Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Supporting Choice in Superannuation and Other Measures) Bill 2025. This bill contains several sensible measures which the coalition will be supporting, and I will outline those measures here today. But it also contains provisions that risk weakening competition in superannuation and using the tax system to subsidise divisive political advocacy that has already failed the test of our courts. For that reason, this legislation requires significant changes that we trust the Senate will properly consider through the Committee of the Whole stage, but I will outline the intent of those amendments in my contribution here today.

There are six schedules in this bill, and some—as I said—are entirely reasonable. Schedule 3 provides tax exemptions associated with Australia hosting the Rugby World Cup, and that is standard practice when Australia hosts major international sporting events and is something that the coalition would support. Schedule 4 implements the Australia-Portugal tax treaty. Again, this is a very routine measure in such circumstances, designed to prevent double taxation and strengthen economic cooperation, and, again, the coalition will be supporting this schedule. Schedule 6 increases the wine equalisation tax producer rebate cap, which will provide additional support to Australian wine producers. Australia's wine producers deserve more support, especially with the cost of living rising under this government. As a Tasmanian, I've spoken many times in this place about my fondness for our Tasmanian wine industry and, indeed, our national wine industry, and I'm very glad that the coalition will be supporting these changes to the WET under this bill.

But, unfortunately, as is often the case for these TLA bills, the government has chosen to bundle these very commonsense provisions that I've just outlined in with far more contentious provisions that the coalition finds problematic. These are the provisions which require closer scrutiny.

Superannuation is one of the most significant economic reforms in Australia's history. Australians now have more than $4 trillion saved for retirement. That figure is projected to reach $5 trillion by the end of this decade. Superannuation shouldn't be a political plaything. It supports the retirement incomes of millions of Australians and underpins investment across the Australian economy. But that system only works if Australians trust the government to remember that superannuation is Australians' money—it's not the government's money, it's not Labor's money, it's not even the money of the big super funds that manage that money nor does it belong to any bureaucrats. But, too often, this Labor government approaches superannuation differently. Too often, the government treats super as a large pool of capital that they can reshape, redirect control of and, of course, tax when their spending is out of control. Further, rather than strengthening competition in superannuation, as the name of the bill purports to do, this government repeatedly introduces measures that entrench the dominance of the largest funds and limits the ways that Australians can engage with their own retirement savings. It is that concern for the coalition that sits at the heart of schedules 1 and 2 of this bill.

As I said, the government has titled this bill as though it's 'supporting choice in superannuation', but this title could be straight from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four because, in reality, those provisions restrict how superannuation products can be presented to employees, thus denying choice. The onboarding process is often the only time that many Australians actively review their superannuation arrangements. It is one of the few moments when workers pause and ask simple questions: Is my fund performing well? Are the fees reasonable? Should I consider another option? Limiting the information available at that moment reduces the ability to compare and weakens competition across the system, so the parliament should be very sceptical of any moves to do this.

As I have foreshadowed, the coalition does support some aspects of the government's proposal. For example, it makes sense that funds promoted during onboarding should be funds that have passed the latest performance test. We agree with that aspect of this schedule. The performance test, indeed, was a coalition reform, and it has played an important role in protecting Australians from persistent superannuation fund underperformance. It should do so during employee onboarding.

But the system proposed in this bill contains a serious flaw. Under the bill, employers and the digital service providers that they use need to receive from the Australian Taxation Office information about an employee's stapled fund, or no options other than the employer's default fund can be shown. The government has said this is necessary to reduce duplicate accounts, and we would certainly support measures to reduce unintentional duplicate accounts with duplicate fees.

For this to work, the entire framework relies on the ATO being able to reliably retrieve stapled fund information, and there was evidence presented to the Senate inquiry into this bill which demonstrated that right now they can't. The government is merely hoping that the ATO will be ready in three months time. But all of this is happening at the same time that the ATO is also being asked to implement payday super, administer the new super tax changes and deliver on a large range of other reforms. Onboarding and employment software providers including SuperAPI, MYOB and Employment Hero told the committee inquiry into this bill that stapled fund retrieval currently only works around 55 to 80 per cent of the time, and that means that, in a significant number of cases, the system simply will not return a stapled fund.

