand for increased
benefits would become imperative and, moreover, that these could be met through
the Fund only by action of a kind, in the circumstances of the time, would have
inflationary effects.[103]
The Government decided to slow the growth of the fund. With
the passage of the National Welfare Fund Act 1952, the amount going into
the fund in each financial year matched the amount paid out in that financial
year.[104]
Because the fund earned interest on the treasury bills it held, the 1952
amendment did not completely stop the fund’s balance growing and by 1964 it had
risen to £209.2 million.[105]
The birth of
the myth
The 1952 changes created some controversy. An organisation
called the National Welfare Fund Association had formed to push for the
abolition of the pension means test, arguing that the National Welfare Fund should
have sufficient funds to make this possible.[106]
The association lobbied members and senators throughout the 1950s, including ahead
of the 1952 changes.[107]
In 1954 the Association’s chairman said:
We have gone into the matter very closely, and some hundreds
of millions of pounds have been taken out of the Welfare fund and paid into
revenue. Had this money been used for its rightful purpose, the means test
could have been abolished some time ago.[108]
This was the beginning of the stolen pensions myth. In a
1952 edition of Education, the NSW Public School Teachers Federation
journal, EW Shields accused the Menzies Government of ‘fraudulent malpractice’
and claimed it had abolished the National Welfare Fund and used the money for
other purposes.[109]
Changes by
the Fraser Government
Despite rumours circulated by the National Welfare Fund
Association and others during the 1950s, the Menzies Government had not
abolished the National Welfare Fund. What it had done was end the hypothecation
of an identifiable share of revenue to social services. However, in 1976 the
Fraser Government actually did what critics had accused the Menzies Government
of doing—it transferred the unrequired balance of the Nation Welfare Fund into
consolidated revenue. This had no practical effect on social security
entitlements since the 1952 Act ensured that the fund would receive whatever it
needed to meet its obligations from consolidated revenue each year. The
Treasure Phillip Lynch told the Parliament:
… no working balance is required in the Trust Account. The
Audit Act provides a procedure whereby moneys not required for the purposes of
a Trust Account may be transferred to the Consolidated Revenue Fund upon
determination by the Treasurer. I intend that the internal treasury bill
holdings of the National Welfare Fund Trust Account be redeemed. The cash
resulting from the redemption of the internal treasury bills will be paid
direct to the Consolidated Revenue Fund.[110]
The National Welfare Fund was created to serve a political
rather than an administrative purpose. In return for higher taxes, lower income
earners received the benefit of the Chifley Government’s National Welfare
Scheme. When the fund built up a substantial balance it became a political
liability to the Menzies Government because it encouraged public demands for
additional social services entitlements—in particular, a non-means tested Age Pension.
The Menzies and Fraser Governments had succeeded in eliminating
the balance. The Fraser Government was now faced with the problem of what the
National Welfare Fund was for. A 1981 Auditor-General’s report pointed out that
maintaining the fund created a great deal of administrative work and sought the
views of the Department of Finance on abolishing the fund. The Department of
Finance was aware of the problem and advised the Auditor General that the ‘the
possible abolition of the Fund has been under notice for some time’.[111]
Hawke
Government abolishes the National Welfare Fund
The Fraser Government lost office before taking any further
action on the National Welfare Fund. In 1985 the Hawke Labor Government
introduced the National Welfare Fund Repeal Bill 1985 to abolish the fund.[112]
The Bill received bipartisan support with the opposition claiming credit for
initiating the process.[113]
In debate over the Bill, Labor Community Services Minister Don
Grimes acknowledged the work of former Social Security Minister Margaret
Guilfoyle and illustrated how the fund had become a political problem for both
sides of politics:
I, when shadow Minister for Social Security from 1976 and
Senator Dame Margaret Guilfoyle as Minister for Social Security in that time,
attended many meetings with pensioners. … At almost every meeting I have been
to, one or two pensioners have accused me, Senator Dame Margaret Guilfoyle and
all those who have preceded us, of locking away in a big vault in Canberra the
national welfare fund which was introduced by Mr Curtin and Mr Chifley and was
snitched away from them by Sir Robert Menzies and locked up. We are told that
the only thing that was stopping the pensioners of this country from getting
their pensions doubled was the fact that the national welfare fund was locked
away and we nasty politicians had got at it.[114]
Complaints continued after the abolition of the National
Welfare Fund. For example, the 2009 Pension Review (Harmer Review) received
submissions arguing that the contributions to the National Welfare Fund ‘were
in effect a prepayment of a future entitlement to a pension’.[115]
Treasury’s 2020 Retirement Income Review noted that the National Welfare Fund
and Social Services Contribution ‘may have been perceived by some older
Australians as pre-funding their Age Pension entitlement’.[116]
Both reviews attempted to explain why this view was incorrect.
