I’ll believe it when I see it.

THE Rudd government will today announce a $34 million improvement to two military retirement benefits that have been the subject of a long campaign by veterans to bring their annual indexation arrangements into line with the pension.

Minister for Defence Materiel Mike Kelly will today announce the Defence Forces retirement benefit and the Defence Forces retirement and death benefits will be indexed in the same way as age pensions.

The ALP plane is for recipients over 65 which fits my profile but the Coalition have included those over 55;  

The Coalition has promised DFRB and DFRDB superannuants aged 55 and over will have their superannuation pensions indexed in the same way as aged and service pensions. About 57,000 military superannuants are members of these schemes.

Why are both parties undertaking to bring our annual indexation into line with pension.  By way of explaination I posted this last year;

I received a letter from the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation(DFRDB) informing me I have a CPI increase of .01% for the six months Sep 11 to Mar 12. This gives me an increase of $1.12 per fortnight. I thought of taking my Bride out to dinner to celebrate but the Power bill that is forecast to increase by up to 7.6% % is due and the rates notice is around the corner with a 4.9% increase although the Mayor had promised to keep the increase below the 3.6% inflation rise.

What’s that – 3.6% inflation? How is that related to .01% CPI rise?

I seriously doubt that the ALP undertaking will ever be called upon and even in the unlikely event that the voters are snowed by the Rudd Tsunami and actually elect him again I would expect them to reneg when they finally admit they have run the country broke and can’t afford any of their election promises; let alone a promise to the very organization that they have ignored and denigrated over my life time. We’ll see.