Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Superannuation Amendment (PSSAP Membership) Bill 2020. I'm going to address my remarks to the second reading amendment which has been moved, calling on the government to commit to making no cuts to the legislated superannuation guarantee for workers. People should be under no illusion about what this government is up to with superannuation. It is laying the groundwork, politically tilling the soil, for trashing Australia's superannuation system and for the Prime Minister to break the promise that he made before the election that superannuation would continue to increase in line with the legislated increases—that next year it would go up by half a per cent and so on, as per the schedule. In practice, what it means if the Prime Minister breaks his promise is that he will cut the pay of millions of working Australians and condemn people to a poorer retirement, because the fact is that a cut to super is a cut to pay. Super is part of your pay in Australia. Those opposite can't make this false little distinction between wages and super. Superannuation in this country is part of a worker's pay and it is incumbent on Labor to stand up for everyday Australians and defend the superannuation system that Labor built.

Australians should be proud of our super system. It's something we're rightly proud of. Superannuation is part of the pay of Australian workers now. It's no longer a privilege, as it once was, just for the elite. It's a right for everyone now, for every worker. Super provides a more dignified retirement for Australians. It makes the Australian economy stronger as well. We now have in this country a $2.8 trillion—that's right—savings pool to invest in jobs and growth, and everyday Australians own more of the country and more of our wealth.

The fact is, without superannuation, the system that Labor built, Australia's debt and budget deficit would be vastly higher, and in the coming years our AAA credit rating would be at risk—well, it's already at risk under this government. The fact is it would be lost if we had not provided as a country, as the Labor government in the 1980s did, for our pensions with an ageing population.

But the political contrast is that the battlelines are drawn on behalf of Australians. They're very clear. Labor created super. We defend the system. We're champions of increases in workers' pay through these legislated increases that were legislated under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government. But let's be clear on the record of the government, of those opposite, of the Liberal Party. They have opposed every single cent that has ever gone into workers' superannuation in this country. Every time legislation has come before this parliament in 40 years the Liberal Party have opposed it. They oppose superannuation. The only indication of support, in fact, has been the promise that the Prime Minister made before the last election that he wouldn't cut superannuation rises. That's the only indication we've ever heard from the Liberal Party that they have even the tiniest level of support for super, and they're about to break it.

The Liberals' plan to cut superannuation and to run the system down will leave working people behind, and they're using COVID now disgracefully as a cover, as an excuse, to destroy super and pursue their decades-long ideological obsession with cutting workers' pay and condemning Australians to a poorer retirement. The fact is—and they said this for five years when the current Prime Minister was the Treasurer and before that the social services minister—they wanted to increase the retirement age for Australians, the pension age, to 70. They wanted everyday Australians to work until they were 70, and now they want to cut their super.

Last week, they froze the age pension. Astoundingly, they froze the age pension for the first time in 23 years. And in the budget they will try and cut super and try and cut people's pay. It's ironic, isn't it—the party of debt and deficit. The first three years I was in this parliament we couldn't get up in a question time without having this mob rant at us like lunatics about debt and deficit disaster. It's funny now: we haven't heard anything of that, have we? We haven't heard about debt and deficit from this Prime Minister now he's overseeing the largest budget deficit this country has ever seen and the first recession for 30 years. Haven't heard much about that—it's not in your talking points, is it, Mr Blue Suit?

Trashing super is economic vandalism. It is the biggest intergenerational rip-off this country has ever seen. What they're really saying by cutting superannuation and not providing for the retirement of Australians is: 'Don't worry, we'll put it on the bill. We'll run up the debt. We'll run up the deficit. Our grandkids can pay for our retirement.'

The numbers are instructive—and we've heard this before—but one of the key rationales for introducing superannuation in the 1980s, the universal scheme, was our ageing population. In the mid-1980s we had about six workers for every retiree. Now it's about four workers for every retiree, and the projections are that within 15 years there'll be three workers for every retiree. Although with the cuts to migration the truth is, on the projections, that day is going to come sooner. We've smoothed the curve, but we haven't changed the trend.

Labor in the 1980s planned for 50 years ahead. Politicians get accused of not planning for the future. Superannuation was one of the generational reforms in this country that provided for workers to have a decent retirement and provided fiscal security for the country. Make no mistake: COVID for the Liberals is just cover for their same ideological wars and their attacks on super, wages, corporate tax, industrial relations, privatisation—we'll see it all in the budget, with a little healthy dose of rent seeking.

The scale of the superannuation system is enormous now, and I think Australians might not always appreciate what has been built over the decades. We have 15 million Australians with superannuation accounts. Sixty per cent of all Australians now have a super account. Eighty per cent of Australians between the age of 25 and 54 in that key working age bracket have a super account. We have $2.8 trillion in assets, and that is projected to grow to $10 trillion by 2040. It's now equal to 140 per cent of our national GDP. They are big numbers. So what do they mean?

Firstly, it means more money and financial independence for retirees. Super is now the first- or second-largest asset that most Australians have. The average balance at the moment is about $270,000 for men and about $157,000 for women. It means most Australians can retire with their pension or part-pension and some superannuation. It's a better standard of living in retirement. And people are living longer. It's not yet enough for most Australians to replace the pension but if we stick with Labor's plan to legislate over the decade to increase it to 12 per cent, it will move in that direction. The median balance will be higher—about $300,000 for women and $600,000 for men. Of course, it also reduces the exposure of Australian households to financial shocks by diversifying their assets.

Just a little aside on the gender gap: you can see from those figures that there is still a huge gender gap in the level of superannuation that men and women will retire with. But the Liberals' plan to cut superannuation will make things even worse for women. Right now, 40 per cent of older single retired women live in abject poverty in this country. They are one of the fastest-growing groups of homeless—single retired women. They are people pushed out of their work—maybe in their 50s. They are people retiring after a divorce or a catastrophe of some form, in their 60s, with no superannuation. A cut to super is a cut to wages that will hit women especially hard.

One of the economically worst aspects of the government's handling of the COVID recession—and it goes to the second reading amendment—is the government allowing people to raid their retirement savings. Instead of providing support to those who need it, in the last few months the government has let over 560,000 Australians withdraw every last cent of their retirement savings. There is literally nothing left in their retirement savings. It might not sound like a lot but, for a 25-year-old, taking $10,000 out now means $233,000 in lost interest by the time they retire. It's enormous.

It's the biggest generational rip-off in Australia's history and it's also the privatisation of stimulus. The work that the government should have been doing on behalf of the community and all taxpayers has been outsourced to the lowest-income—poorest—people in society.

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