Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last night, we saw the Treasurer deliver the 2016 budget for more jobs and growth. The 2016 budget is an economic plan for Australia, for a strong new transitioning economy, again with more jobs and growth.

As part of the budget, there are several changes to superannuation and some dividends from Operation Sovereign Borders. Obviously, in a three-minute time period I cannot go through the whole budget, so I will just talk on those two particular issues.

The government will enshrine in law that the objective for superannuation is to provide income in retirement to substitute for or supplement the age pension. There will be a retargeting of tax concessions towards those who need incentives to save for their retirement, including: introducing a $1.6 million balance cap on the total amount of superannuation that can be transferred into a tax-free retirement phase; extending the 30 per cent tax on concessional contributions to those earning over $250,000, including concessional contributions; reducing the annual cap on concessional contributions to $25,000; and introducing a lifetime cap of $500,000 on non-concessional contributions. All of that is based around bringing equality back into the superannuation scheme where the high-end-super people can now have some of their funds turned back to the superannuation schemes of those on lower incomes.

The government will also introduce a low-income superannuation tax offset from 1 July 2017. This will ensure that low-income earners are not paying more tax on their superannuation than they are on their take-home pay. This means that 19,534 individuals in Swan earning $37,000 per year or less will effectively pay no tax on the money they contribute to superannuation.

There was also another announcement in the budget about the dividends of the success of Operation Sovereign Borders in stopping the boats. Our border protection measures have enabled the government to close four additional detention facilities, achieving savings of $39.1 million over four years. One of the facilities to be closed is Perth Immigration Residential Housing, some of which is based in my electorate. Perth IRH was opened in April 2007 and is located in the suburb of Redcliffe. It will be closed by the end of 2016. This will take to 17 the total number of detention facility closures by the government. When Labor was in government they opened 17 facilities—a result of their failure to secure Australia's borders, which allowed people smugglers to send more than 50,000 illegal arrivals into our country. The closure of these 17 facilities has saved Australian taxpayers more than $500 million. This will take to 17 the total number of detention facility closures by this government.