Australian pension must be granted for eligible Lankans living back here-by Senaka Weeraratna
The failure of both Australia and Sri Lanka to conclude a viable Tax Treaty has caused prejudice to the rights and interests of pensioners of Australian-Sri Lankan heritage. More importantly to those who have left Australia for personal reasons and are unable to return to Australia to collect their retirement income.
Several developed countries being the role models of governance and ethical administration e.g. the U.K., distribute their retirement pensions to whatever bank account in whatever country that is nominated by the pensioner.
It is never too late for Australia to change course in matters of this nature. A democratic country that proudly upholds Western values must reform a law-based public practice that is inequitable, morally indefensible, and unfair by the standards of the civilized world.
If it is good for leading countries of the world such as the USA, England, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, and even India to allow their lawful pensioners to collect their proper entitlement from any part of the world, what impedes Australia from following suit without adopting a hard uncompromising attitude towards poor pensioners? What is the non-negotiable factor?
Pensioners are the weakest segment of society. The retirees gave their best when they were young to their country of adoption. If they had to return to their country of origin that was because they had no other choice. They simply could not abandon their old parents in their old age.
Depriving a pensioner of his pension income merely because he or she happens to live in a foreign country that is not a Treaty country is not an acceptable excuse. Decision-makers must stop looking at different kinds of people as ‘Aliens’. This is a derogatory term that belongs to the ‘ frontier culture of settlor countries’. It is a 19th-century language. We have evolved.
In legislative drafting, every exception to a general rule is necessarily well thought out when drafting the main body of rules. Exceptions to rules are not uncommon. Here is one instance:
‘A man cannot return to Australia because he is unable to do so due to a variety of unavoidable reasons. The country that he is presently living in has failed to enter into a Treaty with Australia that would provide the platform to claim his Australian pension’.
But in such a context a society that is governed by the Rule of Law must find a solution i.e., in the form of an exception to the general rule. The alternative is more suffering for someone who has given his best to the country of adoption and yet has become a victim of state incompetence and legislative indifference to the plight of those who are caught in such rare crossroads.
