Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Well, is there anything that the Liberal and National parties hate more than superannuation? It really is hard to think of anything that Liberal Party and National Party members of parliament and senators hate more than superannuation. And why? Because superannuation is about looking after workers, and that's what the Liberal and National parties have against superannuation. They don't want average workers to benefit from the kind of retirement that all of them will enjoy for the rest of their lives—especially those who, as Senator Sterle was talking about, were born with a silver spoon in their mouth. They're all fine. But average workers? No, they can't have a dignified retirement. They can't live comfortably in their retirement. They should go back to the old system before superannuation was invented by Labor and have to struggle through poverty in their retirement—that's what the Liberals and Nationals want for workers.

If you need any proof of that, just have a look at the history of superannuation in this country. When Labor created superannuation, the Liberals and the Nationals opposed it, and, pretty much every year since, they've launched attack after attack on our superannuation system, which is designed to give working people in this country a dignified retirement. Every time it has been legislated to increase, the Liberals and the Nationals come after it. We've seen that debate play out over the last 12 months or so, with all these Liberal backbenchers saying that we shouldn't have an increase in super and inventing ways for superannuation to be raided, and it's all because they want to launch attack after attack on superannuation.

That's exactly what's happening in this set of bills that we're debating at short notice tonight—the Treasury Laws Amendment (More Flexible Superannuation) Bill 2020 and others. They're just the latest salvo in the ongoing war of the Liberal Party and National Party against superannuation and against working people in this country.

But, in my remarks tonight, I particularly want to focus on the efforts of someone else in this parliament—someone else, in fact, in this chamber; someone else who has become known around Queensland as the LNP's best friend in Canberra. I'm talking about, of course, Senator Pauline Hanson. Senator Hanson, I hope you're watching what I've got to say, because you're going to be called out, once and for all, for the selfish fraud whose snout is in the trough that you are and you have always been.