Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak on this private senator's bill, the Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Tackling the Gender Super Gap) Bill 2025. I commend Senator Hume, who put this bill into this place, and it gives me great pleasure to follow on from the spectacular contribution that we just heard from Senator Kovacic about why this bill is really important. It's really important to Australia, but, most particularly, it's really important to Australian women. Tackling the gender super gap is a really important thing and something that I think we should all be trying to do, because the gender super gap is a reflection of the fact that Australian women, on average, throughout their lifetimes, earn less than men, so, by the very nature of that, they are likely to have less superannuation.

We believe that it is our job as legislators here in this place to work to tackle that super gap to make sure that Australian women have the same opportunities at retirement that Australian men have, because we believe that we need to make sure that our superannuation system is fairer. We need to make sure that our superannuation system is more flexible and we need to make sure that our superannuation system has the capacity to respond to the realities of the challenges that Australians and Australian women face in their everyday lives. This particular bill is a practical reform measure that enables families' retirement incomes to better reflect the collective decisions that families make throughout their working lives on their journey through life as families.

As I said, your superannuation balance is a reflection of what you earn throughout your working life, and the reality is—it's not just an assumption; it's not just something we're saying here; these are the facts that our borne out by the statistics—that women are likely to earn less during their lives than men. They're more likely to work part time than men. They're more likely to take time out of the workforce when they're raising children, and they're more likely to take on caring responsibilities that affect their lifetime ability to earn and their retirement savings. This is what we sometimes refer to as the motherhood penalty, but it is a penalty that implicates women throughout their working lives, and the consequences are quite profound.

For older women who are approaching retirement, it is even worse. We see that, on average, women are retiring with a gap of between 20 and 25 per cent in their retirement savings when compared to men. But for older women, who haven't had the luxury of having superannuation guaranteed for their entire lives, we're actually seeing a much higher discrepancy, with the retirement superannuation gap at almost 48 per cent. The concerning thing is that, over the last decade, we have barely seen that gap change.

Unfortunately, this is contributing to the fact that women over 55 are now the fastest growing cohort experiencing homelessness in Australia. The government acknowledges this problem. I don't often quote the Prime Minister because I don't very often agree with anything the Prime Minister says, but I have to say that the Prime Minister was absolutely right when he said:

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

I think we all should be able to agree with that. Senator Gallagher, the Minister for Women, has also acknowledged that one-third of the gender pay gap can be attributed to the time women spend caring for families throughout their lives and the interruption that makes to full-time work. The Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, has himself admitted that women retire with about 25 per cent less savings than their male counterparts. Clearly, we absolutely agree with the statements of those three people, but the question that we need to ask today is: what is the government prepared to do about it?

This bill is something that we've put forward as a practical measure to do something about the problems that the government acknowledges exist. Labor's response so far has been to pay superannuation on paid parental leave. Whilst that's great—this is a policy that is worth about $1.1 billion over the four years—and might slightly improve women's retirement savings, it does very little in terms of the broader issue that is before us.

This bill seeks to take a different approach. It's structural, it's practical, and it's a measure that is before us that we can do something about today. It recognises the economic partnership that exists between women and men and in Australian families, however they are made up. It creates a simple voluntary mechanism by which families can distribute or split the superannuation that they're earning across the couples throughout their lives. It gives the person in the relationship who has the higher balance the ability to provide additional savings to the person in the relationship who has the lower balance.

This bill, importantly, uses mechanisms that already exist within the superannuation system. There is only a limited mechanism in terms of contributions to be made on behalf of a spouse. So far, we have seen a very low uptake of those provisions. Weirdly, contemplation of superannuation becomes very live when a relationship breaks down and you head to the courts for divorce. The obvious question this raises is: why on earth, if you can do this when you divorce, can you not do it when you are together? If we can recognise it when people are breaking up a relationship, surely we can recognise it when people are in a relationship.

So this bill applies existing rollover mechanisms proactively rather than retrospectively, but it has a whole heap of safeguards attached to it as well. The bill is not available for transfers from or to defined benefit schemes. It's not available to people already in pension and drawdown phases. Individuals can have only one superannuation account. There are clear limitations on the amount that can be transferred. The original fund balance cannot drop below the receiving fund's balance after the transfer, and the receiving fund cannot exceed the transfer balance cap. As an example, if one spouse had $300,000 and another spouse had $150,000, the maximum rollover would be $75,000, which would give each of the two partners $225,000 super each. Likewise, if one spouse had over $5 million in super and the other spouse had only $500,000, it would be capped so that the receiving balance could not exceed the transfer cap.

