Here's the pitch: lower Australia's retirement age to 55 and introduce a Universal Basic Income of $1,000 per week for every Australian aged 30 and over. That's it. That's the idea.
I know. I can hear the objections already. But give me five minutes before you close the tab, because the counterarguments are weaker than they look, and the potential upside is genuinely interesting.
What We're Actually Proposing
Two things, working together.
First: retirement at 55. Not mandatory, but available. If you've worked for thirty-odd years and want to step back, you should be able to. Pass on your role to someone younger. Consult part-time if you want to stay engaged. Spend time with your grandkids. Mentor the next generation instead of competing with them.
Second: a UBI of $1,000 per week for Australians aged 30 and over. Not a means-tested payment loaded with bureaucratic conditions. A floor. Something that means no Australian with a decade of adult life behind them is one bad month away from genuine crisis.
Together, these two changes create something interesting: a society where older workers can exit gracefully, younger workers can enter with real opportunity, and everyone has enough security to take the kind of risks that actually build things.
The Money Question
Yes, it's expensive. The UBI component alone would run to somewhere around $800 billion annually based on current population numbers. That's not a small number. But let's be honest about what that figure ignores.
UBI doesn't exist in a vacuum. You'd be replacing or significantly reducing a sprawling welfare system that currently costs tens of billions to administer badly. You'd be reducing healthcare costs driven by financial stress and work-related burnout, which are enormous and poorly measured drains on the public system. You'd be generating new tax revenue from the entrepreneurial and economic activity that financial security tends to unlock.
Funding mechanisms worth exploring include progressive taxation on high earners, closing corporate tax structures that allow large multinationals to minimise Australian tax obligations, a carbon price, and an automation levy on companies that displace workers with machines. None of these are radical in isolation. Combined, they start to move the numbers.
The Workforce Concern
The most common objection is that lowering the retirement age shrinks the workforce and we can't afford to lose experienced people. This argument has two problems.
First, it assumes retirement is binary. It isn't. Most people who retire early don't disappear. They consult, mentor, sit on boards, do part-time work they actually enjoy. The institutional knowledge doesn't evaporate; it just flows differently, and often more usefully.
Second, and more importantly: we are on the edge of one of the largest labour market disruptions in history. AI and automation are not going to politely wait for retirement policy to catch up. The question of "what do people do when machines do more of the work" is coming whether we plan for it or not. A lower retirement age paired with UBI is essentially a pre-emptive answer to that question rather than a panicked response to it.
The "That's Just Socialism" Objection
It's not. Socialism involves state ownership of the means of production. This is a cash transfer programme. Those are different things. The US has Social Security. Australia has the aged pension. The UK has universal healthcare. Every functioning democracy has large-scale redistribution mechanisms. The question is never whether to redistribute; it's who gets what, when, and how.
A UBI that gives a 35-year-old tradie the security to retrain for a new industry without losing their house is not a socialist project. It's an investment in human capital that happens to be distributed more broadly than current systems allow.
Is It Actually Going to Happen?
Probably not soon. The political will isn't there, the funding mechanisms are contested, and the details would need enormous amounts of work to get right. I'm not pretending this is a fully costed policy platform.
But I think the underlying logic is sound, and I think we're going to be forced to have this conversation much sooner than most people expect. Automation is not slowing down. Cost of living is not improving. The social contract built around "work hard for forty years and retire comfortably at 65" is already broken for a large percentage of the population. Something has to give.
Why This Belongs on a Branding Agency Blog
Because we think big ideas matter. The same willingness to question received wisdom that makes for good brand strategy applies to everything else. The best businesses we've worked with aren't the ones that accepted the default options. They're the ones that asked "why does it have to work this way?" and built something better. That's worth doing in policy, too.
Agree? Disagree? Think I've completely lost it? Drop us a line. We're genuinely interested in the argument.