To answer the original question - can the government do this to us? Emphatically yes, and often with little or no primary legislation. I have an old Which Guide to Pensions on the bookshelf, which points out in the opening chapter that all governments, irrespective of political persuasion, are forever tinkering with pensions...why? Because they can.
However, where public sector final salary pensions are concerned (including the AFPS), it will be a case of fiddling and evolution, not drastic revolution.
The key public sector roles, specifically those that are vital to the function of an evolved democratic state such as ours (police, NHS, teachers, armed forces, fire brigade, much of the civil service and even politicians) require a good percentage of their public servants to be of the full career variety. This is because of the huge costs associated with training these people. We all know how much military pilots costs to train, but they are only the tip of the iceberg. Compared to the commercial world, where "within the work place" training is virtually non-existent nowadays, the resources and public money required to train a doctor, or a policeman, or a teacher etc etc are immense.
Pensions may not be the biggest attraction to university leaver (although I suggest they are fast becoming a young persons consideration when seeking a career) but once a public servant has got a few years and started a family, they become a massive inducement to stay.
If you removed the inducement by making public sector workers responsible for their own "defined contributions" pensions, most of which are both optional and highly portable, you would see public sector workers job hopping like everybody else, every time something more attractive passes by. And this is something that the state (any state) simply cannot afford, either in terms of cost, or in the disruption which would arise from the continual turnover of public sector staff (especially as it would be the good ones that go and the chisellers that stay).
Small changes yes (and so there should be). Big changes - no chance.
Last edited by The Old Fat One; 19th Sep 2010 at 11:37.