Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Choice in Childcare and Early Learning) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to rise to speak on the Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Tackling the Gender Super Gap) Bill 2025, and I commend Senator Hume for bringing forward this very important private senator's bill. It's something that I wholeheartedly support, and I encourage the Senate to do so. This bill works to ensure that the retirement outcomes for women and families are fairer and more flexible. The tackling the gender super gap bill 2025 is designed to address one of the most persistent and unfair challenges in the super system, the gender superannuation gap. In August 2025, a Super Members Council report said:

Women across Australia continue to miss out on super due to time spent out of the paid workforce to care for children and other family members. This contributes to an overall gender gap in super balances, which leads to working women in Australia retiring with a quarter less super than men.

This structural inequity also means women suffer more acutely from the scourge of unpaid super. The smaller your balance, the bigger a difference each dollar of unpaid super makes.

Missing out on super—which is a legal workplace entitlement in Australia—dramatically erodes women's super by retirement, magnifies existing inequity, and erodes women's future financial security.

The report highlights that the average affected working woman misses out on $1,300 in super each year, which can lead to more than $26,000 less in their retirement savings for that typical worker.

Labor's solution was to pay super on paid parental leave, investing $1.1 billion over four years. This was something that we supported, but it really doesn't go far enough to address the inequality that exists between women and men in relation to superannuation balances when it comes to their retirement. The paid parental leave measure will address the superannuation of women having children in the future, but it will not help women beyond child-bearing age. While estimates vary, women retire with significantly lower super balances—between 20 and 25 per cent lower—than men. The gap is worse for older women approaching retirement. That is to say that the change in relation to paid parental leave, while obviously welcome for young women having children, is not something that is going to assist older women at all. The gap is worse for older women when they approach retirement: 47.8 per cent for women aged between 55 and 59, and 42 per cent for women in the 50-to-54 and 60-to-64 age brackets.

The bill that Senator Hume has introduced will help to close the gender super gap by giving the partner with a higher balance, typically the spouse—a man—the option to transfer some of their balance to their partner to even up the accounts. The bill creates a simple and voluntary mechanism allowing couples to split their collective superannuation balances evenly during their relationship on an ongoing annual basis. Currently there is only one mechanism to make contributions on behalf of the spouse. This has an astonishingly low take-up, with only 1.1 per cent of Australians using it in 2021-22. Equitable splitting of superannuation balances is only currently considered in divorce proceedings. This bill uses the existing mechanisms already in place—that is, rollover with the standard form and recognised tax treatments—and it applies it proactively. If the economic partnership at the heart of most families is recognised in divorce by splitting super balances, then why shouldn't we allow the option of recognising it while the couple is still together? Splitting super balances using a rollover from one fund to another is a genuine structural change.

I might add that this could have the desired impact of helping to reduce the friction that often is there when couples are going through difficult times. When you take out the financial difficulty that a woman would face in terms of considering what her future would be like if they were to split from the relationship and whether or not there would be some sort of equitable settlement at the divorce and they can deal with that at the outset without having to go all the way through to divorce, it might actually give the couple a chance to be able to resolve their differences or potentially even reconcile the relationship and work it out without having that additional financial burden that often raises the tension within a household. This could have quite a significant impact, at least in addressing that disparity that often exists. Anything we can do to keep families together, particularly when there isn't domestic violence involved and there's simply a split that's occurring and friction within the relationship, is good for families. This could be a measure that couples could start while things are quite amicable and they're getting along. They say, 'This is the arrangement we're going to make to split our super,' potentially safeguarding against any future difficulty that could come as a result of that financial pressure. It's just a thought.

As we know, women are generally more likely to take career breaks or work part time, making noble and necessary sacrifices for the wellbeing of their families. If the super system does not reflect the value of the work that mothers do outside of the workforce, the gap will only continue to grow. As I've said already, the government has introduced superannuation on paid parental leave. It does not cover the nuances of every Australian mother's potential circumstances. After those six months of parental leave conclude, some mothers may not wish to return to full-time work or may return to a flexible arrangement as agreed with their employer. Families might get the paid parental leave for their first child, but, if they're having children in quick succession, then they have quite a period outside of work. They're not re-entering the workforce for a long enough period to be re-eligible for the paid parental leave, therefore they don't also get that benefit.

