Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Technology and the Future of Work) Share this | Hansard source

It's the first time I've spoken in the parliament from here in my office in Clayton. It's quite serendipitous, I think, that part of the title of the bill that I'm contributing to is the word 'flexible'. I will use this opportunity, through you, Deputy Speaker Bird, to thank the Speaker's office for the role that was played by that office in making sure that we've got this opportunity to contribute to the remote parliament. The rules that the ACT government put in place for us to be able to attend Canberra really counted out a lot of people who represent communities and also have significant caring responsibilities, but it is so important to me that I be able to continue to speak for the people I represent in Hotham, so it's great to have this opportunity to make a contribution remotely.

I am also really glad to have the chance to speak a little bit about superannuation in the debate today. The bill that is before the House, the Treasury Laws Amendment (More Flexible Superannuation) Bill 2020, is a fairly straightforward piece of legislation. It essentially aligns the super system with the increase to the pension age that was made several years ago. So it is a fairly straightforward piece of legislation, and Labor is going to support its passage through the parliament.

There is not a lot to debate in the bill before the House, but I do want to spend a little bit of time speaking to the second reading amendment that was moved by the member for Whitlam. We are here today passing a bill that will make it more possible for people who are nearing their retirement age to make concessional contributions into their superannuation. What we should be doing is having a much bigger and much broader debate about the dangerous attacks that are underway at the moment on our superannuation—in particular, by a group of Liberals who are sitting on the back bench at the moment. It is not just a debate here about superannuation, because when we look at all of the things that are critical to Australians as they come into those later years of their lives, whether it is our aged-care system, our pension system or our superannuation system, we see that these three pillars of our retirement system are under significant attack at the moment by the Liberals, and that really needs to be called out by the parliament today.

Superannuation is one of the most practical, innovative, beneficial policies that I believe has ever been passed by this parliament. It's certainly up there with Medicare and the National Disability Insurance Scheme in terms of Australian policies that are looked at with great envy, I have to say, by public policymakers around the world.

I think all Australians who are listening today would be well aware that we face a very quickly ageing population. Between 2013, when I joined the parliament, and 2040, the number of Australians over the age of 65 is going to double and the number of Australians over the age of 85 is going to treble. It is very clear that, if all of these people end up on the age pension, it is going to be a responsibility that can't be effectively paid for by the share of people who are in work, which gets smaller as the share of people who are in retirement gets larger.

We in the parliament get criticised a lot for many things, and I am, of course, very supportive of the democratic system that facilitates that. But one of the things we get criticised a lot for is that the parliament doesn't make enough decisions that are for the really long term in thinking about the problems that are in the decades ahead. We also get criticised a lot because there is not enough collaboration on public policy. Superannuation is probably the best recent example we have of a government doing exactly those things. It saw a problem many decades ahead and it brought together unions, employees and employers, and the government as the representative of all of these groups, and it actually solved the problem. It said that we want to make sure that Australians have dignity in retirement, that they are able to live a good-quality life in their later years, and we are going to create a new system that enables them to do that. This is something we should be really proud of. It is one of those special exceptions.

What have been the impacts of this policy so far? I think they have been pretty outstanding. One of the first things to say is that literally millions of Australians have retired in greater comfort than they otherwise would have, because of the superannuation system, and millions more will follow. We are here, literally, to improve the quality of life of the people that we represent, and superannuation is one of the main ways that we are doing that today as a parliament.

I don't want the important economic benefits that superannuation has brought to our country to get lost in this debate. We are now the 14th largest economy in the world. We have the 55th largest population of all the countries in the world. But because of superannuation we have the fourth largest reserve of capital in retirement savings that can be used to promote growth in our economy. An enormous amount of money has been amassed—$3 trillion so far. I think it is set to be $10 trillion by the end of this decade. This is an extraordinary amount of money, which is being used to do good across all of our country.

One of the best things about our superannuation system is that, in other countries in the world, it is rich people who own shares and it is rich people who get to participate in investing in things like ports, railways and important pieces of infrastructure—but not in Australia. Because of superannuation, we have created a situation where almost every Australian who is an adult actually owns shares. This is something that is very much the domain of the privileged in other parts of the world.

So this is a policy that's delivered enormous benefits already to our system. That's pretty obvious, I think, to most of the people that I represent, who are genuinely non-partisan watchers of public policy, except if you are an ideology filled Liberal who, instead of all of the benefits that I've talked about, sees some weird communist threat. I genuinely do not understand where this kind of weird suspicion and paranoia has come from. I'm sure there's a Reddit thread out there with a list of all the ways that superannuation is apparently doing damage to our country, but I genuinely don't understand it when there are so many benefits that are pretty clear.

For ideological reasons, the Liberals have opposed superannuation as a concept from its very beginning. They have opposed every single increase that has gone into superannuation, and this attempt that we believe will come to delay the superannuation increases that are due to Australians starting next year is quite consistent with the history of how the Liberals have approached this subject. For the rest of Australia, COVID is an opportunity for us to bring the country together and to really deliver on some core national goals, but not so for this group of Liberal backbenchers, who instead see essentially a political opportunity to trash a system that they have long had under the gun.

