Senator Payman has submitted a proposal under standing order 75 today. It is shown at item No. 13 on today's order of business:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Parliament to expand the criminalisation of wage theft to include the deliberate underpayment of superannuation and to guarantee that Australians aged under 18 are paid superannuation.

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Parliament to expand the criminalisation of wage theft to include the deliberate underpayment of superannuation and to guarantee that Australians aged under 18 are paid superannuation.

This parliament has a habit of celebrating progress before the job is done. We pass a reform, we hold a press conference, we declare victory, and then we wonder why Australians are still being left behind. We're doing it again with superannuation. This parliament rightly recognised that unpaid super is a serious problem. That is why payday super was introduced, requiring super contributions for eligible workers to reach their fund shortly after pay day. But we never asked the most basic question. Who actually gets guaranteed super in the first place? We fixed one part of the system, while leaving a much bigger problem untouched.

Superannuation is not a bonus, a gift or a favour from an employer. It is money a worker has already earned and set aside for retirement. If someone takes a worker's wages, we call that theft. It is legislated as theft. So, when a workers super goes missing, it should be treated exactly the same way. That's why I'm advocating for super theft to be investigated and prosecuted by the Fair Work Ombudsman, not brushed off as an administrative hiccup. Every dollar of unpaid super is a dollar stolen from someone's retirement, a dollar that cannot compound, a dollar that cannot grow and a dollar that could mean the difference between security and uncertainty in retirement. The theft happens today, but the damage is felt decades later.

There's an uncomfortable truth sitting right next to this one. Hundreds of thousands of young Australians are being denied guaranteed super before it can even be stolen. Right now, workers under 18 only get guaranteed super once they clock more than 30 hours in a week. Think about who that actually is. It's the teenager stacking shelves after school. It's the uni student serving coffee on the weekends. It's the young worker helping their family cover the rent. They show up. They do the work. They pay tax on what they earn. Yet the law decides that they don't count when it comes to super.

The numbers are staggering. The Super Members Council estimates that around 530,000 under-18 workers will miss out on guaranteed super this financial year alone. That's a combined $411 million in contributions that they'll never see. A typical teen working part-time for two years before turning 18 could lose around $2,500 in contributions now, which compounds into roughly $11,000 less at retirement. It's gone before they can even cast a vote. We tell young people to be financially responsible, to plan ahead and to start saving early. Then, the very first time they enter the workforce, we take the opportunity away from them. That's not fairness and it's definitely not common sense.

We talk a lot in this chamber about the gender super gap. Maybe we should talk more about where it starts. Evidence presented to my office showed that young women are hit the hardest by this exclusion because they're more likely to work part-time hours that fall below the threshold. For too many women, the first gap in their retirement savings is not created at 40; it is created with their very first job. This rule dates back to the creation of the modern super guarantee in 1992. At the time, contribution rates were lower and there were concerns that fees and insurance premiums could erode small balances. Those settings have changed. Contribution rates have gone up and protections have been introduced. Yet this outdated exclusion hasn't moved an inch. We see the workforce has changed, the economy has changed and young Australians have changed, but the law has not. That is exactly what's happening when governments govern through piecemeal reform. They fix the system, ignore the cause and celebrate the announcement, and they leave the worker behind.

So my message today is very simple: workers do not need another announcement. They need a superannuation system that works as intended—a system where super is paid on time, a system where stolen super is recovered and a system where every worker who earns a wage earns super too.

Industrial relations reform in this country that advances the interests of workers is done by the trade union movement, it's done by the Australian Labor Party and it's done by Labor governments. This government has introduced the most far-reaching industrial reforms in a generation, and they reflect those commitments, those values and those principles that underpin the Labor movement. It's not just about announcements; it's about actual change.

When you look at what this government's done and what this government is going to do, you see a transformation in the superannuation system in Australia, and you see a transformation in the way wage theft is dealt with. The Albanese Labor government legislated Australia's first federal criminal offence for intentional underpayments. There's been a strengthening of wage theft penalties. Importantly, there's been the empowerment of the Fair Work Ombudsman and an increase in funding to enforce these claims. There are a number of different measures that have made it easier for both unions and individuals to bring claims to courts and the commission and to get their cases heard.

The key focus of this debate, though, and the key driver of these key reforms has been the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association of Australia and its branches around Australia, its members, its delegates, its industrial officers and its leadership. It's not to say there isn't more work to be done here, but the role of the SDA in relation to being a leading voice on wage theft needs to be acknowledged. The union has run major union funded underpayment class actions. Its underpayment class action against Aldi reached a proposed settlement of $55 million in July 2026, getting money back into the pockets of workers. Its Eudunda Farmers Foodland case settled for $5.5 million in 2025. That was part of a formal submission made to the 2026 wage theft inquiry. That Eudunda case was interesting. It was resolving a case first brought to the Federal Court in 2021. They got money into workers' pockets based on things that they had been denied based on wage theft. I acknowledge there the role of the SDA secretary in South Australia, Josh Peak, who said at the time:

The SDA is proud to have secured $5.5 million in backpay … This is one of the largest retail underpayment cases in South Australian history.

