Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed, they can when they divorce. So why can't they make the choice to do that beforehand?

It makes me think about last night's budget. It makes me think about the many broken promises. It makes me think about the increased taxes. It makes me think about the higher debt—indeed, we will have some $1 trillion in debt next year. It makes me think about the declining living standards that Australians are facing every single day in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. And it makes me think about the fewer houses that Australians have and how that has impacted both the costs of mortgages and rents and the ability for people to access the housing market.

We make everything harder than it needs to be. This is a way to make one thing simpler: to make a decision about your own money and how you allocate that as a family unit between your super accounts. I can't understand why this government won't consider that. I don't understand why they don't see that this is an opportunity to provide additional security for a lower income earning partner—and, let's face it, that is usually a woman. Why is there a barrier to that? What is the systemic issue where you say you shouldn't be able to do that? What is the problem with this? Who will end up worse off? The super funds will still get their fees, the funds remain in a superannuation account—they haven't been taken out—and a family gets to make a decision about something that works best for them.

The only thing that I can think of that is that there's a view that there might be an ability to tax less on the lower balance account, so they don't want to see a distribution from the higher account to the lower account. That means that this is about the culture of this government that just wants to tax you more. Why do they—actually, that might be wrong. I think it's not that they want to tax you more; they have to tax you more because they have spent so much, they have lost control of our economy. They don't know what to do and how to plug those holes, so they have to tax you more. This is another thing that they do not want to consider.

We know that this is a historic pattern with Labor governments in this country. When they run out of your money, they come and ask you for more—or not ask you but come and get more of it via taxes. They come and get more. We can't forget that this government went to the election, in the lead-up to 2022, saying that there would be no changes to super and no new taxes. But the moment they were elected, they reneged on that promise and immediately announced an unindexed tax on unrealised capital gains. We know what that is: a tax on money you don't have yet but you might have in the future. 'We're going to calculate it on the basis that you're going to get it, but if things go wrong and you actually don't earn that money and we've taxed you on it and you lose that money, we're not going to give you the tax back.' That's what they wanted to do—an entirely unworkable proposition that was absurd and would see young people starting out on even average incomes today paying more and more tax into the future on top of the fact that they would never be able to afford to own their own home.

That is the culture of this government, and, frankly, we need to create a circuit breaker for it. It can't continue. Australians cannot continue to pay the price of this government and its inability to manage our economy. We need to draw a line in the sand and say Australians have a right to make choices about their own lives and their own money, and this is an example of that. If Australian couples wish to split their super amongst themselves, then they should be allowed to do it. They should be allowed to do it at a time of their own choosing, when it best suits their needs and when it best suits the needs of their family because—guess what? If their family were to break down, then it gets split anyway. So why can't they do it at the time of their own choosing? I'd like the government to be able to answer that question. I'd like them to explain to Australians why this is yet another decision that's been taken out of their hands, why this government won't allow families to make choices about their own lives, about superannuation, about child care and about aged care. This government wants to have control but has no idea what it's doing.