"ancient home which has gone up in $ value, dramatically in Melbourne through no fault of your own. Same house, no major improvements, indeed rather shabby these days. You just happen to have owned that home since 1960. Close to kids who live in nearby suburbs."
This was a hypothetical person, rather than me. Not sure why you consider that you are "under financial distress". Is it because you are not able to access the Aged Pension and that $32,000 is insufficient for you to live on? As we age, the government wants us to use what we may be used to calling our "capital" rather than just the income coming from that capital. This is because we can't take it with us. Mind you, I can understand if you felt reluctant to do so as it would make one feel insecure and lacking in responsibility to do so.
To have a universal Aged Pension system which is unfunded would be massively expensive, despite the taxation which may be imposed on it. The younger generations who are already angry at the fact that house prices are increasingly out of their reach because of negative gearing over the decades being made available to their parents' generation, would be slammed with additional tax to pay for this universal Aged Pension scheme. Nuh, never going to happen...... utterly unaffordable.
