Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker Gillespie, can I start by saying thank you for pronouncing the electorate of Goldstein correctly. This is not a point of pedantry; it's extremely important because it is named after one of Australia's greatest suffragettes, Vida Goldstein, and every time we mispronounce it the member for Whitlam and others disrespect Vida Goldstein and her legacy. I think it's very important to get it right and I think it's a pretty basic expectation that I refer to other members' electorates correctly as well.

In saying that, thank you for the opportunity to speak on this bill and this motion, because it's an important piece of legislation around something relatively minor but it's a pathway for making sure Commonwealth public servants are able to be in the best position to contribute to their own superannuation system. Despite the deceptive arguments put forward by the member for Whitlam, the coalition government has no issue with superannuation. More to the point, I don't think he quite realises that the superannuation system existed before 1992. In fact, people used to have superannuation as private citizens. It was actually quite common. People had it. There were even public sector services as well. Private businesses had it. They had their own funds. But in their mad ideological world view—self-referential, where they see themselves as the only basis for the success of the country—the Australian Labor Party have a collective memory lapse on this basic point of history. For them, this debate about superannuation isn't actually about Australians. It's actually about themselves, the Labor Party, because the Labor Party only see the success of Australia through the political success of themselves, so they constantly refer back to their own legacy to try and justify and rationalise their existence. They do not see the success of our great country through the material aspirations and achievements of individual citizens and families. It's one of the great dividing lines across this chamber.

The Liberal Party, the coalition, want to build up strong Australians and strong Australian families, because we don't want people who are dependent; we want people who are independent. The Labor Party are mad ideologues. They simply cannot confront a brutal reality—that the most important thing for retirement security for an Australian is not a large super balance; it is to own your own home. The hard evidence shows this. If you own your own home, then you can get additional assistance if you need it if there is a gap. If you do not own your own home and you rent in retirement, then you face ever-escalating costs and you still then have to draw it down from the taxpayer. But, no; they think there is some sort of logic that means a 20-year-old, rather than saving to buy their first home, should prioritise sacrificing their savings into a superannuation fund that, funnily enough, is controlled by the Labor Party's political mates. This debate is not about retirement security for them. This debate is about power for them.

This is not a new debate. It has gone on for many years. Go back and look at two different speeches, by Ben Chifley and Sir Robert Menzies, in 1949. You can go and read them on the Museum of Australian Democracy website. At the time, Ben Chifley talked about how we have to use Commonwealth-state housing agreements to promote a nation of renters, to make people dependent on others and, more critically, dependent on government. What did Sir Robert Menzies do in the election, which he won? He talked about how we had to use Commonwealth-state housing agreements to create a nation of homeowners, of people who have an interest in the state, in the status quo, in the foundations of this country, because it would build independence for individuals and families as the foundation for a great nation.

This debate, for the Labor Party, is about making dependency, and dependency where they can harvest the fees of the superannuation of young Australians' savings to be redirected back to themselves. Today the Labor Party are not the party of organised workers. They once were. They once believed that workers should save and own their own home. That was once something they believed in. But today they are not a party of organised workers; they are a party of organised capital. You heard that explicitly in the member for Whitlam's speech, where he talked about how he wanted to use people's money to decide how the economy should be run. It's trading the invisible hand for the shadowed fist of the Labor Party and their mates over the capital of this country and the future direction of this country. In pursuit of making this argument, he put forward a silly amendment. The member for Whitlam, like every other member on the other side of this chamber—although I exclude some of the Independents; they had the good sense to oppose it—supported Labor's giant retiree tax, which would have whacked Australian retirees, those people who've sacrificed and saved, in spite of what they were compelled to do by the law. They would have lost a third of their income overnight—not 0.5 per cent; a third. It would have pushed people below the poverty line.

Before the last election they mocked and derided me and my colleagues, who gave a platform, and made mischievous slurs and deceptions to the Australian people to distract from the reality. They said it only affected the wealthy. We gave case after case of people with a disability and those who were living very close to the poverty line, people on $20,000 or $30,000 a year. It was only after the election and the shellacking they deserved, because they wouldn't listen to the Australian people, that the Leader of the Opposition finally acknowledged they'd got it wrong.

