Noel Whittaker's latest column is less about markets and more about plumbing — three small rule changes that would quietly make life easier for a lot of people.
Three things have been bothering him, and all three land hardest on Australians in the second half of their working lives.
Bank account freezes. Banks can and do freeze accounts when identification paperwork doesn't match their records — in one case he describes, over whether a family trust's name included the word “the”. No warning, no phone call, and direct debits simply stop. His suggestion is modest: require banks to make reasonable attempts to contact the customer first, except where the law or a genuine fraud risk demands immediate action, and give people a fast way to get an account unfrozen.
Lenders mortgage insurance. If you borrowed with less than a 20 per cent deposit you probably paid it, and it can run past $20,000. It isn't portable, so refinancing to a cheaper lender means paying it again from scratch. In practice that ties borrowers to whatever rate their current bank decides to charge. Making it transferable would cost taxpayers nothing.
The age pension income test. This is the one worth reading twice if you are counting on part-time work later. The column follows an older renter on the full pension who takes a $45,000 job and, once the pension taper and tax are applied, ends up roughly $11,000 behind. A couple with a $3 million home and $800,000 in super, by contrast, can earn more than $52,000 from work and lose nothing. Same system, very different outcomes.
If you are 45 or 55, none of this is abstract. The plan most of us carry around — work a bit longer, wind back the hours, refinance if rates move — rests on rules exactly like these.
It's welfare turned upside down.
Read the full article: Three common sense reforms that Australia needs — Noel Whittaker, Firstlinks, 21 October 2026.
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