Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It seems that every day we are seeing dysfunction at the heart of the Turnbull government. They lack both vision and direction. They have no economic agenda, just dysfunction; no plan, just complete chaos. And we are seeing media ideas leaks almost daily on a range of issues, but no policies and no decisions. This is happening because they cannot agree on anything, We hear different stories. First it was the 15 per cent GST, which we know is still on the table. We know they will bring it back. That is their plan. It is not dead and buried. Then it was negative gearing—lots of talk, but nothing happened; capital gains tax, nothing happened; superannuation, nothing happened.

The government cannot agree on the central idea about tax reform. We have asked the Prime Minister on a number of occasions to rule out many things, but he won't; he is just too weak. That is at the heart of this dysfunction—his weakness and his indecision. But he does allow the constant attacks on superannuation. Why? It is because they do not believe in superannuation. Well, we believe in it.

Superannuation is one of Labor's proudest achievements. Australia's superannuation assets are now worth more than $2 trillion, making it the third-largest pool of funds under management in the world. The fact is the Liberals and the Nationals simply cannot be trusted with the huge responsibility of managing our superannuation system, just as they cannot be trusted with managing any part of the economy.

Before the election they promised no changes to super, but we know this was just a lie, like the other broken promises—no changes to health, education or pensions; the list goes on and on. When it comes to super, this government have done nothing but make the system worse for workers and they continue to attack it. The people who will be hurt the most are, of course, low-income earners. Especially in regional areas, locals know that it is the Nationals who are attacking their super.

We constantly see the government leaking new attacks on super. Just last week, we heard that the government was planning to make superannuation opt-out for low-income earners. The fact is this would fundamentally undermine the compulsory super system for low-income Australians, casual workers and young workers. These are the people who would be hit the hardest. Let us look at the government's record on superannuation so far.

Firstly, they lowered the penalty on noncompliant employers. So their highest priority in the super system is to make it easier for employers to dodge super guarantee obligations. The government's attacks go further. They have frozen the superannuation guarantee, which directly hurts the retirement savings of millions of Australians. The super accounts of average Australians will be $20,000 worse off because of this single policy decision. Then last week, the government floated the idea of permanently freezing super at 9.5 per cent, which would have an even greater impact. The government have also scrapped the low-income superannuation contribution, which will hurt the super savings of 3.6 million workers. Scrapping this will rip up to $500 off the super accounts of workers earning $37,000 or less.

All of these policies from the government are in direct contrast to Labor's plans for super and Labor's plans for better economic management. We want to make super stronger and fairer, and we are committed to ensuring the sustainability of the retirement income system. We have outlined and costed detailed plans for high-income superannuation. These plans tighten the excessively generous, unsustainable super tax breaks for the very wealthy. To improve the fairness and sustainability of our super system, we will ensure earnings of more than $75,000 during the retirement phase are taxed at a concessional rate of 15 per cent instead of being tax free. It is a plan that would return more than $14 billion to the budget over the next decade.

The government still does not have a plan to address the excessive superannuation tax concession for high-income earners. Why don't they have a plan? It goes to their dysfunction and chaos. Labor, on the other hand, have been up-front with the community about our plans for super and about our plans for changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax. We have been up-front and we have put all of these plans to the community.

With our policy for negative gearing, we will limit it to new housing from 1 July 2017. All investments made before this date will not be affected by this change and will be fully grandfathered. Also, we will reduce the capital gains discount for assets from the current rate of 50 per cent to 25 per cent—also fully grandfathered. We have been very up-front with these plans. Our reforms will strengthen the economy and provide an additional $32 billion in revenue over 10 years. Labor's plan would be the most important structural budget reform in a decade.

When you talk about superannuation, we are the party of superannuation. All the Liberals and Nationals do is make the system harder and worse, especially for low- and middle-income Australians, particularly for women and people in regional areas who will be severely impacted by the government's harsh changes. On the Labor side, we will continue to fight the government's attacks on super. We will fight them every day here in the parliament and out in the community. We will fight them every day up until the next election. We will stand up against this government's very cruel attacks on workers. In the country, we blame the National Party for these cruel attacks on our superannuation system.

See this speech in context