Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) | Hansard source

Minister, we probably don't need to go over the reasons why it would be useful to address balance deterioration and erosion. We're on board with that. Labor have given an indication that we're supportive of those objectives. But I go again to the practical mechanisms. There are 1.9 million workers affected by the changes that are being proposed. The trustees have a few months to sort this out. The model that you suggest is that the way they will sort this out is through obtaining individual information from members, and the cohort of members we're talking about are not entirely but largely people under 26 years old. I feel as though you're swimming against the tide on this one. We have all of the data about the level of engagement. Is it not government's responsibility to design a policy intervention that does address the world as it is?

I applaud your interest in increasing financial literacy across the board. I feel like that's going to be quite a long journey, and, in the meantime, we have some very practical proposals before us. Your expectation is that funds are going to sort this out by individually engaging members under 26 in the next few months to obtain information from them about their occupation so they can decide whether or not they're eligible to be in an opt-out fund. I think that is impractical and unworkable and, as I put it to you, it seems particularly so in the case where there is an existing dataset at the ATO that could have been accessed, and you tell me that that wasn't even contemplated. This doesn't seem like policymaking that actually responds to the problem, or the world, and I just question why it is that the government is so stubbornly pressing on with this without dealing with some really practical things that are being raised. We're not talking about a major ideological conflict; we're just trying to talk about a workable solution. I am puzzled, bewildered, surprised, that I can't get more engagement on this informational problem that we're coming up against. I don't think the pathway you propose will provide trustees with the necessary information to make this decision in the time frame suggested by the bill.