Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The amendment moved by the member for Fairfax will be supported by the coalition, and I'm glad that the member for Hunter has acknowledged in his contribution the truck drivers of this country and the freight industry as a whole, because, at the moment, the trucking and transport sector is in freefall. I really think that, as a matter of urgency, the Labor government needs to call a summit and needs to hear solutions to what is a calamity in our country when you have companies such as Ron Crouch Transport and Don Watson Transport going to the wall and third-generation, decades-old companies doing it tough. It's so, so difficult because everything, as you know, gets delivered on a truck. Everything—our food, just about every good—at one stage of the chain process gets delivered on a truck.

This bill before the House, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Supporting Choice in Superannuation and Other Measures) Bill 2025, contains six schedules providing employers and agents with access to employees' staple fund information earlier, restrictions on superannuation advertising during onboarding, Rugby World Cup tax exemptions, Australia-Portugal tax treaty deductible gift recipient listings and schedule 6, which is an increase to the wine equalisation tax producer rebate cap. At the early part of my contribution, I want to refer to schedule 6, which is about changes to the WET. Increases to the Wine Equalisation Tax producer rebate cap are important because currently producers can claim refunds of excise up to $350,000 per annum. The bill will increase that refund amount to $400,000 per year.

This rebate will hopefully keep small and medium winegrowers afloat, and, particularly in regional Australia, this is imperative. The Riverina is Australia's second largest wine-producing region. When I say Riverina, I'm being a little bit generous. The Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area has long been in the Riverina. The Riverina, some could argue, starts at Narrandera and go west. It takes in Griffith, Yenda—amazing wine country. That is well represented by the member for Farrer. You look on any given tourism schedule, any given Wikipedia entry, and it's considered the Riverina, and it is. Five of New South Wales's 16 winegrowing regions are in the Riverina. Wine is also linked to the great immigration stories of southern New South Wales, particularly through Italian communities. You've got the Casellas, the De Bortolis—I could go on and on. Some of those names are synonymous of course not just throughout Australia but worldwide. Yellowtail and other iconic brand names have done so much to boost win production in that outstanding winegrowing area of New South Wales.

Demand for cool-climate wines from the Riverina—again, not just the electorate but the regional geographic areas—is strong. Riesling is seeing a great resurgence domestically. Then you look at the vineyards at Cottontail Wines, Wagga Wagga, Borambola Wines—it's been operating for more than 30 years; McMullen's there. They're doing an outstanding job. These wineries add to the dynamic regional tourism offering and provide perfect venues for birthday parties, meetings and weddings. The Wild Vine are out on the road to Oura. They're an outstanding wedding venue, and their vineyards are very well looked after. Charles Sturt University is doing some great research, and it's home to the next generation of, we hope, Australian and international winemakers, so their own wine stands out as well.

In the world renowned Tumbarumba region, we have premium cool-climate wine and grapes, with 19 vineyards and 3,000 tonnes of grapes crushed annually. They're reasonable numbers for a regional winery. The Murrumbateman wine region is home to 20 world-class boutique wineries: Clonkilla, Nick O'Leary Wines, Helm Wines, Shaw Wines—all outstanding, just to name a few. I know the mayor of Yass Valley Council, Jasmin Jones, is one of the great promoters of the wineries there, and she's also very worried about what she describes as an industrial junkyard with the take-up of arable farmland with 260-metre-high wind towers. She's extremely worried, as she should be. That's cool-climate wine country, and it's tourism country. It should not be, in the reckless race to renewables, taken up with those monstrosities that they call wind turbines.

These wines that I mentioned just a little bit earlier from Murrumbateman and elsewhere around the Yass Valley appear on curated wine lists at restaurants around the world as well as the dinner tables in the Riverina and also sometimes in the Hunter Valley, in South Australia and elsewhere—Margaret River; I could go on. They're very good wine-producing country too, but they all know the value of Riverina and southern New South Wales wines.

The coalition successfully implemented the Australia-United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement, which removed the five per cent tariffs on Riverina wines destined for the UK. This was a win for our producers and the British public.

I have to say that in any tariff arrangements or free trade agreements that are signed—and I know Senator Farrell is well aware of this. He likes a good red. I have been with him on a trip or two, and he knows the value of making sure that our winemakers are looked after in any trade arrangements. I know that the member for Page did a good deal of shadowing in that trade phase, but he also, as a minister in the former coalition government, understood the value of getting the right arrangements when it comes to free trade agreements. I could mention the member for Wannon there too.