Under this legislation, what happens when the ATO's stapled fund system doesn't work? Well, employees may only be shown the employer's default fund. This is, of course, great news for the largest established Labor aligned superannuation industry, but what it will mean is that a system that is designed to reduce duplicate super accounts will actually result in more of them—more duplicate accounts, more fees and worse outcomes for workers. This isn't simply some sort of ideological concern; this is a practical risk identified by the very businesses responsible for operating the onboarding systems the government will be relying on through their ongoing consultations with the ATO.

For these reasons, we have serious concerns about how these provisions will operate in practice, particularly in relation to employee choice, duplicate accounts, system reliability and transparency. We will therefore be moving amendments in the committee stage to address these concerns and to ensure that the framework is workable before it takes effect, and I certainly hope that this chamber will be supportive of those amendments. They are sensible safeguards for a system that will affect millions of workers and employers. It will influence how Australians choose their superannuation for years to come, and it could mean the difference between, on the one hand, higher fees and multiple accounts and, on the other, lower fees and better outcomes.

Finally, I want to turn to schedule 5, which deals with new deductible gift recipient listings, also called DGR listings. This bill proposes to grant a specific DGR listing to Equality Australia for gifts made after 30 June 2025 and before 1 July 2030. Equality Australia is currently registered as a charity with the ACNC under the subtype of 'Advancing public debate'. But, importantly, this is not an organisation that the regulator or courts have found to be eligible for public benevolent institution status. In fact, the ACNC refused Equality Australia's PBI application. That refusal was then upheld in the AAT and again by the Full Federal Court. Those decisions were clear in their reasoning: Equality Australia is not principally engaged in direct relief of disadvantage.

This matters because DGR status isn't a symbolic label; it is a taxpayer funded financial benefit. It makes donations tax deductible. It is in every practical sense a public subsidy, and, when parliament grants a DGR listing to an organisation, we are making an explicit judgement about the suitability of that organisation to receive this subsidy. It is therefore reasonable, and indeed necessary, for parliament to be incredibly cautious when the government asks us to extend special tax treatment to an organisation that is engaged in active and contested political advocacy, particularly when Australia's charity regulator and the courts have already considered that same organisation's activities in detail and declined to elevate it into a higher benefit charitable category.

There is no doubt that Equality Australia engages in political advocacy. The organisation is heavily involved in campaigning against the sex based rights of women and is in favour of sex ID laws which further erode those rights. Let's be very clear: the debate around these issues is not one where government should be picking a winner by selectively applying a tax advantage to one side and not the other. That is exactly why Australia has a set of principled, well-established DGR categories—so that eligibility for taxpayer support is based on mutual, purpose driven criteria, not political preference or alignment with the government's ideological agenda. The government's proposal in this schedule departs from that very principle. It is asking the parliament to elevate a specific advocacy organisation above others, despite the fact that the regulator and the courts have determined that it does not meet the relevant high standard. It is utterly inappropriate for our DGR framework to reward favoured advocacy groups while excluding others.

For all these reasons, the coalition will be moving an amendment in the committee stage to remove Equality Australia from the list of organisations receiving DGR status. Australians expect DGR status to be reserved for organisations that meet the highest standards of scrutiny. They expect it to be applied consistently, fairly and without political favour. They expect parliament to protect the integrity of that system, not undermine it by carving out special treatment for an advocacy organisation simply because the government happens to agree with its platform. With this amendment in the committee stage, this is what the coalition intends to do.

In conclusion, this bill contains measures that the coalition supports, and I've outlined these here today. But it also contains provisions that raises serious concerns about competition and choice in superannuation and about the proper use of our DGR framework. Those concerns should be addressed, and we will be pursuing them in the committee stage. Australians deserve a superannuation system built on choice, competition and trust, and they deserve confidence that the taxpayer supported gift recipient status is reserved for organisations that meet the highest standards of scrutiny.