Alice Jordan-Baird (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Supporting Choice in Superannuation and Other Measures) Bill 2025, brought forward by the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, and I commend him for doing so. When I was 16 years old I worked in hospo. I was young, enthusiastic and excited to join the workforce and to work hard for my future. My boss signed me up to a dodgy traineeship. If I were a trainee, you see, he could pay me less, and he got away with it. I don't know whether there was malice or whether the employers in my establishment signed up all employees or just the young, enthusiastic and naive ones. I think it was just a program that, for my employers, was just the norm. What I felt at the time and what I know now is that it wasn't fair and it wasn't right.

This story is one I've told before in this chamber. That's because, for me, it was a really formative moment. I was young. It was the moment when I realised that employees aren't always treated fairly by their bosses and that an employer doesn't always have your best interests at heart, and it's when I learnt the importance of not just advocating for employees—yes, that's important too. I also learnt the value of actually having the right legislation and regulations set up and being adhered to so that these types of situations are prevented from even happening in the first place.

I'm proud to stand here today, because that is exactly what this legislation does. This bill is here to streamline the process for employees to choose a super fund when they start a new job. This is legislation to ban employers from advertising super fund products to new employees during their onboarding process. But it's also about so much more than that. This bill is about empowering employees to make informed choices about their super funds when they start a new job. It's about workers' rights and about creating those laws—the type of laws I could have benefited from at 16 years old—which protect hardworking Australians so they can secure their own futures. Taking advantage of employees who don't know any better, by compelling employees to make choices that are not in their best interests, is simply wrong. I know this, and we, as Labor, know this. We are the party that is grounded in advocating for and legislating to protect the rights of workers, and this bill is no exception to that.

Schedule 1 to the bill amends the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act. This is the part about streamlining the process for choosing your super fund when being onboarded as a new employee. In 2021, a set of reforms—Your Future, Your Super—was introduced to improve the superannuation system. It was designed for a few reasons: to empower members and make it easier to choose a well-performing product that meets your needs; to hold funds to account for underperformance; and to increase transparency and accountability for how super funds use members' savings. It also introduced stapling. A stapled super fund is an existing super account linked, or stapled, to an individual employee, so it follows them as they change jobs. Having stapled funds reduces your account fees as it avoids new super accounts being opened every time you start a new job. This bill will build on those reforms. It will make it easier for employees to see, consider and select their existing super fund when they start a new job. This empowers employees by helping them to avoid accidentally paying double or triple fees, and this can save thousands of dollars.

Schedule 2 to the bill amends the Corporations Act 2001 to impose a ban on advertising superannuation products to employees during onboarding, with certain exceptions. It's ridiculous that, when starting out in a new job, employees can have advertisements for super products targeted at them. Meanwhile, information about keeping their previous super account is not readily accessible. This is a key moment when employees engage with their superannuation, and they should be able to do so in an informed and safe way. A ban on advertising superannuation products to an employee, specifically at the point of employee onboarding, is really important.

These changes reinforce our government's commitment to supporting Aussies to make an informed choice about their super while providing strong consumer protections. We're protecting employees from being unduly influenced to make uninformed decisions, because Aussies should be able to trust their employer and the super system we're all a part of. When you sign up to a new job, you're not always going to independently know all the fine details about all the available super funds and what's best to avoid, but that information should be accessible. Employees shouldn't be getting signed up to super funds that aren't necessarily right for them, just because their employer has compelled them to do so. And do you know what? Employees should be able to trust their employer to not push them into super funds that do not act in their best interests. They should be able to trust the system because the system should be working for them. It should be protecting them. If the system is, in fact, not protecting employees, then it's our duty as parliamentarians to change that. So that's what we're doing.

This bill will create those changes for employees right across the country, including in my own community in Melbourne's western suburbs. My electorate of Gorton is one of the fastest growing electorates in the country. The average age is 35. We are full of diverse, young, hardworking families—families who are setting up their children's futures and planning their own retirements. People in a good, hardworking community like mine don't deserve to be taken advantage of by their employers when they start a new job. They deserve to have transparency and proper access to information about their own super. They deserve to be empowered to make informed choices about their retirement savings, as do all Australians.

This bill is important for transparency, for employee empowerment and for strengthening our superannuation system, but it's by no means the only measure the Labor government is taking to ensure Aussies are earning more and keeping more of what they earn right up until retirement. We've passed payday super, a once-in-a-generation reform to fix unpaid super, because workers deserve to get paid their full entitlements and Australians deserve to retire with confidence and with financial security. The ATO estimates that $5.2 billion in super went unpaid in 2021-22. That's $100 million every week that workers earned and never received. Thanks to this Labor government, from 1 July this year employers will be required to pay super at the same time as they pay wages, instead of paying it quarterly. This means that employees will receive their super in their funds within seven business days of payday and that workers will receive what they're legally owed.