In this debate, we have a lot of deceptions continuing today. The latest was only the other day from Industry Super Australia, who outlined that I am, apparently, 'a hypocrite', because we in this chamber get 15.4 per cent of superannuation on our salary. I have said it in this chamber and I will say it again and again: I only expect the legal mandated component, and the rest should be cashed in as salary. That is an utterly consistent position. I have no reservations about that, whatsoever, because superannuation is only deferred wages. As I've argued that it is better to help young Australians buy their homes now, I also argue that it is better for people to have access or the choice of access to that capital now. And, if they want to contribute more to superannuation because they see there is some tax benefit to it, that is their freedom to choose.

By the way, while we talk about hypocrisy, I am curious, Deputy Speaker Gillespie, although I don't expect you to know the answer: what is the superannuation contribution of those employees at Industry Super Australia? Do you think it's the 12 per cent they want or do you think it's the legal component that's required? What we know is that the constant obsession with trying to increase the amount of capital, in the hands of funds who want to fester it for fees and harvest it because they know that young Australians don't pay attention to their superannuation until much later in life, comes at the expense of two things. Firstly, it's wages. In fact, the member for Whitlam doesn't even try and pretend it doesn't come at the expense of wages anymore. We welcome that sort of new honesty. They used to contest this point!

The problem they had was that the Grattan Institute—not a body I normally quote, I have to declare—has made it nakedly clear, looking at long-term research about the impact. Of course, the Treasury has always held this view. The Australian Council of Social Services—this is really starting to be an unlikely group of people who get together on the same page—acknowledges that it has an impact on wage growth and that lower-income Australians need that money now. Then, of course, we have Industry Super Australia's own research, which they tried to hide but which through the economics committee we managed to get out. It clearly showed that, yes, increasing the compulsory super guarantee will have an impact on wages now. But there was no-one clearer than the Reserve Bank Governor, before the House economics committee, in response to questions I asked only a couple of weeks ago. He made it crystal clear that increasing the compulsory super guarantee would have a direct impact on wage growth, an explicit correlation with wage growth. Under further questioning, he pointed out that there is also a correlation with the number of Australians who'd be employed.

Let's just think about that now. In the middle or start of a COVID recession—and we know we're there, because of the virus—the Australian Labor Party would rather prioritise money that can go into the funds managed by their friends, to fester for fees, than create the jobs that unemployed Australians, particularly young Australians need, right now. They are not the Labor Party anymore. They're the industry fund party. They're the organised capital party. They would rather put their own interests ahead of those of workers. That's why I find their position so untenable, so difficult to digest, because they're literally seeking to advance their own interests at the expense of workers. Admittedly, we know they've always done that through the industrial relations system, but never has it been more nakedly clear and, more to the point, costly, not just to those who are workers today but the people who are unemployed, who, I would hope, we all desperately need to get back into the workforce to rebuild the strength of this country.

If people don't have a job then they're not going to be making contributions to the superannuation system. But that is the mad ideology that sits at the heart of the Labor Party's approach to superannuation: it's how they empower themselves, not Australians and their families. It's how they make sure that young Australians can't own their own home, so they can promote dependence, rather than what we on this side want, which is Australians having jobs so they can save for their retirement and also buy their own home so they can be strong and independent themselves and not always turn to Canberra when they need support. That's how you build the strength of a great country. It isn't from Canberra bureaucrats or even from decisions that we make in this place. The wisdom of the nation sits around the kitchen tables of family homes. I would rather see 26 million Australians empowered over 600,000 bureaucrats in Canberra, because that is the true foundations of a strong nation.

While sometimes we get into a debate on these issues, and the member for Whitlam likes to wax lyrical and carry on like, well, I won't say, this debate goes to the core of the type of country we want to be. I think that as a country—and I hope every member on this side of the chamber believes as strongly as I do—we want a nation of empowered individuals and families and communities as a foundation of a great country, not a strong Canberra. But that is what our political opponents want. That is why they sit on that side of the chamber. When in doubt, whether it is through the government or through the funds that their mates control, they see themselves, not Australians, as the solution to the problem; to give themselves, not Australians, more control; to empower themselves, and not Australians.

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