The SDA, along with the ACTU, pressed for the federal wage theft criminalisation provisions that the Labor government has done. That was particularly in response to underpayment and retail scandals at Woolworths and Coles in 2019 and onwards. The Albanese Labor government adopted it and legislated it as part of its Closing Loopholes package. But there is more work to do. It is important that wage theft cases and wage underpayment cases are discovered properly. While the Albanese government has made changes to how unions have access to records, there is probably more work to be done in this space, and we would acknowledge that. We acknowledge that there is an important role for trade unions to be able to enter workplaces and inspect records in order to discover these cases on behalf of workers.

I go to my home state of Western Australia, where, under section 49I of the Industrial Relations Act 1979 (WA), unions have that power. They have the power, the right of entry, to go into workplaces and inspect records and to act on underpayment in wage theft cases.

But that power, in terms of its scope of operation, is limited by the scope of the federal industrial relations powers, so we need an equivalent provision in federal law. Again, the SDA continues to be a leader in this space. I want to take you to something that the national secretary of the SDA, Gerard Dwyer, has said. He's urging the government to restore the rights of unions to inspect time and wage records and conduct spot checks, expand the low-cost small claims jurisdiction, which the Albanese government is in the process of doing, and treat unpaid superannuation explicitly as wage theft.

I also want to acknowledge the role of the SDA and the role of the Labor Party in relation to under-18s' superannuation. The SDA has a long-running campaign, called Super on Every Dollar, which is aimed at ensuring that those people aged under 18 receive superannuation on every dollar they earn, regardless of how many hours a week they work. That's a very important development, and I was proud to be a member and a delegate at the ALP's national conference in July where that was included in the party's platform. What we will come to see is that we will get super on every dollar for those people who are under 18 years of age.

But, to take a big step back on all of this, it is Labor governments, Labor members, the trade union movement and the rank and file of the Labor Party that deliver serious industrial relations reforms in this country. We are in the process of delivering groundbreaking, once-in-a-generation, if not once-in-a-century, industrial relations reform, and credit must go to the Albanese Labor government and the wonderful work of the trade union movement.

The Greens will always stand up for workers' wages and conditions. It's the most powerless who are most affected by wage theft, and stealing wages from workers, especially workers with low bargaining power—young people, migrants, women—causes serious harm. Evidence to a recent Senate inquiry into wage theft clearly showed that it continues to be a widespread, systemic and entrenched problem across Australian workplaces, and the Greens were proud to support the criminalisation of wage and superannuation theft during the closing loopholes reforms. We need to make sure that our penalties for superannuation and wage theft are fit for purpose and that we increase the resources available to make sure that prevention and repayment are actually enforced.

But I want to move on to the other issue covered by this motion: the need for this Labor government to guarantee that Australians aged under 18 are paid the superannuation that they would be entitled to if there were not discrimination on the basis of age. I listened to Senator Ghosh tell us that Labor will get super for all under-18s. But all the young people out there watching this and thinking about super and wondering what they're going to have in their pay packet next fortnight will be asking Senator Ghosh: when are we going to see Labor actually do what we need here? Right now, hundreds of thousands of young Australians aged under 18 are missing out. Every year, 530,000 young workers are denied the astonishing sum of $411 million in super for no reason other than their age.

The Greens have pushed three times to try and get Labor to act and give those young people the super they should be getting. We took this policy to the last election, and last year we tried to amend the government's Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Bill 2025 to grant all young workers the right to super from their employers. Labor had a chance to back young workers then, but they decided to side with the very wealthy one per cent—those very big supermarkets, Maccas and the fast food industry; those big giants profiting from billions every year. They sided with them over the young people and the $411 million they are owed in their super. Then, just this July, we pushed again to partially disallow this exclusion in regulations and deliver super for young people.

So, Senator Ghosh, I say to you and to the Labor Party: When are you going to deliver for young workers? When are you going to stop discriminating against them just because they're young and they work part time because they're at school? There are very good reasons why those workers work part time. They are there every afternoon in their hundreds of thousands, and they deserve superannuation.

