Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased but somewhat concerned to rise and speak to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Building a Stronger and Fairer Super System) Bill 2026 and the Superannuation (Building a Stronger and Fairer Super System) Imposition Bill 2026 because these bills represent a fundamental shift in how the government views Australians' retirement savings. For decades we've known that superannuation has been built on a simple understanding that Australians would lock away part of their hard-earned wages during their working lives, invest those savings productively and have in return certainty in the future of a secure retirement.

But unfortunately this government increasingly sees superannuation not as Australians' savings but as a convenient pool of revenue for government spending. That is why we're seeing new taxes, new thresholds and new rules that reduce choice throughout the system. The real problem facing this government is not that Australians are paying too little tax. The real problem is that this government cannot control its spending. When governments run out of fiscal discipline, they start looking for new places to collect revenue, and that is with the taxpayer. Today it's super balances above $3 million. Tomorrow that threshold can change quickly. We know there is a massive Labor deficit, and they have endless wasteful new spending to add to it.

It's worth remembering how we arrived at this point. When the Treasurer unveiled his first superannuation tax proposal, Australians reacted very swiftly, and we, the coalition, opposed it. The community raised serious concerns about the Treasurer's proposal. Even voices on that side—it cannot be denied—raised questions within their own ranks and began to question in. The original proposal crossed a very clear line in our tax system. It would have taxed unrealised gains, paper increases in asset values that existed only on a spreadsheet. No sale, no income received, but what you would have seen is people like farmers and business owners who, under the then rules, would have had to sell off their businesses, carve up their farms or simply walk off the property because of an overreach of this government. Australians rightly pushed back on that. They also noticed something else. The Treasurer had quietly refused to index the threshold meaning inflation would slowly drag more and more Australians into that tax overtime. The way we see inflation growing at its current rate would only expedite that.

The art of taxation, it has been said, is to pluck the goose with the least hissing. Labor thought they could do it here, but Australians have hissed loud enough that even the Prime Minister heard it. So the Treasurer was forced to retreat, but now he's back again with his latest proposal to tax retirement savings. Let us be clear here. This is not the policy the government took to the last election. This is something completely different. In one important respect, it is something much worse, because the original bill explicitly excluded the tax from applying to when someone dies. That safeguard has now very quietly disappeared. Australians abolished death duties in the 1970s because they were widely recognised as unfair, punitive and ineffective, yet here we are in 2026, watching their quiet re-emergence under this Labor government.

Under Labor, Australians are taxed when they work. We all accept that. It pays for our hospitals, our schools, Medicare—all those services that you rightly deserve. They are taxed when they retire, and now you're going to be taxed when you die. At some point we have to ask: when does it stop? I do acknowledge it is easy to see the politics in this proposal. The government says this tax applies only to balances above $3 million and imposes an even higher rate on balances above $10 million. Clearly, in a cost-of-living crisis that is only getting worse under Labor, many Australians would say they're not going to lose any sleep over that. In my electorate, the average super balance is $170,000. I say to the people of my electorate: I get it; I understand. You look at somebody with a super balance over $3 million and you would say, 'Well, they can pay it.' People are focused more on mortgages, rents, groceries and energy bills, not multimillion dollar retirement accounts. I get it; Labor politics—I withdraw that.

It is very tempting to say, 'We'll let this one go through to the keeper,' but where does it stop? The real problem facing this government is not that the Australian people are paying too little tax. The real problem is this government cannot control its spending. Tax receipts today are already at historically high levels as a share of the economy. They are at levels we have not seen since the Howard years, but there's a very important difference there. When the Howard government benefited from strong revenues generated by growing an economy, they returned those revenues to the Australian people, and they did so through broad based tax relief. This government sees historically high tax returns and immediately starts looking for ways to take even more, because this government cannot live within its means.

There is, of course, a small increase to the low-income superannuation tax offset now attached to this bill, and we support that. It's a tax cut, but it's small—only around one-fifth of revenue collected by that tax—and, in a cost-of-living crisis, it is pretty strange that this government didn't choose to deliver more immediate tax relief. That is the stark difference between this government and what was done under the Howard government.

That brings us to a much deeper issue in this debate, and that is the integrity of the superannuation system itself. Superannuation was built on a contract. Australians would set aside part of their wages during their working lives. Those savings would be invested productively across the economy, and, in return, they would have security and certainty in retirement. But that system depends on one crucial ingredient, and that is trust—trust that, if the Australian people followed the rules, the rules would not constantly change and trust that, when people make long-term decisions about saving for retirement, governments won't move the goalposts halfway through the game.

Superannuation is not a short-term investment. People make decisions about their retirement savings in their 30s and 40s that will affect their lives decades later. They structure their investments, they plan how much they contribute and they plan the kind of retirement they want and that they can afford. They do all of that on the assumption that the rules governing the system will remain stable. But what this government has done with these bills is fundamentally change that system. Now we have a different tax rate depending on the size of someone's super balance. It's a wealth tax. There's no denying that. The government says it's about aligning superannuation with what it calls dignified retirement. Dignified retirement is your choice and my choice, not the government's choice.

The problem with the argument by Labor is very simple. As I said, who decides what counts as dignified? Today the government says that the line in the sand is $3 million. But this bill raises around $2 billion a year—that is it. In the context of a $1 trillion debt, that's not a structural solution to the government's fiscal pressures. When $2 billion inevitably proves insufficient, the temptation will be obvious: lower the threshold, expand the tax and bring more Australians into the net. Maybe the line becomes $2 million, maybe $1 million. Maybe they'll just tax all super and give everyone a $20,000 dignified retirement stipend. Who knows?

We simply cannot trust this government and we simply cannot trust this treasurer. Once the government begins to treat superannuation as a convenient revenue source, the pressure to keep expanding that revenue will never go away. We can already see the broader direction of travel. We hear discussions about making changes to capital gains tax and about changes to negative gearing. We hear discussions about trusts. Each time the argument begins the same way. First, they deny they are considering new taxes. Then they say that it will only apply to the rich. But, when the spending pressures continue to grow, the definition of 'rich' inevitably changes. That's why this bill matters.

Once one of the principles established is that retirement savings are simply another pool of revenue for the government to draw from, the integrity of the entire system begins to erode. That has consequences not just for retirees but for the whole of the Australian government. Those superannuation balances Labor is taxing are not sitting idle. They represent capital invested across Australia that is backing businesses and infrastructure and helping companies to expand, hire workers and innovate.

The coalition understands a very simple economic truth: if you want better hospitals, better schools and stronger public services, you need a stronger economy. It is the only way. You cannot cheat your way to prosperity. Governments can't distribute wealth that has not first been created. Prosperity comes from growth, from investment and from people working, saving and building businesses across this great country. That is how living standards rise. It's also how sustainable government revenue is generated.

Superannuation plays an important role in that story, but it only works if Australians have confidence in the system—confidence that their retirement savings will not become a convenient target whenever government finds itself short of revenue. Superannuation is not government money; it's your money. It represents the wages that people earn through decades of work and set aside for their own retirement. The coalition respects that and always will, and we believe governments should control their spending before reaching further into Australian people's savings that they have worked decades to build. For those reasons, the coalition will oppose this bill.

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