Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased that I was here in the chamber to hear that contribution, because it gives me the chance to speak to people who might be listening to the work of this parliament and point out how completely divisive that contribution was. I see you in the chair there, Acting Deputy President Sterle, as a man who ran your own business in the trucking industry. I see you as a representative of one of the largest unions in the country, the Transport Workers' Union. While you're in the chair, presiding over the Senate, you haven't forgotten all the struggles you had to get your truck, to keep it on the road, to meet the compliance and to do the work that keeps Australia moving—getting all of your business up and running. Then there is your association with the Transport Workers' Union, representing people with little power who are on wages and also representing the biggest companies in Australia who deliver all the things we need everywhere around this fine country.

Yet, in that contribution, from a person who's come in and styled themselves as a businessman—I just had a quick look. He was born in Gosford. He can't be too bad. I come from that area of the world. It's a beautiful part of the world. I hoped there might be a little bit of joy somewhere in the middle of that contribution. And he's made his money out of earthworks. Well, hey—fantastic! I'm the daughter of an Irish immigrant. I know a bit about dirt and roads. I love it. I ran a small business for my parents. I did all the bookwork from age 11 in that business with pride and determination. We needed to keep that business alive to keep our family going and to keep all those people employed. So every single time someone gets up in this chamber—predominantly from the Liberal and National parties, now joined by One Nation—and diminishes the contribution of senators who bring rich lives to this place, it gets my goat. It gets my goat because it sets one group of Australians against another, and that's all it is designed to do.

This parliament runs better and this country runs better when everybody brings their talents, knowledges and understandings of that complex world out there into the debate in service of the nation, instead of grandstanding and saying, 'Hey, I'm a big business owner, and I'm the only one who knows about this stuff.' It's just a joke, and it diminishes what we do. The reality is it's that sort of attitude that we see today that would have prevented superannuation ever becoming a thing. 'Small business or workers? Workers or small business?' There is this divisive narrative when the reality is that it's workers in great small businesses, which populate the entire country, that drive our economy.

Let's talk about the great small businesses—the really good ones. They don't want to rip off their workers. They want to pay them what is fair and reasonable. They want to pay above award to make sure they keep their staff employed, because that's their business. Their business is an investment in people as well as an expression of their own capacity. I can tell you what small businesses are sick and tired of, whatever sector they're in. Small businesses that are doing the right thing by their employees and paying superannuation properly are sick and tired of being undercut by dodgy businesses who think they can rip off their employees and keep the money themselves. Sadly, that attitude still prevails in part of this country. Not every business owner is doing the right thing by their employees. This isn't a change for the great employers; it's to make sure that the dodgy ones do what they should have always been doing but have excused themselves from doing.

The reality is that this is a battle that has been fought for a very long time. I note that the SDA, the union that I'm very proud to be associated with, have really been making sure that people understand what this payday super thing is about. They wrote to their members in June of this year, and it's as simple as this:

What does pay day super mean?

Currently, there's no requirement for employers to pay your superannuation on the same day as your pay and it is generally paid quarterly.

Well, what's wrong with that? You probably would have heard a defence from Senator Whitten of paying not quarterly but perhaps just once a year. They'll call that efficiency. But thing is that it costs workers. It costs workers because when your super is only paid quarterly the benefits of compound interest are lost for the individual employee. The money is sitting with that employer for three months when it could have been earning interest for that employee.

Who does this most particularly affect? It most particularly affects young people. Every Australian, whether you're 65 or 70 or 16, should get paid properly. You're entitled to be paid for your work and contribution, and this reform in the matter that we're discussing in this debate here in the Senate this evening will help ensure that workers actually receive the super that they're owed. They'll get it when they're owed it with their pay on their payday.

What is the problem that we're trying to solve here? The ATO actually have a pretty good eye about what's happening with some of these matters. In a typical ATO investigation of an unpaid super case, a worker has missed out on nearly two years worth of super contributions. For the average 35-year-old, failing to recover this money could reduce their retirement savings by around $32,000 in today's dollars. How do we prevent that? We enact this piece of legislation so that every Australian who gets their pay will get their super on the day they get their pay. It's a commonsense move, and it gives people a chance to see that superannuation coming in.

