Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I've just sat and listened to a speech given by the member for Goldstein at maximum volume—which should be recorded for the sake of Hansard so that all those who read it in their head in the future read it at shrill yelling volume so they know its full impact. I heard him argue at that volume against superannuation—against superannuation, the entire scheme! I think many people in Australia will be interested to know that in fact his position is that superannuation, as a scheme, is madness, that the commitment that the Morrison government took to the last election to stay with the already legislated increase to the superannuation guarantee is, and I quote the member for Goldstein, 'mad ideology'. Where was this high-octane, high-volume argument against the government's own policy in the lead-up to the election?

It's one thing to come in here and shout and rave and suggest in a way that has absolutely no basis in fact and is hardly comprehensible that the entire scheme of superannuation is somehow about feathering Labor's nest. It's one thing to do that—it's another thing to actually be honest with the Australian people and say that superannuation is a scheme that has been in place for many, many decades and that the Morrison government has no intention of completely dismantling it in an open and transparent way; its intention is just to chip at it and chip at it and chip at it. And who gets the money that apparently is going to be spent buying all of these houses? Could it be, perhaps, the people that donate to the Liberal Party? I might just leave that out there.

It is just beyond the pale to have the member for Goldstein come in here and say that superannuation is madness and that the government's election commitment to abide by the legislated superannuation guarantee increase is mad ideology. I might note that all of us privileged enough to serve in this place have a superannuation contribution of 15 per cent, whilst people on the other side are arguing against their own policy for working Australians to have a superannuation contribution of 12 per cent.

Here are some actual facts that show the superannuation system we have in Australia, which is world leading and a proud legacy of Labor governments, makes the economy stronger. It's a savings pool to invest in jobs and growth. It means Australians own more of the country and more of the wealth that our country creates. If Australians have less superannuation, they're going to have more reliance on a pension and less money for their retirement—and we know that we have a government that wants to increase the retirement age to 70. Superannuation was created to fix the budget and to give retirees a dignified retirement. Those people that the member for Goldstein and others on that side say they're fighting for—this younger generation of people who dream to own a home—also deserve to have a dignified retirement. They don't deserve to have a government that says, 'We'll think about how we're going to afford to pay for your age pension sometime down the track,' because it's not really going to be our problem. It's going to be some other government's problem in future years to fund what will be an enormous pension call on the budget if they get their way, which the member for Goldstein has made absolutely obvious in his speech, and they dismantle the whole superannuation system.

Superannuation contributes twice as much to retirement incomes as the age pension. So consider the impact when people's superannuation is denuded in the way that this government wants and encourages it to be. Superannuation is also either the largest or the second-largest asset most Australians have. The current average balances at retirement are $270,710 for men and $157,050 for women. I'm going to come back to that gender disparity in superannuation and the implications of it later in this speech. It means that more Australians retire having to rely not on a full pension but only on a part pension and it means more Australians retire with a superannuation income that gives them dignity in their retirement. If we stick with 12 per cent, the median balance at retirement will be more than $300,000 for women and more than $600,000 for men, and workers on the lowest incomes will be between 15 and 20 per cent better off than they will be on the age pension alone. That's standing up for workers. That's standing up for low-income workers. Yet we have a government that has decided to encourage Australians to raid their futures—to raid their retirements, in the form of their early access superannuation scheme—to get through their current circumstances instead of having a proper and comprehensive plan to help them get through. No-one is critical of individuals who have taken the opportunity to access that scheme in good faith. The criticism is levelled at a government that is telling Australians that that's a good thing to do for their future.

We know from industry analysis that the estimate is that a 20-year-old who withdraws $20,000 under the scheme could lose more than $120,000 from their retirement balance, a 30-year-old who accesses $20,000 could lose about $100,000 in their retirement and a 40-year-old could lose more than $63,000. It's not right and it's not fair to say that the most significant way to get through this pandemic is for people to raid their future to survive their present. It's also not right and not fair to put off the future impact on a budget.

