Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party, Minister for Revenue and Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Capricornia, who is such a hard-working member, for her question. She knows that Australians work incredibly hard for their retirement savings, and they are seeing so many of those superannuation savings disappear through excessive fees and charges, through high insurance premiums, through duplicate accounts and through underperforming funds. Every single week I receive letters from members, from individuals, from family members and from people in this House, both on this side of the chamber and on that side, who are concerned about the erosion of retirement savings.

Just recently I received a letter from a concerned sister, who was writing on behalf of her brother. He has a disability. He has taken it upon himself to engage in the workforce—and good on him—and he was automatically enrolled in insurance coverage through his superannuation fund. This has cost him around $800 a month in premiums, a cost that has far exceeded his wages. What is the net result of this? His superannuation nest egg has turned to nothing. It is a mandatory system, and it is simply not good enough for superannuation retirement savings to be eroded in this manner. That is why, on this side of the chamber, the government has made significant announcements.

Opposition members: Name the fund!

It's actually an industry fund. I'm very happy to name it, but you might not like it. I'm very happy to provide the Leader of the Opposition with those details.

In a mandatory system, we need to make sure that we protect the retirement savings of millions of Australians, which is why our government reform package is doing just that. We are not going to have young Australians or those people who have got low balances or those people with inactive accounts paying high insurance premiums. In fact, we are going to save them $3 million in a 12-month period, because they will not be forced to do this. We're also going to reunite people with their own money, through the Australian Taxation Office—that is, $6 billion of their own money that they will get back in their pockets as a result of our changes.

Who is standing in the way of this? It is the Leader of the Opposition, who is so shifty when he is asked about these questions. When he is asked whether he will support these reforms, he twists and he turns. Let me say this: it is so easy for you to support these reforms, if only you would do that on behalf of the millions of Australians who will benefit.

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