No pension or superannuation until age 70 under radical plan Some who would prefer to stop working earlier will not be able to afford to do so. Australians would be denied access to superannuation and the aged pension until they turned 70 under a radical plan that goes far beyond one proposed by the Productivity Commission late last week. The pension access age is scheduled to climb six months from 65 to 65½ in 2017. After that it will climb six months every two years until it reaches 67 in 2017. A new proposal from the Grattan Institute would double the pace from 2017 onwards, lifting the access age by six months every year until it hits 70 in 2025. After that the age would rise progressively in line with increases in life spans. There would be no ultimate limit. Developed parallel to and without knowledge of the Productivity Commission plan, the Grattan Institute plan would also lift the age of access to superannuation. The super access age is already scheduled to climb from 55 to 60 by 2024. Grattan would lift it to 70, increasing it by six months every year from 2015 until it hit 70 in 2035. Then it would index the access age to climb automatically. Its report Balancing Budgets: Tough Choices We Need to Make, released on Monday, identifies 20 proposals to repair the budget and finds lifting the pension and super access age the most attractive of the lot. It would save an extra $12 billion a year in today's dollars when the benefits were fully realised - about one fifth of the $60 billion annual shortfall it says the budget faces. It would also boost economic activity by up to 2 per cent. The institute concedes "some who would prefer to stop working earlier will not be able to afford to do so." But it says "given increasing life expectancy, this is a reasonable burden." Its top four proposals all take benefits or concessions from pensioners or superannuants. Between them they would save the budget $28 million a year - almost half of the sum that is needed.