There are a number of other integrity measures that would be built into the system that this bill seeks to implement. The split amount retains its original concession—the non-concessional characteristics. Transfers are treated as a rollover, not a contribution, ensuring that the tax arrangements are not disadvantageous.

This isn't about tax minimisation, and it's not about gaming the system. It's about fairness, and it's about recognising that unpaid care that underpins so many Australian families is important. Today, with this bill, we recognise that importance. It's about giving families the flexibility to manage their retirement savings in a way that reflects their shared decision-making throughout their lives together.

I think the coalition has a very strong record in this space. In fact, in 2021 the Women's Budget Statement outlined practical reforms to improve women's workforce participation and economic security—real retirement outcomes for Australian women. We invested in more affordable child care to help women return to the workforce and increase their hours. We removed the $450 super threshold so that low-income earners and part-time workers could accumulate superannuation in the same way everybody else could. We've funded women's safety initiatives, workplace participation measures and leadership opportunities.

We also, as part of our superannuation reforms—to make sure that they were fairer, more transparent and more effective in working for Australians—capped fees on low balances, banned fees on rollovers in investment switches, made insurance opt in for young Australians and introduced catch-up concessional contributions to help women who had taken time out of the workforce. We also introduced the bring-forward rule and the downsizer contributions. Today, Australians will be retiring with more because of the coalition reforms, but that needs to continue to improve.

Quite frankly, too often Labor treats Australians' retirement savings as if they are its money and are some sort of honey pot for government and political projects. We are already starting to see the Labor Party try and water down some of the strong provisions that we put in place, reforms that were designed to keep super funds accountable to members. We've seen Labor break promises on superannuation taxes. We've also seen proposals designed to shift superannuation away from its core purpose—that is, to deliver dignity and security for Australians in retirement. The fundamental difference between us and the Labor Party is we believe that your superannuation savings belong to you, and this bill is designed to make sure that we provide you with, once again, fairness, flexibility and the ability to reflect the reality of your lives by allowing you to split your superannuation within your family during your working life, making sure that we don't continue to see women disadvantaged when it comes to superannuation savings.

Tackling the gender super gap is the next step in making sure that superannuation is more flexible and fairer, particularly for women. Unfortunately, we continue to see often that this government says one thing and does something else, so we're saying to you: 'Don't say something and do something else when it comes to supporting women. Make sure they have as great equity when it comes to their superannuation balances at retirement as their male counterparts do.'

Last night's budget was a classic example of the government being quite happy to go out there and say something that they themselves know isn't true; it sounds good, but in reality it's actually not true. Last night, Labor made an incredible number of great, big promises, and the announcement's fine, but you've actually got to deliver. Last night we heard a whole heap about housing and about getting young people into housing, but even their very budget papers tell you that what they're attempting to do, with the changes they announced last night, will actually result in higher rents and fewer houses and make it harder for young people to save for a housing deposit. I'm not quite sure which part of that is actually delivering for Australians.

We have got an opportunity today, with this particular bill, for the government to put their money where their mouth is. If you genuinely believe that we want to break down the gender pay gap, which is the contributing factor to great discrepancies between men's and women's superannuation balances, then you should be prepared to back and support the bill that we have before us here today. It provides real and practical measures in order for us to do something to make a difference on the pay gaps and the superannuation balance gaps that we're seeing between men and women at retirement.

I would say this to the government: instead of trying to pit generations of Australians against each other and instead of lying to Australians about the outcomes that are likely to be achieved by measures that sound good at announcement but actually, in reality, do the complete opposite of what they're saying, why don't you do something that already has been done for you? It's been designed for you and it's already sitting here in front of you. I don't think anybody in the Labor Party could pick a hole in what this very practical piece of legislation is trying to achieve. Why don't you support the legislation and demonstrate to the women of Australia that you are prepared to do what it takes for them to be able to have an equity proposition when it comes to their retirement savings?

Superannuation sharing seems like a very small measure that you would be able to take. It's a very small gesture to say that you're not going to be bloody minded and disagree with this legislation just because it's been put forward by the coalition. Recognise the fact that this legislation is good, because even your prime minister, your minister for women and your treasurer have all acknowledged that there is a problem. Here is a practical solution, and I encourage you to support it.