Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

We are still borderline millennials, you and me, Member for McMahon! That ratio, by 2030, will have dropped to around three to one. So we've got some tough decisions to make. Do we say to our grandkids: 'We're going to drop the ball on superannuation. We are going to drop the ball on self-reliance'—self-reliance used to be a Liberal Party value—'We're going to drop the ball on preparing our country for the future and leave it to our grandkids'? Are we going to put it on the tick and say, 'Darling, can you pick up the bill'? That is literally what they are arguing: don't worry about it; the grandkids can pick up the bill. The ratio of workers to retirees will be one to three.

We don't think that's fair, and on this side of the House we want to maintain a system that is designed to ensure that workers—all workers, not just the privileged ones—have access to a dignified retirement. That was the purpose of superannuation in the first place. I have heard members opposite argue, from time to time, 'Superannuation should be treated as any other bank account.' Let me walk you through a couple of reasons why that is absolute rubbish and how all workers will be worse off if that proposition ever sees the light of day. Let's look at the rate of return that superannuation has enjoyed over the last 10 years. On average, it's six to seven per cent, in some funds closer to eight, per annum over the last 10 years.

Find me a bank that is offering that sort of a rate of return even on a long-term deposit. You can't. Look at the medium-term deposit returns you're getting on a bank investment today. They're somewhere closer to two per cent, and probably closer to one per cent, at the moment, than six, seven or eight per cent. There's a very good reason for that: banks hold cash on demand. It's not invested for 10, 15, 20, 40 or 50 years. It's banked and held on demand, and it can be drawn down very quickly. The banks can't be investing in the long term and can't be getting the sorts of returns that a patient investor, like a superannuation trust, can get, because that's not what they're set up to do. They're set up to have cash on demand. They're set up for a very different purpose. These nongs opposite argue, 'Let's treat superannuation just like a bank account.' You can treat superannuation like a bank account, but you'll get the same sort of return you get in your bank account as well—probably seven or eight per cent less than you're getting today. If that's seriously what they're arguing, they'll be devastating the savings returns for ordinary Australian workers.

Let me say something else about this for those who try and say superannuation money is just like any other money and should be treated the same. It attracts tax preference: 15 per cent on the way in, 15 per cent on the returns of the fund and, if held to preservation date, nothing on the way out. There is no other class of income or investment that attracts the sorts of preferential treatments that superannuation does. It attracts those preferential treatments because we want to encourage people, incentivise people, to save for their retirement. So there's a very good reason that it's not treated like any other money, although some of those nongs over there are trying to convince people it is. I withdraw, Deputy Speaker. It was most unkind of me and to the nongs of this world.

Some of those people are trying to say, 'Let's just treat it like any other bank account.' It would absolutely devastate your savings and the investments of those superannuation funds. It's not the banks that are investing for the long term in our port infrastructures, our airports, our highways, the long-term infrastructure of this country, that require an investment not over one, two or three years or even 10 or 15 years but over 30 and 40 years. Banks play a good role but it's the superannuation funds and that patient capital that's doing the long-term investment, the long-term returns, and delivering excellent outcomes not just for the fund members but for the country.

Jobs, economic growth, putting ballast into business investment, which has fallen off a cliff under those guys over there—superannuation funds are the key to all of that. They want to pull it all apart. Individuals will be worse off, the economy will be worse off, pensions will go down, taxes will go up and retirement incomes will be absolutely devastated. It would be hard to find a government that had a greater grudge against retirees and elderly people than this one. They have frozen your pensions. Labor indexed pensions. These guys opposed it and tried to wind it back and now they have frozen it. They are kicking the guts out of superannuation because they don't understand it or they don't believe in it. It wasn't their idea, so there is intellectual jealousy. They are freezing your pensions and kicking the guts out of superannuation and aged care.

If you were to receive a report from a royal commission that told you that between 30 and 50 per cent of residents in aged-care facilities were malnourished—the technical term is 'starving'—would you sit on that report? Would you sit on that report for nine months, as the hapless aged-care minister has done, supported by this government? No, you wouldn't. You'd act. You'd ensure that those aged-care facilities received the funding, the support, the regulation and the oversight that our senior citizens so dearly deserve. I can't see the heart in this government. They are absolutely heartless—devastating for individuals. But there you have it in one. You've got their trifecta: kicking the guts out of the pension system, ripping the heart out of superannuation and being absolutely heartless when it comes to aged care in this country. That's the trifecta that you're getting from this government.

We give them the opportunity to repent. We give them the opportunity to do a very simple thing—to come in here and vote in favour of their own election commitments. It's a very simple thing. We give all of them over there the opportunity to come in here and vote in favour of their own election commitments. It's actually much more than that. We're asking them to vote in a way that supports a recovery from the economic recession that this government is making ever so much worse, ensuring that we have the basis on which to build an economy and growth into the future; that we aren't kicking the can down the road on the cost of pensions and an ageing population; and that we aren't saying to our kids, 'We're putting it on the tick and you're going to pick up the bill. We'll be long gone and you guys are going to have to pick up the bill.' It didn't used to be Liberal ideology that the answer to everything was to put it on the taxpayer and we'll pay for it down the road. But, surprisingly, it seems to be today.

We are going to oppose them every step of the way. We are going to invite them to vote in favour of their own election commitment when they consider the vote on my second reading amendment. Apart from that, we'll be supporting the legislation. We encourage the government to do the right thing by the retirees of this country, like the right thing by people living in aged-care facilities. We've got a lot of work to do to recover from this economic recession that this mob are making so much worse. Kicking the guts out of superannuation is not the right way to go.

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