Conclusion
The National Welfare Fund and Social Services Contribution
served a political rather than an administrative purpose. In the 1940s the
Government encouraged Australians to see social security benefits as something
they had earned. For example, in 1948 the Director General of the Department of
Social Services wrote:
The fact that a specific social services contribution is now
payable has helped to remove from people's minds any association of benefits
with charity. However, notwithstanding the realization of the public that they,
by production during their lifetime, have in fact created or contributed to the
resources from which they may draw benefits, cases are continually coming to
notice where those who have led useful lives and created wealth for the
community hesitate to make application for a share of the products of their own
past labours.[117]
Today, the Department of Social Services tells retirees
that the Age Pension is ‘a safety net for people who are unable to support
themselves fully in retirement’ and emphasises that it is ‘financed through
general taxation revenue on a recurrent basis’.[118]
The major parties’ approach to the means test has changed
since the 1970s. Some of today’s retirees may remember the early 1970s when
both sides of politics promised means test-free age pensions or the early 1980s
when former Social Services Minister Bill Wentworth insisted that Ben Chifley
had set up a kind of national superannuation scheme.[119]
The stolen pensions myth challenges the idea that the Age Pension
is a ‘welfare’ safety net and re-asserts the idea that it is an earned
entitlement. However, in doing so it misrepresents the history of the Age Pension
and the National Welfare Fund. The myth goes much further than insisting that
retirees have earned a pension by contributing to society through paid or
unpaid work.
There are at least three things the myth gets wrong. First,
the myth creates the impression that the National Welfare Fund was created primarily
for the Age Pension. As the history above makes clear, it was originally set up
for the Curtin Government’s National Welfare Scheme. The scheme did not,
initially, include the Age Pension. The Age Pension was added later.
If the National Welfare Fund and the Social Services
Contribution are understood as conferring a moral right to benefits, it I hard
to see how this would not apply to unemployment payments as well. In explaining
the new system, Chifley insisted ‘Benefits under the National Welfare Scheme
are not in any sense … to be looked upon as a charitable dole; all have
contributed to the Scheme according to their individual capacity’.[120]
Second, the myth suggests that the Curtin and Chifley Governments
established what amounts to a superannuation-like Age Pension system in the
1940s. The history of the Age Pension presented above makes it clear that the
changes of the 1940s did not change the nature of the Age Pension. It was still
essentially the same scheme it had been when it was established in 1908. At
various times there were plans to replace or supplement the Age Pension with a
new government-run national superannuation scheme, but these plans were never
implemented.
Third, the myth suggests that the balances credited to the
National Welfare Fund represented a store of value in addition to consolidated
revenue and could be ‘raided’ by the Government. However, because the National
Welfare Fund held its ‘investments’ in the form of internal treasury bills, the
only way to spend these balances was to find the money to redeem the treasury
bills.
Funds credited to the National Welfare Fund represented a non-legally
binding promise to spend a certain amount on social services in the future. When
the promised funds were spent, the Government would normally raise the money
through taxes or loans. As with unemployment payments, the money for Age Pensions
would likely come from taxes paid in the present, not taxes paid in the past.
Legally, the National Welfare Fund had no effect on
entitlements to the Age Pension or other social security payments. These
entitlements have always been set out in social security legislation and can be
changed by the Parliament.
Appendix:
Timeline of policy changes relevant to the National Welfare Fund