Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Superannuation is absolutely one of my favourite topics, and I want to follow the member who just spoke about how this is not a topic that's abstract. I couldn't agree with him more. He wanted to talk about how superannuation is money in return for work. I couldn't agree more. Every time the superannuation guarantee goes up, it means workers' wages go down, and that's why we've always believed in our heart of hearts that superannuation is workers' money.

The problem with the Labor Party is that they do not see the trillion dollars of money in superannuation as workers' money; they see it as a honey pot—a honey pot to extract extreme amounts of fees to be able to fund the ALP itself. You can just go and look. When I was the chair of the House economics committee, we went through step by step how superannuation funds expended marketing expenses to trade unions, who then organised campaigns for the Australian Labor Party so that they could be in government and garnish more of Australians' wages towards superannuation, which could then be harvested for fees. And so the superannuation cycle of life continued to go on.

But fear not, because you just need to look at what the state governments did. They said, 'We can get in on that act.' What they started doing was commissioning projects and using the superannuation system as a way to finance projects so that then they too could get in and suck off the teat of Australian superannuation. And, in the process, they used it as a vehicle to increase the wages of a select few, and, even worse than that, they used it as a facilitation device to get public money to organised crime, like through the CFMEU-Labor cartel.

That is the fundamental challenge with superannuation. We see it as workers' money that they should control. The Labor Party sees it as a pathway to launder money to organised crime. We make no apology for standing up for Australians controlling their superannuation. We make no apologies for standing up and believing that Australians should be able to control their own destiny, and we make no apologies for saying people's money should be able to work for them on their priorities consistent with their stages of life. That's why we've always been very open to having a conversation about the importance of homeownership as a principle before retirement savings. This is not because we don't fundamentally believe in retirement savings but because you get the benefits of homeownership during your working life and your retirement.

But we know that is not good enough for the Labor Party. They want to rig the system in favour of their mates in the superannuation industry at the expense of young Australians owning their own home. It's hilarious because what they actually say is that it's outrageous that we couldn't have a public support system for incomes in retirement, but the government should come along and increase its equity and its stake in the first homes of Australians.

Every time you look for logical consistency from the Australian Labor Party around superannuation and homeownership, what you find is their attempt to take the maximum take over Australians futures. What they actually want to do is control Australians' futures. The last line of political defence in standing up for Australians to buy their own home, to determine their own destiny, to get a good education, to own their own capital and to go on and save for retirement with dignity is the coalition parties. That's why it's so important to stand up. We believe in superannuation, but I can sure as hell bet you we do not believe in a system designed to launder money to organised crime, and that is why the Labor Party's approach to superannuation is so bad—because they would rather have people die with 97 per cent of principal intact, which is currently the statistic of what's happening, but deny young Australians the chance to get their first home.

In 1992, the age at which young Australians bought their first home was their mid-20s. It's now increasingly in their late 30s, trending towards their 40s. And with buying their home later goes family formation. So, rather than support Australians to control their own destiny, Labor would literally prefer to break down the social family unit and break down the very structures of which our society is built so they can control Australians and how they live their lives through the superannuation system.

We want people to retire with dignity. We want them to be able to control their own destiny. We support Australians to own their own home. But what we don't support is a system where it's used to launder money to the corrupt CFMEU.

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