Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Moncrieff for the opportunity to speak on the subject of superannuation. Universal superannuation is a proud achievement of the Hawke and Keating Labor governments, and it came into being in 1992. The member for Moncrieff's concern for young workers, demonstrated by her motion, is, I hope, a measure of her strong support for universal superannuation and for the rights of young workers, because back in 1992 the former member for Moncrieff, Kathy Sullivan, and the rest of the coalition members voted against universal superannuation. They were wholly opposed to the point where the then member for Bradfield, Mr Connolly, stood up in this place on 5 May 1992 and spoke on the third reading of the bill, saying, 'This is simply a sordid deal between the government and the ACTU.' Further, he said it was only the Liberal and National parties who would stand and demonstrate that 'compulsory superannuation legislation of this nature is fundamentally flawed'. He referred in his speech to the year 2020 and stated that the legislation would not address the fiscal challenge of a greying society.

Well, here we are in 2023. It is worth considering just how much superannuation an ordinary 20-year-old worker, to refer to the member's motion, would have had in their superannuation account today if the coalition had managed to prevail in 1992 and thereafter. The 20-year-old would be 51 years old today. I'm not 51 myself yet, but it's a pretty familiar age to many people here. How much would that 51-year-old have in their superannuation? Nothing, nil, zip, zero. Fortunately Paul Keating and Labor did prevail in 1992, and as a result the average 51-year-old worker today has a super account of hundreds of thousands of dollars and growing, because compulsory superannuation isn't fundamentally flawed, as the coalition bleated in 1992; it's excellent. Australians now have a total of over $3.5 trillion invested in superannuation, and our retirement savings system is the envy of most of the world.

Before the member for Moncrieff brings motions into the House on the subject of superannuation, she might want to consider her party's hopeless record in this area. Obviously, and as the Treasurer has stated on this matter, future governments and parliaments will have something to say about super. If an average 20-year-old today is looking at a super balance of $3 million some 40 years down the track—and that would be a good thing, although I don't think the member's maths will stack up—then future governments will need to consider what to do about that. This motion isn't about deep-seated concern held by the coalition for retirees in the year 2063; it's a furphy. This motion is all about the coalition scrabbling about fiercely to arrest the slide of their vote among young Australians right now, in 2023.

The ANU found only one in four people under the age of 40 voted for the coalition in 2022, the lowest percentage since their records started in 1987. At the election a year ago, young voters took a good, hard look at the coalition and emphatically said no. They said no for lots of reasons. I'm sure very few of them were thinking about their retirements in the 2060s when they voted. The reasons young voters turned away from the coalition are, according to the surveys, climate change, integrity in politics, cost of living and housing—all areas where the new government has been very active. Just a few days ago the Prime Minister announced a further $2 billion for social and affordable housing, because regardless of Liberals conveniently ignoring the government's mandate and the Greens simply ignoring reality, we have a mandate to act on housing, and we are acting.

To return to super, what young people might like to consider in their area of super is just how much the coalition has in fact cost young people through their delays in increases to superannuation guarantee. The delays occasioned by coalition governments—about seven years worth of delays over the past decade—must have reduced the eventual super balances of young people by tens of thousands of dollars. Further, we have enacted payday super to take effect from July 2026. The coalition were told about the need to take action on unpaid super way back 2015 by the National Audit Office. They were told that 690,000 Australian workers were being dudded to the tune of $2.6 billion every year, and they squibbed it. It must have cost young workers thousands since then. Labor has acted. We on this side are very happy for the coalition to keep bringing motions on superannuation.

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