I'm proud the Greens now have a private member's bill before this very Senate that would improve and change that outdated exclusion. We brought the bill forward because Australia's superannuation should apply to every worker. It's time for young workers to be paid the super they deserve. I've referred this bill to an inquiry and I look forward to hearing from young workers about how this unfair exclusion hurts them. It hurts them every day. It's time to stop boosting the profits of some of Australia's biggest and most profitable corporations by letting them continue to rip off young workers by taking money out of the pockets of those kids under 18 and putting it onto the bottom line of some of our most profitable big corporations. This parliament needs to support the Greens private member's bill and give superannuation to all workers under the age of 18, regardless of how many hours they work. If you earn a wage, you should earn super. If you pay tax and turn up for your job as someone under 18, you should be paid your super.

The Greens will continue to fight for those young workers. We will push Labor. It's time Labor delivered for those young workers to remove those restrictions, to remove age discrimination and to pay those workers what they are entitled to. It's time to end that discrimination and shift that money, that $411 billion, from the bottom line of Coles, Woolies and Macca's into the pockets of those young people so they have a decent retirement when their time comes.

Labor has always believed that people should be paid properly for the work they do and that working Australians should be able to look forward to a secure retirement. This is particularly important for younger Australians. Many are working casual or part-time jobs while studying, helping with household costs and trying to get a start. The super they earn early in their working lives matters, because it has longer to grow and can help make a real difference later in life. At the moment, a worker under 18 generally has to work more than 30 hours a week for an employer before they're entitled to compulsory super. We know that is not how many young people work. They work after school, on weekends and during school holidays. They work in cafes, supermarkets, shops and businesses across the country. They are doing real work and earning real wages. The principle is straightforward. If you're earning a wage, you should also be building super for your future.

We want to strengthen superannuation and make sure working people receive what they are entitled to. That is also why this government has acted on wage theft and unpaid super. From 1 January 2025, deliberate wage theft became a criminal offence under federal law, and those protections include superannuation entitlements. I want to be speak now particularly about Senator Payman's motion. The suggestion that deliberate underpayment of superannuation sits outside the protections this government has put in place is not correct. We know too many workers still miss out on super that they are legally entitled to, particularly younger workers, lower paid workers and casual workers. That is why our focus is on making sure workers receive the money they have earned.

Since 1 July, payday super has begun rolling out, moving us to a system where super is paid at the same time as wages. Super is not an optional extra. It is deferred wages, and it belongs to the worker. Payday super means workers can sooner see whether their superannuation has been paid, and unpaid super is less likely to build up over months. We are also extending support for low-income workers through changes to the low income super tax offset, which will benefit more than a million Australians.

While we're talking about strengthening super, there is another debate happening that should concern Australians. One Nation wants renters and mortgage holders to be able to divert a quarter of their compulsory superannuation contributions in 2 to two take home pay for up to three years. The superannuation guarantee is now 12 per cent. Under One Nation's proposal, workers would take three percentage points out of their super and spend it today. I understand why that might sound attractive to someone struggling with the cost of living, but there is no free money here. That money comes directly from workers' retirement savings. It means less money going into their super account and less time for that money to grow. Modelling cited by the Assistant Treasurer suggests that someone on the median wage who did this for three years would retire with around $25,000 less in super. For a couple, that would be around $50,000 less.

Labor does not believe the answer to the cost-of-living pressures today is to make working people poorer when they retire. Superannuation is one of Australia's great economic and social achievements. It's about making sure people who work hard throughout their lives can retire with dignity and security. We have taken the superannuation guarantee to 12 per cent. We are paying super on Commonwealth Paid Parental Leave. We are delivering payday super. We are improving support for lower paid workers, and we will keep looking at practical ways to strengthen the system so it works better for more Australians. Superannuation is a long-term system. Changes made today can have consequences over decades, so reform has to be careful and focused on better outcomes. That is the difference. (Time expired)

I rise to support Senator Payman's motion, which says pretty simple things that you would have thought that the Labor Party would embrace with both hands—the need for the parliament to expand the criminalisation of wage theft to include the deliberate underpayment of superannuation and to guarantee that Australians under 18 are paid superannuation. It is pretty remarkable. I've listened carefully to the Albanese Labor government's position in this debate, and it seems to be that firstly they don't like what One Nation says about superannuation. Well, take a ticket. That's hardly novel. Secondly, they like superannuation. Well, take a ticket. It's popular in the Australian public. And, thirdly, they've moved to payday superannuation. Thankfully my party, the Greens, supported that move, and that's how it got through this parliament.

But what I failed to hear was: why on earth they haven't supported a Greens' bill that's been repeatedly put on the books and amendments we've moved repeatedly, supported by Senator Payman and by the crossbench, except for One Nation; why Labor has repeatedly opposed giving mandatory superannuation to under-18s; and why they said no, not once but twice, to giving mandatory superannuation to under 18s. I've listened carefully, and from what I can tell, it's because Labor doesn't like One Nation. Maybe they talk about unintended consequences or about how you've got to do this carefully.

