Leah Blyth (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Stronger Families and Stronger Communities) Share this | Hansard source

I'm going to start by addressing some of the remarks made by Labor and the Greens which are really quite extraordinary, and there were some that I personally found quite offensive, that a man is not a financial plan. Nowhere in this bill, the Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Tackling the Gender Super Gap) Bill 2025, does it have any kind of connotation that a man is a financial plan, and unless Labor and the Greens have some kind of magic solution that is going to mean women like me—I've had three children, which have necessitated me having to take time off work to have those children. Unless Labor and the Greens can solve that issue for women, why shouldn't a family—a man and wife, a wife and wife—decide that, for the care of children, they will actually share their super contributions and make that decision on an annual basis? What it tells me about Labor and the Greens is that they don't value the unpaid work that happens in child care and child raising that happens within the family—that they don't value that and they don't respect that. Rather than coming up with actual issues with the structure of this bill, all they are doing is throwing out very crazy, reckless ideas that somehow women are dependent on men asking for this.

I can tell you that in my family situation, even though I was the one who had time off work, my super balance is actually higher than my husband's, because he's self-employed. I was very lucky to have a high super. Why couldn't I do it the other way and share with him? Why are Labor and the Greens assuming that this only goes one way when it comes to super? Of course my situation is probably not what most Australians experience, but there would certainly be a lot of people in that situation. What this bill is trying to do—and I congratulate my colleague Jane Hume for introducing this bill to the parliament, because we all know that women aged over 55 are the largest growing group experiencing homelessness in Australia. That is largely because they have less super. When there is a marriage breakup or a relationship breakdown, it is women who are financially significantly behind. A lot of them might have taken time off work to raise children. It might be that they're now empty nesters and have spent that time doing the care work around the house. It's difficult to find employment. You might not have a very large super balance. These women are now disproportionately showing up in our statistics for homelessness. This bill is trying to address that.

Rather than finding frivolous reasons why to not do something—because you want to do something and fix everyone's problems—why don't we tackle this one particular problem, which I think this bill actually does, making the superannuation system fairer for women and enabling families to make a choice of what they would like to do with their money? What we hear from Labor and the Greens is that they hate Australians having choice. They don't want you to be able to decide what you can do with your money. They want to tell you what will happen, and—let's be honest—superannuation accounts are just a piggybank for Labor. When they run out of money, they will absolutely come after yours. They will come after Australians' superannuation balances, so the idea that we're actually going to start making the superannuation system fairer for women, in particular, scares them a little bit. Labor's solution to this problem—and they've given us a long list of things that they say they're going to do—is that, just by addressing the pay gap, it will magically fix super. Once again, I would say that unless there is a solution whereby women don't have to take time off work for childbirth—and, I can tell you, after having three natural deliveries, I was very grateful to have some time off work, and it certainly exceeded what my sick leave allocation would have been—addressing the gender pay gap is not sufficient. That is not a sufficient measure to address what is happening in the reality of superannuation in this country.

Labor don't value family, they're not valuing the unpaid work contribution that Australians make within their own family situation, and they don't value Australians having that personal responsibility and that personal choice to do it. I will say that the example of the, I think, $5.5 million, was just to demonstrate the guardrails that are in place for the bill. That's not saying that Australians have that super balance and that it is a normal balance; it's just to demonstrate that there are guardrails that have been put into this bill to show that you can't just transfer whole balances over from one partner to the other. I think it is a little disingenuous to say that it's a disturbing number and that a man is not a financial plan.

After the care that women across our country put into raising children and having children, why shouldn't they be able to split superannuation? Couples might split the electricity bill; they might split the mortgage payments. You're able to split superannuation and, legislatively, you're required to aggregate superannuation at the time that a relationship or a marriage dissolves. Why can't you choose to do that when you're happily together? Why does it have to be only on the dissolution of a relationship that there is some equity that's put into the superannuation system? What this bill does is create a way for one partner to say to the other, 'I'm valuing what you're doing, staying at home, raising and caring for children, and we can split the super so that it's fair.' One partner can say to the other, 'I accept,' and it is usually the woman—or the mother—who stays at home to raise the children. The other partner says: 'That's great. I'm valuing what you're doing by staying home and not being in the workplace. I accept that you may not be getting paid for that work.'

There are a lot of reasons why Labor have said they don't support the bill. What I haven't seen is a good reason not to. This is really about giving individuals the opportunity to decide what works best for them and their families. I think the coalition has a fantastic record on superannuation. Unlike Labor over there, who use it as a piggy bank—it's run for their union mates—the coalition, in the time we were in government, made superannuation far fairer, more efficient and more transparent. We capped fees on low balances; we banned fees on rollovers and investment switches; we made expensive insurance premiums opt-in, rather than opt-out, for young people; and we abolished the $450 rule. On this side of the chamber, we in the coalition certainly have a very, very strong record when it comes to making our super system in Australia fair. This isn't also necessarily for older people. Younger people can choose to opt in to this scheme as well. The coalition has the Your Future, Your Super reforms. That ensures that workers' funds follow them from job to job so that young workers don't have to join a new super fund every time they change employers. It is like Labor to say that they invented superannuation, but it took a coalition government to make superannuation work for members instead of the unions and super fund managers. Tackling the gender super gap is the next step to ensuring that superannuation in Australia is more flexible and fair, particularly for women, and making sure that your hard-earned dollars in your superannuation accounts are working for you and your family and not for Labor and Labor's mates.