Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Bill 2025 has been a long time coming for people on my side of politics. This bill is common sense. This bill will be welcome news to all Australian workers. For businesses doing the right thing: keep doing what you're doing. This bill will have minimal impact on you, because it's not about you, the businesses that pay their employees super on time. This is about giving tools to the employers that might get a bit caught up and accidentally not pay on time, or the employers or businesses for whom not paying super on time has become part of their business model or who are unable to pay super on time.

It is a fact in this country that far too many workers go without super. Along the way, some in business in Australia have not accepted that super is not their money but their employees' money. Many, many years ago, this parliament, with the support of industry and the trade union movement, agreed to set up the superannuation industry. Today, it is worth billions upon billions of dollars, safeguarding savings for Australian workers for their retirement. It was founded on that fundamental principle: super is employees' pay. They defer collecting it, and it is kept in safeguard by superannuation accounts until they retire, but essentially it is their pay. They have earnt it.

As I stated at the beginning, the majority of businesses do the right thing. I acknowledge that. They put the pay aside and pay super. All of us in this place receive super on time, as do employees of the Parliamentary Service. The majority of businesses do the right thing and pay super on time. Advancement of technology has made it so much easier for our small businesses. The ATO already supports businesses using the Single Touch Payroll data system to ensure workers are paid super on time. This is how the ATO will enforce the legislation that is before us.

What we are proposing in this legislation is that, from 1 July 2026, employers will be required to pay superannuation guarantee contributions on the same day as wages instead of quarterly, aligning, for the first time, your regular pay with your regular super payment. Employers must ensure that contributions are received by an employees' super fund within seven days of payday. This change will make it easier for employees to track their super. It will ensure that they earn on their savings but also ensure that employers have the ability to manage cash flow.

I know those opposite like to claim that people in Labor don't understand small business. It is just a falsehood. We do, many people on this side of the House being small business owners themselves or having close connections with families through small business. I myself grew up in a family of small business. I can remember the work my parents did managing cash flow in the running of their small businesses, a second-hand furniture business and then a holiday hire company.

Cash flow with small business has always been king, and the ability to manage cash flow is critical, so I can understand why some small businesses, that are so focused on the day-to-day running of their business and delivering the goods and services, can sometimes get caught out with that super bill. Have they put enough aside? That is why this reform will help them. The Australian tax office and the Treasurer have already committed to supporting businesses to adapt to this system and manage their super. There will be a way in place, working with chambers of commerce and with the ATO, to ensure small businesses can transition to this system.

Those who will not like this bill are those businesses who are doing the wrong thing, undermining all of us, undermining the businesses doing the right thing and ripping off their workers—the ones who build that into their business model: the phoenixers, the people who will go and undercut or underquote another small business because they bank on never having to pay their super bill.

Before coming to this place, my background was working for the United Workers Union, in their cleaning and security divisions. Time and time again we saw dodgy cleaning companies and security companies undercutting someone who did the right thing by their workers—paid them properly—and then phoenixing at the point when the ATO chased them for unpaid super. Those workers would lose their jobs. The company would go into bankruptcy and would phoenix. The workers would lose their super. Through the Fair Entitlement Guarantee and, before that, GEERS, we would try to manage payment of what they were owed. The ATO, of course, would miss out on payments, and whilst, quite often, through the federal government-backed scheme, we could recover annual leave, they lost their sick leave and they lost their super. It was just accepted that you would not get that super.

This changes that. It catches out those businesses early and it will help break that phoenixing model that exists. It will be a game changer for those service based industries, such as cleaning and security and so many others, where wages are a critical part of the competitive tender. But, most importantly, apart from helping to create fair competition in those industries so businesses can compete against businesses on quality, not on the fact that you'll rip off super from your employees, those employees who've done that hard work and who might have been paid their weekly, fortnightly or monthly wages will also know that their super is being paid.

