Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens welcome the Labor government's Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Bill 2025 and Superannuation Guarantee Charge Amendment Bill 2025. We will be supporting this legislation. This reform has been a long, long time coming. There are a bunch of folks who have been working behind the scenes and campaigning publicly for this legislation for a long, long time, including the Super Members Council, the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia and Super Consumers Australia. They have demonstrated relentless advocacy and persistence, and it is because of them and folks like them that this long-overdue reform is now finally going to become law.

This will be, when it passes through this parliament, a win for fairness, a win for transparency and a win for accountability. Importantly, it's a win for millions of Australian workers who have been shortchanged and ignored for far too long. The number of people who are missing out on their superannuation payments is staggering. It's absolutely staggering. The Super Members Council analysis of ATO data shows that in 2022-23, 3.3 million Australians were not pay the superannuation that they were owed. They were not paid the superannuation that they earned.

Let's be really clear about this. Superannuation payments belong to workers. They belong to the people to whom those payments are due. Those 3.3 million Australians who were not paid the super they earned in 2022-23 collectively missed out on $5.7 billion. That's $5.7 billion in unpaid super in a single financial year. That is $110 million a week that should have been going into the pockets and the bank accounts of Australian workers but wasn't. That money belongs to those workers; it doesn't belong to their employers. It belongs to the people who were doing the work.

For decades now, employers have been able to use their employees' superannuation as an interest-free loan, in effect, to top up their cash flow. The quarterly payment system, which has been in place for a long time now, has basically allowed widespread wage theft to hide in plain sight. Too many businesses have treated unpaid super as optional or as a buffer to offset their own financial mismanagement. This bill will finally change that situation.

From 1 July 2026, superannuation will be paid at the same time as wages. In simple terms, what that means is that, when working folks get their wages, they'll get their super payments too. It is simple. It is fair. It means workers and the ATO can spot problems faster. It means unpaid super can be recovered sooner. And it means fewer workers arriving at retirement to discover that tens of thousands of dollars are missing out of their superannuation accounts. This is a positive step and—credit where credit is due—we thank the government for bringing this legislation in. But I do want to say that we need far greater reform of the superannuation system than what this legislation delivers, than what the government's revamped super tax arrangements will deliver next year.

Over time, since the superannuation system was created in Australia, it has drifted away from its original goal of providing for a dignified retirement for working Australians, and it's become less about that and more about functioning as a tax haven for wealthy Australians. That is, it has to be said, mostly the fault of coalition governments, in particular the Howard-Costello government, which introduced a range of reforms to the superannuation system that actually made it less about being a dignified retirement system for workers and more about becoming a tax haven for wealthy Australians. I'll have more to say about that general proposition and that drift in intent of the superannuation system in other speeches that I will make in this parliament.

I do want to draw attention to one matter in this speech, which is the second reading amendment that the Greens have circulated in my name. I foreshadow that amendment now. That amendment does hold the government to a promise that it's already made, which is to regulate the advertising of superannuation funds during employee onboarding. Those protections, the regulatory framework, were in the exposure draft of this legislation, and those regulations that were proposed were widely supported by consumer advocates and the industry super movement. But they've been stripped out of the final legislation. I have to say they've been stripped out of the final legislation without any kind of convincing explanation from the government. That is disappointing, because that reform is about protecting workers at one of the most vulnerable moments in their financial lives. That is when they start a new job.

I want to put the Greens's position very clearly on the table here, which is that new employees in any job shouldn't be subjected to unregulated advertising designed to manipulate them into joining underperforming or unsuitable superannuation funds. It is well beyond time that we regulated the advertising of superannuation funds during employee onboarding. That is simple common sense. It's about making sure that people's retirement savings and their choice of superannuation funds are guided by what is in their own best interests, not by marketing budgets. The government says they'll deal with it later, and our amendment will help ensure that that promise is kept.

While we do support the bill, we need to acknowledge the broader reality for more and more workers in Australia at the moment. People are simply being hammered by a cost-of-living crisis. We have corporations, including supermarket corporations, price gouging hand over fist. It is very disappointing that Labor's final announcement in the early days of the election campaign was that it is going to take on price gouging in the supermarket sector, but it's not going to extend across the entire economy, as the Greens bill does. Can I be very clear: yes, supermarkets are indeed price gouging, and, yes, we indeed need legislation to make price gouging by supermarket corporations illegal. We absolutely do. But narrowly scoping the legislation as Labor is proposing to do, so that it only relates to supermarkets, is ignoring the fundamental and bitter reality for millions of Australians, which is that they are getting price gouged by multiple corporations in multiple sectors of our economy. Do you think the big insurance companies aren't price gouging? Do you think the big airlines aren't misusing their market power to price gouge? Of course they are. Do you think the big banks aren't price gouging? Of course they are.

If we're going to make price gouging illegal in Australia—as we should—it absolutely should apply to supermarkets, but it should also apply to corporate price gouging right across our economy. It should capture the banks, airlines and insurance companies. Let's actually stand up to corporate greed, corporate profiteering, misuse of market power and corporate price gouging. Let's protect the millions of Australians who are getting smashed by corporate price gouging at the moment, and let's make price gouging illegal right across the entire economy. I say to Labor: the make-up of this parliament is such that we could legislate for that tomorrow. If Labor wanted to make price gouging illegal across the entire economy, the numbers are there in both houses of this parliament to legislate for that tomorrow.

The only reason that we're not going to legislate for that is a lack of ambition from the Labor Party. You have to ask yourself: why is the Labor Party so lacking in ambition? I direct people who are asking that question to the corporate donations that the Australian Labor Party takes from so many big corporations in this country. I direct them to the photos of the Prime Minister in his safety vests with big polluting fossil fuel company logos on the chest and on the back of them. I direct people to the revolving door that exists out of the parties of government in this place, including the Australian Labor Party, into the corporate boardrooms of Australia. Too many MPs representing the parties of government, the political duopoly in this country, know that if they run the pro-corporate agenda when they're in this place, they can roll out of the door at the end of their political careers into a cushy position in the boardroom of one of those same corporations that they protected when they were sitting in this place. It is small-c corruption that that still occurs, and it is time we put an end to the practice.

To sum up, this is much-needed legislation. It's overdue legislation. It's pro-worker legislation, and it is legislation that delivers on the fundamental Australian value of fairness. The Greens will be supporting it. I move the second reading amendment standing in my name:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) notes that:

(i) the bill does not include provisions that were included in the exposure draft legislation to regulate advertising of superannuation funds during employee onboarding, and

(ii) regulating advertising of superannuation funds during employee onboarding is an important reform to protect workers from being influenced to join unsuitable superannuation products when they commence a new job; and

(b) holds the Albanese Labor Government to their previous commitment to introduce legislation to regulate advertising of superannuation funds during employee onboarding commencing by 1 July 2026.