The AFR has looked at the Budget leaks and headlined what’s likely to be given to retirees as another Baby Boomer bailout. Is this bulldust or more like overdue charity for a group that hasn’t always lived the life of Riley?

Ultimately, we have to see what the Treasurer offers to help lift the standard of aged care and I don’t want to really debate this issue today. However I do want to look at the expected changes to the downsizing rule and the work test.

These are sensible reforms that actually will add fairness to a super system that is anti-women and does nothing for someone not in a multimillion home.

Those who write stories about over-pampered boomers think they’re all sitting on homes worth over $1 million. In reality, the median national property price is $549,918. And there’s also an assumption that these houses are totally paid off, which isn’t necessarily true.

More on this later. First let’s look at two big changes expected in tomorrow’s Budget. Here they are in nutshell:

1. The rules around downsizing are to change.

Downsizing is where you sell your home, buy something smaller and put the balance of your money left over into super. This will be allowed at age 60 rather than the current 65.

The downsizing provision allows a one-off $300,000 contribution to your super after selling your home, and a couple could wack $600,000 into super in one go.

2. The work test to be axed.

The work test will go, which means someone between the age of 67 and 74 will be able to put money into super without having to pass a work test. That means every year between 67 and 74, someone could put $100,000 into their super fund, moving their money from a highly taxed investment into a non-taxable super fund in pension mode.

This won’t start until 1 July 1 2022 but it’s a beauty of a change.

The current $1.6 million cap in your pension super fund will still apply, which stops the mega-wealthy putting too much into super.

For those who think this downsizing change will over-help those who don’t need it, look at this from the AFR’s Phil Coorey: “Since July 1, 2018, about 22,000 people have used the scheme, of which around 55 per cent were women. Three-quarters who used the scheme had less than $500,000 in their super.”

ANZ looked at the predicament of older Australians when it came to super and this is what they found: “Around 58 per cent of total superannuation assets are held by those aged between 50 and 69, according to ASFA. The average super balance for people aged 50 to 54 during 2015–16 was $135,290, ASFA found.

“For people aged 60 to 64, this figure increases to $214,897. For 65-69-year-olds, it drops to $207,105 as people start drawing down their super.

When balances are compared by gender, it becomes clear that women are, on average, worse off than men. Around 45 per cent of women aged 65 to 69 reported having no super at all.”

Sure, these figures are three years old but they wouldn’t have changed by much so anyone who’s looking at baby boomers jealously because their homes are now more valuable are ignoring the fact that their super balances are shockingly low.

Right now, if a retiree couple aged 67 lived in a $1.5 million home with $300,000 in super (which is low amount to live on), they’d need a government pension as well. They could now sell up, buy a place in the bush for $500,000 and get $600,000 into super in one go. And then each year they could put $100,000 each into super until all their leftover money from the sale is in their super fund.

Having $1.3 million in super means they don’t need the Government’s pension and they have added their property to the stock of houses to be sold to younger Australians, who are mad keen for baby boomers to give up their big homes.

Letting Australians get their money into super when interest rates are so low — which means that older Australians are virtually losing money when their funds are in a bank deposit earning less than 1% and when inflation is over 1% — is a good and smart idea.

Super returns are over 5% and closer to 7% on average and are taxed more favourably, so it’s a win-win scenario encouraging money out of bank accounts and into super.

Also, as retirees are living longer, they need super to be bigger to fund their longer lives, hopefully going off the taxpayer-funded pension system.

Anyone who wants to beat up on boomers are doing this with one-eye and are blinded by what’s really going on rather than what they think is going on.

Sure, a minority of baby boomers will be better off because of these reforms but many of these double up as the so-called “Bank of Mum & Dad”. “Parental contributions are averaging more than $89,000, an increase of nearly 20 per cent in the past 12 months, and enough for a 20 per cent deposit in most of the nation’s postcodes outside Melbourne and Sydney, according to an analysis by researcher Digital Finance Analytics (DFA),” Duncan Hughes reported in March this year. “The Bank of Mum and Dad (BOMD) – the colloquial term used to describe parental funding – has about $34 billion in loans, making it the nation’s ninth-largest residential mortgage lender and bigger than HSBC, AMP and Bank of Queensland, according to DFA.”

This means a lot of the well-off baby boomers are actually sharing the wealth with their younger family. As a lender to buyers in the property market, they’re also generators of jobs  and wealth for everyone who owns a property, the prices of which have been spiking for decades. Also, when baby boomers were young, they didn’t drive new cars, easily fly overseas, have access to easy credit to buy new ‘stuff’, they paid 17% on their home loans, didn’t have super or live the life of Riley, whoever that lucky bastard was!