An elderly couple who won a million-dollar lottery prize have angered younger Australians by questioning how they can continue to receive a government-funded pension.
The couple, aged 73 and 67, posed the question of the “right” to… The Sydney Morning Herald Money columnist Noel Whittaker on Wednesday.
They revealed that both were receiving full pensions, which have since been revoked after they won the huge amount of money.
“We have placed that money into a basic interest-bearing savings account at our bank,” they wrote.
‘We plan to use the money to buy a new house and sell the one we currently have, although it is also possible that we will just renovate it.
‘The windfall has completely stopped our pension until we spend the money, which is all well and good, but could we have avoided losing the pension in any way?’
Mr Whittaker said the couple should consider themselves “extremely lucky and enjoy the money” as they could live a more luxurious life on the winnings than on a pension.
But he urged them not to spend money simply to reduce their assets below a benchmark value of $1.031 billion and claw back their pension, as they might still be ineligible.
An elderly couple who won a million-dollar lottery prize have angered younger Australians by questioning how they can continue to receive a government-funded pension from taxpayers’ money (file image)
The couple were told they should consider themselves “extremely lucky and enjoy the money” (file image)
The couple’s question sparked a furious backlash from younger Australians struggling with the country’s cost of living crisis.
“I’d bet my million dollar lottery prize that this couple has at some point complained about spoiled brats taking advantage of unemployment,” one person wrote on X.
Another person commented: ‘Some people are never satisfied, if they want to keep their pensions so desperately maybe they could donate the money to a homeless charity.’
“Imagine winning the generational lottery and then winning the real lottery and reflecting on it,” added a third.
Other users said the couple shouldn’t be judged so harshly.
“They worked their whole lives for those pensions, there should be no question about whether they keep them,” wrote one user.
“If they spent their whole life working hard and paying taxes… they deserve their pension, what’s wrong with that?” another questioned.
They added that those criticising the couple were not “talking about scammers who claim Centrelink… because they are too lazy to work”.
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