Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Indi for her motion on this significant issue that affects hundreds of thousands of working Australians. Strengthening the compliance on superannuation guarantee payments and improving our efforts to recover unpaid superannuation for distressed employees are issues for which I and the member for Indi share great concern.

According to Industry Super Australia, within the electoral division of Mayo in 2016 there were 12,896 affected employees, with an average of $1,748 lost in superannuation per person in a single year. This amounts to a staggering 28 per cent of all employees in my electorate who are entitled to employer-paid superannuation contributions but are underpaid on those entitlements. All too often I am approached by members of my community who have been victims of unscrupulous employers. They sometimes learn only too late that their employer has not been paying their superannuation for many months or even years. I received another such email today. All too often, the employer eventually winds up their business and manages to avoid paying most or the entirety of the outstanding amount of superannuation that they owe their employees. This occurs even when employees notify the Australian Taxation Office of the unpaid superannuation.

Notifying the ATO is currently the only official avenue of recourse available to employees in their attempts to recover their unpaid superannuation, and yet the ATO is singularly ineffective in achieving this task. I have been approached by some constituents who have notified the ATO of unpaid superannuation amounts in the many thousands of dollars, and yet, more than seven years later, the results that the efforts of the ATO have reaped for these individuals can be measured in cents rather than dollars, while the business continues to operate as normal. Sadly, in one case the company concerned declared bankruptcy, and my constituents will never see the remaining unpaid superannuation paid to them. One of them was hoping to approach retirement. I do not seek to come down hard on the ATO, but I do have concerns that this area is not adequately resourced for the job of recovering unpaid superannuation. Employees need a much more direct avenue through which they can recover their superannuation, as the diligence and fervour of the ATO is never going to match an aggrieved employee, and understandably so, because what amounts to another day in the office for the ATO is the future livelihood of an employee.

For every year the employee's superannuation is unpaid, another year of compounding returns and future financial security is lost. Every year also creates a greater burden upon the Australian taxpayer, who must then fund additional and completely avoidable age-pension payments. The current ineffective system is helping only to force people onto government funded income support payments instead of allowing them to provide for themselves, as every ordinary retiree prefers. Much more needs to be done. I welcome the contribution of the Senate Economic References Committee, which reported on its inquiry into superannuation guarantee nonpayment in May this year. I have investigated all of the inquiry's recommendations seriously and at great length, and that is forming the basis for a private member's bill I am drafting on this issue of recovering unpaid superannuation. I look forward to presenting this bill in the coming weeks of parliament, during which I will cover this issue in much more technical detail and in far more time than I have today.

In conclusion, I congratulate the member for Indi on her ongoing work, interest and dedication in seeking a fair go for Australian workers and I urge the government to consider both the substance and intent of this motion most seriously.

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