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

For the benefit of the members of the House, we're dealing with three superannuation bills this afternoon. The first one, which we just voted on, was about self-managed superannuation funds. The second bill of three deals with an extraordinary deal that was done between the government and a senator for Queensland, Senator Hanson, sometime yesterday. This deal, in its original form, saw a proposition brought before the Senate that would increase the excess contributions cap from its current level, $27,500, by $5,000 per annum for a very small group of people—people over the age of 67. I'm reliably informed that there are 17 members of the parliament, including Senator Hanson herself, who have turned 67. Members of the House may be interested to know what pecuniary benefit would fall to those within the class of people identified by the proposed amendment. It is somewhere in the vicinity of $5,000 per annum. At the same time as we're cutting all sorts of benefits to ordinary Australians and threatening to cut their super, we're proposing to increase the superannuation benefits of politicians by $5,000 per annum. It did not proceed—and thankfully so. They were shamed out of doing it. They proposed to do it but it did not proceed—and thankfully so.

The measure before the House, however, proposes to remove the excess contribution charge. Every member of the House would understand how that works, because we receive a bill every year on excess superannuation contributions. This is a provision which benefits a large group of politicians but a very small group of Australians. At a time when we are trying to resolve the complex issues around superannuation, it is extraordinary in the extreme that this is the priority of this government—a measure that benefits a large group of politicians but a very small group of Australians who earn over $275,000 a year. It's not a priority and Labor won't be supporting the measure.

See this speech in context