Since the creation of super, far too many people in our history have missed out on super, and many people in this place have shared those stories. Quite often it was when they were younger and they worked in hospitality or in a retail business, in those early days—and in those early days of super too. Quite often, when I'm talking to people in my electorate, I talk about my generation being the generation of super. Like so many others, I started working at 14 and nine months—legitimately, of course. I worked in my family's businesses. When you're working in a family business, it's a little bit of pocket money for those hours that you do when you're in the truck helping your dad with the deliveries or helping with the till. But I was 14 and nine months when I got my first job, and it was early days.

My generation, the people now in their 40s and 30s, will have a working life of super when they retire. Technically, for when it is planned, we should have enough to retire on. But far too many people in their 30s and 40s missed out on those early days of super because we didn't have the system set up. It was paid quarterly, and not all businesses did the right thing and put it aside. And there was the phoenixing that I talked about.

One of the reasons I got actively involved in the union movement was that I was one of those young workers at university who didn't get paid their super. I was being paid cash, and I said: 'Hey, this isn't right. I've got a pay slip here, but there's no super on it.' It was only when I started to ask questions that I discovered I actually wasn't being paid properly. There was something really dodgy going on with my pay slip. I got sacked because I was a casual worker, and I brought that up. But the bar didn't want to have a bar of it. So that was one of the reasons why I started to get actively involved in my union. I was one of those young workers who said: 'I should be getting pay slips. I've got this dodgy thing that doesn't look like a pay slip. Where's my super?' That is the experience of far too many young people. Even with all the advances in technology, where we're at today, this is still happening. This bill will change that.

This bill will ensure that super, for the first time since its creation, will be paid on payday. From 21 July 2026, employers will be required to pay super guarantee contributions on the same day as wages. The changes will make it easier for businesses, easier for employees, and easier for the ATO to detect missing payments earlier—before debts become unrecoverable and before some businesses are unable to pay. The legislation also updates the super guarantee charge, which is the penalty employers face if they fail to pay super on time. Under the new framework, the super guarantee charge will apply for each payday an employer fails to pay super in full and on time. The updated super guarantee charge includes national earnings, administrative uplift and choice loading as well as a number of other ways to help ensure that employers pay on time.

As I said before, this isn't just a great advancement and support for employees, to make sure that they get what they're owed. For those industries where wages are a big part of competition, it helps to ensure an equal playing field so employers who are doing the right thing are not disadvantaged in the market because of employers doing the wrong thing. It's something that's quite often forgotten in this debate. They think it's about employees versus employers, but it's not. It's about employees and good employers having the opportunity to compete in a fair playing field on the very fundamental that is their wages. This is what they've earned.

I'm reminded, as I stand in this debate, of all the heartbreaking cases that have come into my office and into all of our offices. People ask, 'I realised too late I didn't get paid my super; what can I do?' Standing in this place, I have to acknowledge Meryl Birch. She and her brother first came to see me when I first got elected. Her's is a legacy case that goes back to the previous two federal members for Bendigo. They knew her brother wasn't being paid super. They tried to pursue it, to get the money owed to her brother, and it never came. They went through the ATO, and they pursued the business. When the business eventually went bankrupt, they tried to get the money any way they could. It never came. She continues to try to get justice for her brother—even though he has, sadly, passed away—because it is money that he earned as part of his wages. He never got that money because it was deferred.

If this had been in place from the inception of super, then Meryl may have never had to go through this. Her brother may have been able to enjoy his retirement with his retirement savings, through super, that he would have earned. Meryl and her brother are just one example of the countless cases that we have all seen come through unpaid super and the impact it has on people's lives and their retirements.

Then there are the hundreds of thousands of other people who have just written it off: 'It doesn't matter; I've written it off. I can't cry over what I can't fix.' This reform will be a game changer for workers. It will ensure that every dollar they've earnt in their super will be there when they retire. It will make it easier for business to be able to pay on time and equal the playing field, disrupting the way in which the dodgy ones use it as part of their business model to phoenix. In construction, cleaning, security and other service based industries, it is real.

I'm proud to be part of a government that is making this reform happen, and I am ready and willing to work with our local small businesses to make sure they're aware of the changes they need to make to ensure they're ready for this. We can make this happen so it is a win-win for all. Ultimately, it's good for workers, it's good for businesses and it's good for the future.

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