Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness) | Hansard source

I note Senator Chandler has already indicated our position on this matter. In adding to her remarks, I make the point that this parliament is supposed to be for the people. We are not here for the SDA or the Rest Super fund or whatever else these people think we're here for. At the end of the day, younger people are not thinking about superannuation. The idea that superannuation is the only way to have a safe or good retirement is such paternalistic thinking. Australians are not stupid, and Australians have a range of ways that they make their financial arrangements to prepare for their future and their family's future. The idea that you've got to shoehorn every single dollar into superannuation to suit the fat cats at Cbus and HESTA, and all the other people that the Labor Party and the Greens want to help out most of the time, is lazy rust-bucket thinking.

I caution the Labor government again on their preparedness to go along with ideas that come from the super lobby which haven't been thought through. There's no other industry in Australia which opens the door and where all the money just falls in like the super funds. The healthy scepticism that many people on this side have is that the super lobby is so rich that it's been able to commission thousands of different reports where it can find ways where it should get more money that it can manage, in the case of 18-year-olds, for 42 years. Of course they want more money, so they can charge high fees on it and send distributions back to their mates in the unions which own the funds. Of course they want that. I just think that we've got to be able to look at the vested interests here, and I think we've got to be very careful—