There it sits, a very large and seemingly very juicy statistic buried in the back pages of this week's discussion paper on welfare reform; a figure which screams for attention as indisputable
The $50 billion was widely misconstrued as being an estimate of the future size of the annual benefit bill. For that to be the case, the total amount budgeted for welfare payments would have to blow out by nearly eight times its present levels. The benefit system would have well and truly become unsustainable.
(In fact, it is a projected lifetime amount ed),
But the $50 billion figure is rather meaningless. You could add up the lifetime costs of paying someone state-funded superannuation, but that would not be a reason on its own for no longer paying it.
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