Jessica Collins (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak in support of Senator Hume and the Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Tackling the Gender Super Gap) Bill 2025. This bill amends existing legislation, including the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993 and the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 to provide couples with the opportunity to evenly share their superannuation balances.

I fully support this bill, and I commend my colleague, Senator Hume, on bringing it to the floor of this chamber. The reason is this: it sends a message to the Australian people that families are best placed to make financial decisions that best suit their own households. This bill does this by creating a simple mechanism to allow couples to split their collective superannuation balances evenly during their relationship on an ongoing annual basis. It gives spouses the option—it gives them the choice—to split their collective superannuation balances evenly on and ongoing annual basis. To ensure equity between couples, the bill contains a spousal redistribution limit to ensure that the transferring spouse does not end up with less money in their fund than the receiving spouse after the rollover.

Why are we doing this today? There are very few things that I agree on with those on the other side, but on these points I can agree. Let me share a little quote from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on 12 September 2024. He was speaking to the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Adding Superannuation for a More Secure Retirement) Bill 2024. He said:

No mother should be penalised for taking time away from work to do the most important job there is.

I wholeheartedly agree with that; being a mother is the most important job a mother can do.

Katy Gallagher, on 20 March 2024, in response to questions without notice said:

It's part of the fact that, throughout their careers, paid and as family carers—primarily carers in families—they have either had career breaks or been out of the workforce for long periods of time, and during that time when they've not been earning, when they've been caring, they have not been accumulating superannuation.

Let's turn to Senator Jess Walsh. On 18 September 2024 , also in response to the paid parental leave amendment bill, she said that the inequality and the gender superannuation gap are linked to two major factors: the gender pay gap and the career interruptions that are caused when people, predominantly women, take time out of work to raise children. So here we are with this important bill, trying to address these issues.

The important part of the bill, to ensure a spousal redistribution limit, levels the playing field for families where one parent has taken time out from the workforce to raise children. As I said, this is one of the most important jobs a parent will ever do. We in the coalition respect that. It's also a mechanism that prevents spouses from unfairly taking too much of their partner's savings. This is an equalisation measure. To ensure that the amount transferred from one spouse to another does not attract or avoid any additional taxes, it's treated not as a contribution but as an amount rolled over. This is fair. This bill assures couples that they will face neither penalty nor financial disincentive to transfer money from one account to the other. Again, this tax provision signals to parents that they should not be penalised for making choices about who goes to work and who stays home to raise children—because we are the party for families.

It's important to stress this bill only gives couples the option to share their superannuation balances. It does not force them to do so. The bill is not about dictating how couples are to manage their superannuation funds, because we are also the party for choice. Importantly this bill does not prescribe how much superannuation money a couple can transfer to each other. Aside from the rule on the spousal redistribution limit, which limits rollovers to equalisation, the transferring spouse can transfer as much or as little as they like. The bill reinforces the liberal principle of choice, by giving the couples the freedom to share the savings of their respective superannuation accounts with as little impediment or financial disincentive as possible.

This bill recognises the importance of family. It makes it easier for spouses to manage their superannuation finances at all stages of their relationship. It ensures any parent can be financially rewarded for the unpaid domestic work that they do for their family. Given that women typically shoulder the domestic responsibilities of caring for children or elderly parents, they are more likely to take time out of the paid workforce. As a result, they generally accrue less superannuation than men over their working lives. While estimates vary, women retire with significantly lower superannuation balances than men—between 20 to 25 per cent lower. The gap is worse for older women approaching retirement, and this bill aims to address that. Over nearly a decade of recorded data, these gaps have hardly closed, despite progress on many other fronts, including average weekly earnings.

I would like to acknowledge, alongside my colleague Senator Blyth, the alarming fact that women over 55 are the fastest growing group experiencing homelessness in Australia. I call on the Albanese government to ensure that all homes released under the Housing Australia Future Fund go first to vulnerable women and children. If anything good is going to come from the HAFF, surely this should be it. I did ask in Senate estimates, just a few weeks ago, whether this would be the case, but we got no answers on that.

Back to Senator Hume's bill, facilitating the sharing of superannuation balances between spouses ensures that more parents can retire on an equal financial footing, giving choice back to families. The coalition has a proud history of contributing to better design of the superannuation system, starting with the significant contributions of the late senator John Watson in the early 1990s to ensure that the impending superannuation scheme worked for all Australians not just the unions.

Amongst other things, our superannuation reforms in government ensured that the workers' funds followed them from job to job without incurring more fees to the worker. This is what we're trying to do within the family and within the household, recognising that the household is the best place to make financial decisions that work for them, and they should not be penalised in doing so, which is why one of the qualifiers in this particular bill is to ensure that any rollovers between spouses do not incur any additional taxes or fees. We also made superannuation funds performance more transparent by listing their fees and performance on the Australian Taxation Office website—again, promoting the choice of the worker.

I want to talk a little bit about Labor and what they do with superannuation. Labor likes to claim that they invented superannuation. If anybody had the privilege of listening to the condolence speeches on the late senator John Watson, just a few months ago, you would have heard about the very, very significant contributions that he and the coalition made to ensuring that superannuation, as I said before, worked for all Australians. The problem is that the superannuation system that Labor has taken a hold of has invented a system that has structurally disadvantaged women. When Labor tied superannuation to wages, lower super balances for women became a deliberate design feature of the super system, and so this is where we're at now, and we are trying to rectify that.

The government solution to attempting to close the superannuation gap is by paying super on paid parental leave. This comes at a cost of $1.1 billion over four years, and it's only going to slightly improve the gender super gap. So what we're trying to do here—and what Senator Hume is trying to do here with this private member's bill—is provide an equitable solution, an intervention that will address the gender super gap and something which addresses this structural disadvantage for women. But, importantly, it's a choice for households to take up if they choose to and if it works for them.

I highly commend this bill to the Senate. I think Senator Hume has done a terrific job on bringing the conversation back to families and households. The Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Tackling the Gender Super Gap) Bill is the next step in ensuring that Australian superannuation is fairer and more flexible for parents and, particularly, for women. It will make sure that their hard earned savings and superannuation are working for them and their families. I believe that this bill quintessentially reflects the Liberal Party's values of personal choice and family. I am proud to support it, and I commend it to the house.