Chamber of Commerce wants to restrict age pension, page-73

You are absolutely mis-characterising it. Calling it a death tax is like me calling the deficit levy a living tax, or a high achiever's tax.
Remove the emotion out of it.
Your mention of Italy is a worry, they cannot afford their pension scheme, Spain, Greece, France can't either. No country with a scheme were a shrinking tax payers base pay for pensions can. You can't fight demographics. That ship has sailed, that system is unaffordable. Pensions are being cut and taxes are being increased in Europe, not the other way around.

Do not approach this with a worst case scenario in mind either. I don't want the poorest Australians to be whacked over the head with this proposal either.

We have a 30-35 years problem with the pensioners who have not enjoyed a full working life under super, which hopefully the superannuation system will make somewhat better when my generation retires in 30-35 years.
The proposal will absolutely not give incentives to people to not buy a home or go on a spending spree to make sure they get a pension. People currently looking to buy their first home are living in the superannuation age where a large chunk of their pension needs is theoretically being taken care off by super, nobody makes a decision to not buy a home in 2017 because it might mean they don't get a full pension in 2050. It is ludicrous to argue that.

What we are talking about here is pensioners with a large asset base such as a home still receiving some of their pension via a small 0% offset against that asset, there is nothing wrong with that. People do it in other countries to complement their retirement.
You are left leaning, how is it fair that person A with a $1.5m home might get roughly the same pension as person B with a $600k home? Just look at the example I provided before, can you argue against the numbers? You can still leave a lot to your kids, nobody is being kicked out of their home.
In fact the argument that people approaching retirement lock in (or keep locked) a lot of their wealth in their home because they know it is not subjected to the asset test can be made, not the other way around.

This system can be introduced by not indexing pensions for example. You get $800 a week, you need more because of inflation then the scheme is available to you. I don't have all the answers but we need to be able to debate it.
The real unfairness is that we expect the tax payers to pay for it, again, and again, and again while they obviously will only enjoy a fraction of the current pension benefits upon retirement.

Based on the example I have given you, I personally wouldn't have a problem, I am already discussing it with my parents who live in Europe, as there is no other way for them to complement their shrinking pension. They were lucky enough to buy a house, they are lucky enough to get a pension, but it is not enough, so they can use that asset.