Six hundred thousand Australians have emptied their superannuation accounts, and 494,000 of those are under the age of 35. These, remember, are people under the age of 35 who are significantly impacted by this pandemic and the recession, and they're now going to be significantly impacted in their future because they miss out on compound interest. We also know that the early superannuation access scheme has been the subject of significant allegations of fraud and misuse, and that's had to be referred to the Auditor-General by Labor so that it would be investigated.

Women, who already have significantly less superannuation in their accounts than men, have been more likely than men to access the early withdrawal of super. Recently, we've seen in Victoria more than 30 community and union organisations to get together to lobby the federal government and the national cabinet—if it remains after what we've seen in parliament over the last few days, with this federal government attacking state governments—urgently to address the worsening economic conditions of working women during COVID-19. McKell Institute research found a 7.1 per cent decline in the number of Victorian women in jobs since March and has identified that job losses among women were at five times the rate of job losses among men in July. That research has concluded that recent policy decisions mean disproportionate economic impacts on women are likely to accelerate. And what did the McKell report identify as those poor policy designs and ill-considered decisions? The early access to superannuation scheme, the end of the so-called free child care and the ripping away of JobKeeper from childcare and early education workers. The impact on women predicted by the McKell Institute is poverty in retirement.

We already know that the fastest growing cohort of homeless people are women over the age of 55. There are a number of factors that play into that, and one of them is their poor levels of superannuation and retirement savings, particularly compared to their male counterparts. Women's Health Victoria chief executive Dianne Hill was quoted in The Age recently as saying that women are more likely to be at the front line of the pandemic as essential workers, more likely to lose their jobs, more likely to have increased caring responsibilities and more likely to access their superannuation early to meet basic needs. A cohort of Australian workers who are already suffering in retirement from lack of superannuation have been forced, because of a range of poor and ill-considered policy decisions, to access their superannuation early to meet their basic needs. So, when the member for Goldstein talks at high volume and high pitch about the future for Australian workers, perhaps he needs to just calm down for a moment and think about these women and the impact of policies on them.

I want to endorse something else that Ms Hill said to The Age, which is that we must seize the opportunity to tackle these gender inequalities and build a more gender-equal society. That's what we should be looking at in terms of reforms to superannuation, not walking away from the government's previous election commitment to abide by the increase to the superannuation guarantee and the other reforms which are clothed in choice but are really about dismantling our superannuation system bit by bit.

Of course, there are many Australians who rely on the pension in retirement, and the pension, in so many circumstances, is just not adequate for a dignified retirement. Jenny recently called my office about the age pension. She was really saying, 'How am I going to survive without an increase, particularly now that there's the freeze on indexation?' Jenny has to shop online at the moment in order to get her groceries delivered, which means it's much more expensive for her. She is on the pension and struggling to afford to buy her groceries online.

Noel, a constituent, contacted me some time ago. He is not necessarily a supporter of my party, but he really wanted a message brought to this parliament and the Treasurer. He noted that there was a review into retirement incomes—I'm not sure what happened to the government's review on retirement incomes; we haven't seen that yet—but this is what he wanted me to raise back in June. He said: 'The recent increase in the age pension was $8.42 per fortnight. This, of course, equates to one cup of cappuccino a week. Our retirement savings have taken a huge hit. We trust the government will review the pension, the assets and income test, and the deeming rates. My wife and I are hitting 80 in a month or two and we don't have much time to recover financially. The age pension increase wasn't enough.' I haven't spoken to Noel recently, but I can't imagine that the news that the indexation isn't going ahead is going to make him feel any better. I should also give a shout-out to his wife, who is a terrific tennis player and, I understand, has a club in common with the Treasurer.

One of the other issues raised with me by a lot of my constituents about the pension is fairly summed up by an email from Phil—which I think is in capitals because it was at the same volume as the member for Goldstein's contribution! He said: 'Why are the old age pensioners always left out in the cold when it comes to giving money to help us out a little bit? There's one fact they keep forgetting: most of us paid our taxes for 50 bloody hard years. I get $750 in April and $750 in July and that's bloody it. Is that fair?' (Time expired)

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