We do support many measures in this bill, but—and this probably comes to the very core—it shouldn't have been bundled in this way. Those six schedules are, you could argue, disparate. Labor has stitched together a series of largely unrelated measures and wrapped them around contentious superannuation changes that it knows we oppose. It is clever. It's what Labor does. They are always good at politics and never really that great at policy. This approach is designed to force a false choice on the parliament: accept the superannuation changes or be accused of blocking sensible unrelated measures. It's wedge politics. It's not good lawmaking, but it's what, unfortunately, Labor does. We know that Labor has a 50 seat majority, and we know that this bill will pass. We know that it'll go to the Senate, and we know that Labor will do deals with the senators who hold the balance of power, and so on we go.

When it comes to superannuation, we also understand that it is one of those things that we all have and that we all need, but it's something that we probably hold at arm's length. Not a lot of people truly understand the power of superannuation, but I'll tell you who do understand the power of superannuation: those Australians caught up in the First Guardian and Shield collapse. That, for some, is an absolute tragedy—their life savings just gone in an instant. People don't need, at that stage of their lives, to have the rug pulled out from underneath them, as they have. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission, ASIC, is taking further steps to support thousands of Australians who invested in the Shield Master Fund and the First Guardian Master Fund after the collapse. So they should. I really worry about this whole situation. I know that the then shadow Assistant Treasurer, the member for Cowper, was very strong and extremely vocal on this.

The ABC reported as recently as 10 February:

The government is planning to tighten the rules around managed investment schemes and give corporate watchdog ASIC more power to demand information.

So it should. The article continues:

It comes following the collapse of major funds Shield Master Fund and First Guardian.

Consultation on Treasury's proposals closes on the 27th of this month. I do hope earnestly that the government has thrown the net out wide enough to get the proper consultation, and I do hope that the right people have been eyeballing those most affected by this corporate collapse—this collapse of superannuation funds for so many people. The ABC article continues:

About 12,000 Australians—

not a small number—

poured $1.1 billion in retirement savings into the two funds, which collapsed in 2024 and 2025 amid what incoming ASIC chair Sarah Court has described as "industrial-scale misconduct".

Investors in First Guardian, many of whom switched from highly regulated super funds into the product, face little prospect of recovery directly from the fund, with liquidators in December saying just $1.6 million of $446 million tipped into it had been recovered—not enough to pay their fees.

In order to recover money for investors, the corporate watchdog has instead launched a series of lawsuits against companies responsible for overseeing the fund.

Now, at the risk of Labor just saying, 'Well, what did you do when you were in government?' as a parliament entirety, what was done? We should have been onto this, and ASIC should have perhaps been doing more to ensure that these companies just don't go under. If you're somebody near retirement, if you're somebody looking forward to putting your feet up and enjoying your twilight years, knowing that you've got so much invested in these superannuation funds, and that will be what you live off for the rest of your life, and all of a sudden that money disappears—place yourself in their shoes. It must be so worrying, so bad for your health. I know parliamentarians across the aisle feel for those people. We should, we must and we have to in order to do better as parliamentarians. ASIC must do better. Corporate watchdogs must. We must absolutely ensure that this cannot happen again.

I know it's happened before. I know we've had situations that have occurred previously, but it's not right. It's simply not right. The collapses of the First Guardian and Shield schemes have, as the ABC quite correctly reported, exposed deep flaws in the regulation of Australia's $4.3 trillion superannuation sector. It's a massive amount of money, but the ordinary, average, everyday Australians relied on that super. They relied on those two major companies, Shield and First Guardian, and now they have nothing. They face a very bleak prospect.

The ABC also says:

The scandal has also thrown into the spotlight gaps in the regulation of parts of the financial services industry.

Both First Guardian and Shield were managed investment schemes, a type of fund first established in the late 1990s—

and the story goes on. Both sides of government are accountable for this—I'll be perfectly upfront and say that—but it's now up to Labor, who are in government, to do what they can to help rectify a very sad and bad situation for those investors, many of whom now have nothing. They've got absolutely nothing, and they were looking to rely on that to live out their lives in reasonable prosperity, and they have now been left high and dry.

I commend to the House the amendment that's been moved by the member for Fairfax. The legislation has way too much packed into it, in typical Labor fashion.

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