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National Seniors Australia chief advocate Ian Henschke said Australia could learn from New Zealand’s approach, with about 24.7 per cent of people over 65 still working in that country. “We’ve heard of people [in Australia] where they work up until a certain hour and then they tell their employer, look, if I work beyond this, I start to lose too much from my pension,” Mr Henschke said. He said Australia needed a fairer system that did not reduce pension benefits when a retired person worked. Instead, they would be taxed in an income bracket that included their new income and their pension payments.

February 2023.

Australia’s richest person, said to be worth $34 billion, will hand $100,000 each to 41 lucky workers at her company, Hancock Prospecting, to mark her 41 years at the firmMrs Rinehart has been paying out bonuses worth many tens of thousands of dollars a year on top of some of the highest wages in Australia to Roy Hill workers in the countdown to Christmas since 2018. She first flagged sharing profits (something like 5 per cent) from Roy Hill with workers during a speech during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth in 2011 and long before the mine started shipping iron ore. Similar incentives and profit-sharing schemes apply across the rest of the Hancock business empire but are more discretionary.

Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart will hand out another $4.1million in bonuses to employees of her mining company as she marks 41 years at the firm. Ms Rinehart will give 41 Hancock Prospecting staff members $100,000 each this week, with a raffle to determine the lucky recipients. Rinehart has thanked her workers for ‘another great year’ and said all of Australia benefits when her mine thrives.

Australia’s richest person is set to give away 41 prizes in all, or $4.1 million, with about 4000 workers spread across her private company’s mining, energy and agriculture divisions in the running“The mining industry pays by far the highest wages in Australia, close to double the average in other industries. Why would we risk this vital industry for our nation by reintroducing an unhelpful system that didn’t work the last time we had it?” Mrs Rinehart said in a recent response to questions from The Australian Financial Review.

Those 41 prizes represent one for each year Ms Rinehart has worked at Hancock Prospecting. The 4000 workers employed by her companies in mining, energy and agriculture divisions are in the running. Although her fortune is built on iron ore mining, through Hancock Agriculture and S Kidman and Co, Ms Rinehart is both one of the biggest landowners in Australia and owner of one of its biggest cattle herds.