Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As always, Madam Chair! The member for Fenner wants to know about facts. Here are some interesting facts. The interesting fact is there this: as Treasury pointed out, our superannuation system saves about $9 billion in pension payments, but costs $38 billion in fund management fees. That, by the way, is three times what Australian households pay for electricity and energy prices—three times. And do those opposite come in here and demand we get a better deal for the people on low incomes and from disadvantaged backgrounds? Or do they stand up for the ongoing fees and charges of the multimillionaire funds managers in industry super. We know what they do. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the tens of millions of dollars that they will receive in political donations over the next 10 years.

An honourable member interjecting—

Unfortunately it's not garbage. I wish it were untrue, but the truth is that's exactly what's happening. They are putting their donors ahead of the interests of ordinary Australians, and they do it every single time. We know that if you actually want to increase the health and welfare of ordinary Australians, you do that through economic settings that encourage innovation. We know that that happens when you allow people to take a risk and when the risk pays off they get to keep the rewards of that risk. Those opposite, if anyone is ever successful, the first thing they stand up here and do is say 'We need to increase taxes on those people.' It was $387 billion at the last election that they wanted to tax them more. You also need to allow people, when they fail, to at least have the capacity to be forgiven for that failure. This government has introduced innovations in insolvency laws, which are still to be passed, that will allow people to get forgiven when they make mistakes. My question to the minister is—

An honourable member interjecting—

Thank you for the prompting! My question is: can the minister update the chamber on the economic recovery plan for Australia?

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