Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Tackling the Gender Super Gap) Bill 2025 put forward by Senator Hume. The money in superannuation belongs to the owner of the super fund. The reaction should be about benefiting the investor, not the government, not the super fund—the investor. But Labor sees the money in super funds as something it can tinker with. It's going to have to find a way to plug the $3 trillion hole that its economic mismanagement has opened up. We know from their record that you can't trust them on anything. They don't do what they say they're going to do. They backflip and call it everything else. They don't like the word 'cuts', even though that's what they are. They don't like the fact that they're saddling Australians with an immense amount of debt, but you can't cover that up because it's Labor that's been in government for the last four years. This is owned by their economic mismanagement.

The bill is designed to tackle one of the most persistent and unfair challenges in the super system: the gender super gap. It continues the good work of the coalition in government to improve retirement outcomes by making superannuation fairer and more flexible, particularly for women and families. Many women run small businesses. This bill will help them. Many women take time out of work to stay with their children. This bill will help them. Many women find themselves with a relationship separation later in life for a range of reasons. This bill will help them. The evidence is clear, but, as we know, it doesn't matter what the evidence says. Labor is driven by ideology. Don't get in the way of that.

Women's experiences of work are very different from those of men. They're less likely to earn the money that men earn. They take time out of the workforce to raise children. They work part time. They take lower paying jobs to accommodate caring responsibilities, often referred to as the 'motherhood penalty'. That's a reality. That's been my experience, too. While estimates vary, women retire with significantly lower super balances than men—between 20 and 25 per cent lower. The gap is worse for older women approaching retirement: 47.8 per cent for women aged 55 to 59, and 42 per cent for women in the 50 to 54 and 60 to 64 age brackets. Over nearly a decade, that data has hardly changed. A woman who has worked hard and finds herself single should be able to re-establish herself after circumstances she might or might not have had control of. It's the women of Australia that will benefit from this bill, but Labor doesn't see them.

This policy will help close the gender super pay gap by giving the partner with the higher balance, typically men, 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. It also allows them to maintain the integrity of the superannuation system because it includes several guardrails and limitations. This is not a reckless idea. This is a sensible idea that should be adopted.

The limitations are that it's not available for transfers from or to a defined benefit scheme, nor is it available to those already in a pension or draw-down phase, meaning a spouse's funds must be in the accumulation phase. Individuals can have only one superannuation account. There are also limitations on the amount that can be rolled over.

It's a structural change focused on splitting balances rather than relying on clunky existing contribution mechanisms. Currently, there is only a mechanism to make contributions on behalf of a spouse; however, its take-up is astonishingly low, with only 1.1 per cent of Australians using it in 2021-22. While equitable splitting of superannuation balances is currently considered only in divorce proceedings, this bill uses those existing mechanisms, such as rollovers with standard forms and recognised tax treatments, and applies them proactively.

Let me tell you about the coalition's record on superannuation. In the nine years the coalition were in government we made superannuation fairer, more efficient and more transparent. Australians will retire with more because of the reforms the coalition made to super. We capped fees on low balances; banned fees on rollovers and investment switches; made expensive insurance premiums opt-in rather than opt-out for young people; abolished the 450 rule—a deliberate design feature of super that Labor had embedded in 1992—so that low-income earners and women in particular accumulate super like everyone else; and allowed non-PAYG income to be used for contributions below the concessional limit, to attract tax deductions so that the self-employed can take advantage of super in the same way wage earners do—and we know, because women are significant operators of small business, that that will be particularly attractive to women.

We introduced catch-up contributions so that anyone who has not used their full concessional contribution cap can roll up five years of unused concessions, helping women who have taken time out of the workforce. We introduced the bring-forward rule so that three future years worth of non-concessional contributions can be made in any one year. We introduced the downsizer contribution that allows a couple selling their family home to put the proceeds into super—up to 300,000 per person or 600,000 per couple—without breaching any caps.

Labor like to say that they invented superannuation. But it took a coalition government to make superannuation work for members instead of unions and super fund managers. I said earlier in my speech in this parliament that super is there for the people that earnt it, not for the super funds and not for the Labor Party to use it as their honey pot to prop up the next bright idea. It is there for the benefit of the people who earned it, and its only purpose should be to maximise returns to the person that worked hard for it.

We all know that, when Labor run out of money, they come after yours. Yes, we saw that last night in the budget. We saw that Australians will pay an extra $50 billion in taxes over the next four years. The budget last night was full of broken promises, higher taxes, more debt, lower living standards and fewer homes for Australians. It's exactly what Australians don't need.

Labor wants to move the goalposts to make it easier for super funds to invest in projects that are Labor election commitments in energy and housing. The problem is they don't stack up financially; otherwise, the super funds would already be investing in them. The only projects that super funds should be investing in are funds that will maximise returns to the hardworking investors that earnt those funds. Even with the record revenues from inflation-driven bracket creep and high commodity prices, Labor still can't manage the budget.

I wish to thank Senator Hume for this bill to make super fairer for women. It's an important bill; it supports women.