The legislation we're debating here today complements those payday super reforms. That's because, by giving employees more timely and accurate information and details on superannuation, we're supporting their readiness for our payday super reforms. We're legislating these changes for workers because that's what Labor does. We are the champions of workers' rights, and we always have been.

I'm proud that this is not the first time that I've stood up in this chamber and talked about workers' rights, and that's because this is not the first bill that this Labor government has introduced to build better protections for workers. Late last year we passed Baby Priya's bill. Baby Priya's bill introduced a new principle into the Fair Work Act to protect families and employees. It means that, unless employers and employees have expressly agreed otherwise, employer funded paid parental leave cannot be cancelled if a child is stillborn or passes away. At the heart of Baby Priya's law are dignity, compassion and workers' rights. The same can be said of our changes to protect penalty and overtime rates. This was about safeguarding fundamental entitlements for around 2.6 million modern-award-reliant Australian workers.

And there's the legislation I haven't yet had the opportunity to talk about in the chamber because it was passed in the last term of parliament. I'm so glad that I have the opportunity to talk about it now. Our same job, same pay laws have seen thousands of workers receiving up to $60,000 extra in their pay packets each year, and our secure jobs, better pay laws were about modernising the bargaining system to protect better pay and conditions for workers. The right-to-disconnect laws have adapted Australia's workplaces to meet the needs of what a modern workplace actually looks like. Meanwhile, we've criminalised wage theft. These are all such important changes for Australian workers—changes that go alongside our reforms to the superannuation system.

Having lived in the Australia I know and love, I sometimes find it surprising to remind myself that, not so long ago, superannuation wasn't legislated. It's only through the work of legislated change and Labor governments that we have the workplace protections that exist today. Under the Keating government, Labor introduced compulsory super to Australia as part of the superannuation guarantee. Even the member for Riverina acknowledged the power of super in his contribution here this evening. Back then, we introduced compulsory super, and today we're strengthening it.

But this is nothing new for us. Labor emerged directly out of the union movements. It was industrial action that paved the way for the weekend. We introduced annual leave and sick leave. The Fair Work Act, unfair dismissal protections and our Paid Parental Leave scheme were all passed in the Rudd-Gillard years. And we've always championed gender equality. When we're talking about super, women really matter, because it's true women earn less and retire with less. The national gender pay gap is sitting at 11.5 per cent. Women are more likely to take significant breaks in their careers, putting them on the back foot when they re-enter the workforce. Women are less likely to be promoted into high-paying management roles, and women have less savings in their super when they retire. The gender super gap is about $50,000 for Australians nearing retirement—$50,000 less for women to live on in their retirement—because nurses, teachers, aged care workers and hairdressers are amongst those in casual and insecure work. Part of the issue is that those women in those fields aren't getting their fair share of super.

In Victoria, there is a 24 per cent gap between men's and women's super savings across all ages. But, for my electorate of Gorton, it's wider than even that. In Gorton, the gender super gap is sitting at 26 per cent, wider than the Victorian average and on par with the national average. This gap widens significantly as women approach retirement. The median man approaching retirement in Gorton has $181,000 in super. Compare this to the median woman. She's got $114,000 in super—37 per cent less. This is wider than both the Victorian and Australian averages by 33 per cent. That's why the changes that this Labor government has made to women's earnings and super are so important. We've introduced LISTO and expanded paid parental leave, and we've ensured that women are now earning super on top of their paid parental leave.

The low-income superannuation tax offset is an automatic tax rebate paid into the super accounts of low-income earners to offset some or all of the tax paid on their super contributions. You or your employer pay this 15 per cent of the pre-tax super contributions into your super fund, up to a maximum of $500, and it's designed to ensure that low-income earners generally don't pay more tax on their super contributions than on their take-home pay. We're increasing the LISTO by $300 to $800, and we're raising the eligibility threshold from $37,000 to $45,000. This measure is so important. It was about delivering a more secure retirement for 1.3 million Australians, 60 per cent of whom are women. That's because women are among those low-income earners. LISTO is boosting the income of close to 8,000 people in my electorate, totalling $3 million across the electorate, and it's helping close the gender super gap.

To close that gap, we've also made significant changes to super when it comes to parental leave. You can be sure that this Labor government is working at closing that gender pay gap and gender super gap. This is what happens when we elect women: women's issues become the forefront of the government's agenda. I couldn't be prouder to be part of a Labor government made up of 57 per cent women, because, when we elect women, we legislate on women's issues only.

Only our government will protect Aussie super—because this bill is just one part of the Albanese Labor government's commitment for Aussies to earn more, keep more of what they earn and retire with more as well. I commend this bill to the House.

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