Every moment Labor faffs around about not supporting the position of actually ensuring that under-18s got their superannuation, which could go through this parliament in a heartbeat, Coles, Woolies, KFC, McDonald's and Bunnings are literally taking money out of the pockets of 16- and 17-year-old workers and put it in their corporate profits. That's what happens. Maybe it is that the SDA has got such a comfortable relationship with the big retailers that they don't want to rock the boat. Those members of the ALP who came here with the SDA are actively trying to say: 'Look, we've got this comfortable arrangement. We get union dues paid out of the wage packets. I don't want to rock that boat and actually make them give our members superannuation.' Is that what it is? There was no explanation given in any of the speeches here today from Labor.

The laws in this country take theft seriously unless it's a corporation doing the theft. Pay packets that come in short are never the pay packets of the CEOs. It's never the pay packets of the HR manager. It's always the pay packets of the least powerful workers. Those with the least are the ones who get cheated. When it comes to under-18s, it's the ones who are already not even getting an adult wage. To watch the Albanese Labor government repeatedly wriggle and squirm and do this kind of jellyfish politics to try and prevent laws going through to make sure that those who are the lowest paid—15-, 16- and 17-year-old workers—actually get their superannuation, to watch the Labor Party wriggle and squirm like some kind of jellyfish or squid to avoid voting for something that would actually make sure they get their superannuation, is not edifying. It's just this government all over. Is it just because the idea hasn't generated from the government benches? Is that why they're against it? Well, tell that to that young worker at Rebel Sport or Sushi Bay. Tell them why you've decided that they don't deserve to get superannuation.

It is obviously true that parliament should extend the criminal wage theft framework to cover deliberate superannuation mispayment. It's also obviously true that young workers absolutely deserve their superannuation. I say again that, by continuing to resist this, what is the Albanese Labor government doing? It's taking money out of the pockets of that young worker working in a fast-food outlet and giving it to their corporate mates who fund the Labor Party in the first place. (Time expired)

Every Australian worker is entitled to be paid what they have earned. Deliberate, intentional underpayment is wrongdoing and should attract strong consequences. But that is not the reality of the question before us. The question is whether parliament should expand a serious criminal offence to superannuation before the existing offence has been properly tested and reviewed, which it hasn't. I chaired the Senate inquiry into the existing criminal wage underpayment offence. The committee was not convinced it was having the intended effect on the small number of businesses that deliberately and persistently underpay their workers. Seventeen months after section 327A commenced and after almost $50 million was committed to a dedicated Fair Work Ombudsman criminal function, experts, unions and practitioners still could not agree whether it had reduced deliberate wage underpayment. At the time of the inquiry, there had not been a single referral for prosecution—not a single one.

Why is this the case? Part of the problem is that wage theft is not even defined in the Fair Work Act. The term is used to describe everything from deliberate exploitation to genuine mistakes that may have been corrected in an extraordinarily complex workplace relations system that is crushing Australian small businesses. Criminal law must distinguish between the two. That complexity is real, and we can't pretend that it is only complex for those who are bad faith actors. The ABC, major charities, major banks and even the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations have struggled to correctly interpret workplace entitlements and have underpaid their workers. Small businesses with a fraction of those resources are expected to navigate that same system and are labelled thieves when, despite their best efforts, they too are sometimes unable to.

Superannuation adds another layer of complexity. Employers must determine the correct earnings base, navigate choice and stapled fund rules, verify fund details, comply with SuperStream and now ensure that contributions reach the correct fund within seven days of pay day. A processing failure, classification error, rejected contribution or system breakdown is not necessarily deliberate theft. The answer to genuine mistakes is to simplify the system—clearer awards, clearer superannuation obligations and less compliance complexity—not to keep expanding the criminal law as though every error reflects dishonesty or a deliberate act.

Labor's instinct is always the same: if a law isn't working, add another law; if enforcement isn't working, create another offence. The government treats businesses, especially non-unionised small businesses, with outright hostility and contempt, even when it is obvious that they are struggling to navigate the complexity that this government has created.

It is a wonder that business confidence has plummeted. Productivity is lower, and our regulatory burden is higher than the OECD average. Business is drowning under red tape. Since 2000, the number of federal regulations has doubled. The federal rule book has tripled in size, and compliance roles have doubled since 2010. That has a cost. Every hour spent navigating unnecessary complexity is an hour not spent hiring, investing, innovating or improving productivity. Good policy should do two things: come down hard on deliberate exploitation and make it easier for honest employers to get it right. Don't set them up to fail with your complexity. This government can't get either right. They should make the laws we already have work. Workers deserve effective enforcement, and businesses doing the right thing deserve a system that they can actually comply with.

Question agreed to.