As an aside, something I think that we really should be looking at is the flexibility of the Paid Parental Leave scheme, the eligibility of that and making sure that we're not actually disadvantaging families that want to be able to have multiple children—which we need to have in this country, by the way. We've reduced our birthrate in Australia to 1.4 children per woman. There's a lot of talk about intergenerational economic impacts. One of the biggest intergenerational economic impacts that we have is that we're not replacing ourselves. We're not going to have a population coming in behind us to help us, particularly as we get older and end up needing the care of those that are younger than us. We're not going to have the population coming in behind us in the economy. These things are also important for those reasons.

Many households make decisions in relation to their finances, and they're not made lightly. Families weigh the needs of their children, workplace flexibility and financial pressures before deciding what arrangement works best for them. In many cases, part-time work and an extended break from the workforce is the best option for families with children in their formative years of life. With my role as choice in child care shadow minister, I now talk daily to families across the country who are saying to us: 'We want greater choice and flexibility. The current system is too rigid. It locks us into a particular path.' That path works for a lot of families, but it doesn't work for all.

For those that want to make that active choice, a choice that should be encouraged and supported in this country, to spend more time at home supporting their families—we should be doing everything we can to make sure that those families have got that support. It's not the choice that everyone's going to make, but for those that want to make that choice we need to make sure that the system is best set up for them, and why not allow people to use their own money to help provide that choice and flexibility? That's my view. It ensures, if we pass this bill, that mothers are not financially disadvantaged in retirement because they choose to prioritise the care and wellbeing of their families during the key stages of life. This is a role that cannot be replaced.

The ABS data shows that nearly 800,000 people—791,100 women—who experience violence by a previous partner while living together were pregnant at some point during their relationship. Heartbreakingly, 42 per cent of those women experienced violence during their pregnancy, including 17 per cent who experience violence for the first time while pregnant. These are devastating figures, and every one of those women is deserving of safety and security. The bill looks to develop that financial security for them. It helps to ensure that perpetrators cannot completely financially isolate their victims or set up for long-term financial disadvantage. Many women who have experienced economic abuse also experience reduced workforce participation or interruptions to their careers altogether as a result of that coercive control.

The HILDA survey, which studied a nationally representative group of women aged 18 to 64 showed that women who had experienced physical violence experienced an average loss of $3,180 compared to pre-violence earnings. This bill is protecting those women, too. It recognises that the temporary harm inflicted by those perpetrators should not have a permanent effect on a woman's quality of retirement. No woman should be subject to retirement insecurity owing to circumstances of violence and abuse. This bill is not just a retirement policy; it's a women's safety, dignity and autonomy policy.

Labor like to say that they invented superannuation, but it took a coalition government to make superannuation work for members by giving them the right to choose their superannuation fund. Instead of unions and super fund managers, individuals now have that choice. We want to provide that choice, through this bill, for families and couples to be able to work out their financial arrangements without the restrictions that are currently there. This bill provides more flexibility and it makes it fairer, particularly for women, making sure their hard-earned savings in superannuation are working for them and their families, not for Labor and their Labor mates.

Given some of the changes announced by the Treasurer last night, it would not be surprising if he decides to come after our superannuation next. The government is running out of money to spend. It needs another nest egg to attack. In 2024, the Treasurer said that he thought the $4 trillion super pool should help fund major economic and structural shifts, then he flagged it should be used for investment into housing. The Treasurer is confused. He thinks Australia's $4.3 trillion super industry is his money to repurpose. It's not his lotto ticket to fix other debt issues that he has created. We saw them come after Australians' wealth and equity last night in the budget. I've got no doubt that, if they had their chance at the next budget, we would see some changes in relation to superannuation. He is now intent on watering down the performance test so it can be vested outside of its current parameters. Labor wants to move to goalposts and make it easier for super funds to invest in projects that are Labor election commitments in energy and housing. The problem is that these projects don't stack up financially, otherwise super funds would already be invested in them.

This bill is all about providing that flexibility and that choice for families. This is their money. Superannuation funds are not the government's money. They're not a plaything of the government. This is about individuals and families. This bill is putting that choice as to who holds the balance of that super into the hands of couples—men and women, women and women, no matter what it is—to be able to provide that flexibility between each other. We think that is an honourable thing to do. I again commend Senator Hume for providing this bill for us to consider, and I hope we would see it supported by this Senate. Thank you.