So let's just have a look at some of the things that have happened so far. First, there was the early-drawdown scheme. There is no question in the minds of any Labor politician that superannuation belongs to the account holder—no question about that. We have existing hardship provisions that are built into the system to enable people who are in severe financial distress to draw down on their superannuation, as they should be allowed to do. Everyone supports that system. But what the government did instead was to throw out the rulebook when it comes to who can draw down on super. This was basically a scheme that faced no probity whatsoever, and they created a situation where for many Australians that was their only choice. They created a set of policies—JobKeeper and JobSeeker. We were supportive of the big pieces of those policies, but they left a lot of people behind. Think about casual workers, who are probably the biggest example here. We have a higher share of casuals in our workforce than we've ever had in Australian history, yet many, many casuals were left out of having any financial support. So what were these people meant to do? Basically, a situation was created where we had a completely unforeseeable crisis, there was a set of policies in which they didn't have any way to get financial help when they needed it, and then the government created an easy pathway for them to access savings that have been put there and stored away for their retirement. So of course what we've seen is a situation where low-income Australians have had to ransack their retirement savings in order to stay afloat during this difficult period.

I was elected to this parliament with an obligation to try to improve the quality of life for the people that I represent. If I were a Liberal, today I would be hanging my head in shame, because what they have facilitated is a reduced standard of living for many, many Australians in the decades to come. We know that, if a young person drew down the full $20,000 from their retirement savings, they might be $100,000 worse off in their retirement than they would otherwise be. That is a disgrace. It is a disgrace that the government created a situation where that was the only opportunity that people had to keep their heads above water. But we know why they did it. They did it because they don't believe in superannuation. They don't believe that we should create a system that assists people to have a good quality of life in their retirement. So that is the early-drawdown scheme.

Now we're hearing this steady drumbeat from the other side of the House about how we should forgo a scheduled superannuation increase. I want to talk about some of the arguments for this. Just to back up a little bit, 9.5 per cent of people's earnings is put aside as superannuation for them to keep for their savings. We've always had an aspiration to get to 12 per cent, which is just going to make sure that more people have enough superannuation to live off or that, if they don't have enough superannuation to live off and are going to use part of the pension, they have a better standard of living in retirement, because that is what we're here for: to improve the wellbeing of the people that we represent. What the Liberals are going to argue is that there's a trade-off, essentially, between the increase that you might be able to negotiate at work for wages and the increase that you'll get through superannuation.

I just want to address this argument today, because if we were to believe that then we should be able to look back and see that the superannuation increase was deferred by Tony Abbott, so we should have seen a period of great wages growth, therefore, because essentially the Liberals would argue that you've forgone a pay increase in your super and you should see it in your salary packet. What we have just been through is a period of horrifically stagnant wages growth in our country. That is to say: just because people didn't get an increase in their superannuation, it did not lead to any benefit in their pay packet.

So, when Liberal politicians come to Australians over the next coming months and say, 'Don't worry, we're going to defer the pay increase you'd get through super, but you'll make up for it in your wages,' I really want people to call them out on this argument, because on what planet would you have to live to think that Australian wage-earners are going to be in a great position to argue for a wage rise over the coming years? We're going to have unemployment in Australia higher than it has probably ever been in our whole history as a country. We are going to have a situation where underemployment is going to be profoundly difficult for many, many Australians. And, yet, the Liberals are going to say to people, 'Don't worry—you're going to be in a great position to argue for a wage rise.' Come on! They are just dreaming if they think that argument makes any sense at all. The truth is that, for many Australians, the legislated super increase is the best chance they are going to have to get a significant pay rise over the coming years, and Labor will fight every day to make sure that that increase goes to Australians.

The other argument I want to briefly address will be the one that comes from the other side of the chamber that says, 'Don't worry—you're going to not get your pay rise through superannuation, but that's going to lead to fantastic jobs growth, because businesses will suddenly be able to afford to take on more employees.' That has got to be absolute hogwash, and I tell you why I know that: we have just had a dry run of this argument through the discussion that's happened about penalty rates. Australians who are listening in will remember that, a few years ago, the Australian government—under Tony Abbott, under Malcolm Turnbull, under Scott Morrison—stepped back while penalty rates were cut for literally hundreds of thousands of Australians. So, one week, a bunch of Australians went to work on a Saturday or a Sunday, and then they went back the next week, did exactly the same work and got paid less for it. The government allowed that to happen. The reason they allowed that to happen, so they argued, was that jobs growth would result from it.

We've had the opportunity now to see penalty rates cut through, for a few cycles, and I'd encourage Australians that are interested in this to go and look at the labour force data and see that not a single job was created from that. So the federal government stood back and watched hundreds of thousands of Australians get a pay cut, for not a single job to be created from it. All that happened there was a bunch of people got less money in their pockets than they otherwise would have. And that is exactly what we are going to see if we allow this superannuation increase be delayed further for Australians.

There are many other fanciful arguments being put forward. One of the particularly silly ones is that, for some reason, housing affordability will be improved by cutting the superannuation increase going forward—complete hogwash. I'll address that at another time because I am running out of time here, but I just want to leave the parliament with one thought. I come here to the parliament representing 130,000 people who have put their trust in me to make sure that I protect their living standards and, where possible, I improve their living standards into the future. The superannuation increase will do just that, and that is why Labor will consistently argue over the coming months that we need to protect Australians' quality of life in retirement and protect them against a weird ideological crusade from the Liberals that has no foundation in reality.

See this speech in context