What we've seen sadly is that some disreputable business owners who aren't running their business as efficiently and effectively as they should consider the money that should be their employees', the superannuation of their employees, as their own personal loan to do whatever they want to do with. What happens then as that money stays in the employer's account is that not only is the compound interest lost to the employee but if the employer should happen to go bust the impact is going to be even more severe for that worker, be they young, middle aged or older. If you're 35 years old and you're missing out on super from a liquidated business, that could leave your retirement balance over $90,000 worse off in today's dollars. This is an untenable proposition, and that is why Labor is undertaking payday super. It's a once-in-a-generation reform to fix unpaid super and to give Australian workers access to the fullness of the money that they're entitled to by law on the day that they receive their pay.

The scale of this problems is something that has to be addressed, and it would never, ever be addressed by a Liberal-National coalition government. They turned a blind eye to it. They're the ones who rejected superannuation. They were the ones who said, 'It's going to kill small businesses across the country.' If it was up to the Liberal-National coalition, there would be no Australian with superannuation of any kind at all except very wealthy people who seemed to have always had it. But now we have this dignified retirement capacity for Australians. It's Labor's invention, supported, delivered and advanced to the point now where this is an important addition to make sure super does what it's supposed to do.

The Australian Taxation Office have estimated that $5.2 billion in super went unpaid in one financial year alone. That's just one year—2021-22. Think about that across the country. That's people going to work, doing their job, waiting to get paid, expecting that they're going to get their super in a quarterly instalment, not being able to check it in their payslip because it's not there and trusting their employer. Guess how much it's costing? It's $100 million a week. That's a lot of money that could be moving around in regional economies in western New South Wales that I support where employers have decided: 'No, no, no. We're in control of the payslips. We're in control of the time that you get it. We'll choose when you get it.' It's $100 million a week that workers earned and never received documented by the ATO.

We cannot let this continue, not if we are true to our values as Australians. Australians always say out loud and proud that we believe in a fair go. Part of a fair go is getting your fair pay, and part of your fair pay invested in the future that you're entitled to have as a dignified retirement is your superannuation. When we put this legislation through the parliament and it's finally approved—despite the opposition—this will improve the lives of millions of Australians. Every worker will benefit from this.

This legislation does a few critical things. It's going to come into play not immediately but from 1 July 2026. Employers will be required to pay the super guarantee contributions at the same time as the wages are paid instead of quarterly, and I know that there are always challenges with businesses making a transition. But if you can't make a transition in your business by 1 July 2026 you have to wonder how good you might be at running your business, where everything is constantly changing all the time. You have to problem solve every day in multiple ways. Nonetheless that's been taken on board, and the ATO have committed to making sure that there will be a soft approach to this as people get on board. Employers have to ensure that the contributions are received by the employee's super fund within seven business days of payday, and that was a bit of a change that was negotiated with key stakeholders. The outcome we get is the change that will make it easier for employees to track their super, for the ATO to detect mis-payments earlier and before debts become unrecoverable. Track your super, watch to make sure that you're getting your fair share and interrupt a process with your employer if that's not happening as it should be. Under the new framework, the super guarantee charge is going to apply for each payday an employer fails to pay super in full and on time.

These super guarantee changes talk about critical terminology that is really important to getting this right. The first thing is notional earnings. Notional earnings are compensation of employees for the investment returns they missed out on due to a late payment. That's an incentive for businesses to pay this part of your wages, the superannuation part, on time. There's a section called an administrative uplift. That's an additional charge to reflect the cost of enforcement to incentivise voluntary rectification. Businesses can be very, very busy. They can become overwhelmed at times. There might be change in staff. Things go wrong, but the incentive of the administrative uplift is to make sure that people get things back on track in a reasonable time. It's an incentive not to step outside the system, to do the right thing, to give your staff a fair go, to pay, as the law requires you, in full on the day that payment is due for wages and the superannuation contribution.

There is an additional charge called a choice loading, an additional penalty if the employer fails to pay into the employee's chosen fund. Sadly, sometimes employers—and I've very unhappily heard there are some kickbacks for some of the employers—say: 'No, we're not going to put it into the super fund that you want. We're going to put it into the one that we want.' That's just not on. That's absolutely not on. It's your super; it's your choice. You should get what you want. So we're going to make it a little more likely that the recalcitrants will do the right thing.

What I would say to Australians is that Labor in government supports small businesses, fair wages and superannuation. This legislation should pass the Senate because it will improve the lives of Australians as they're earning their pay and, importantly, in dignified retirement. It's Labor's vision for a great Australia.