Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a first principle, we should never forget that superannuation is your money. It's not the government's money; it's not the superannuation fund's—it's your money. It's your money to deliver quality of life in your retirement. It's not a piggy bank for the government to tax and spend or to direct into priorities that they determine it should focus on. It is you forgoing your wages today to save for the future, and it is money that is taken from your wage without your choice. We all agree to that social contract; everyone supports that principle. However, what we're doing with superannuation is asking Australians to make decisions today on their retirement plans—to forgo money today—that will impact them in 20 and 30 years time. We need to provide them with certainty when they make that decision, and that certainty is a key part of the superannuation social compact. It's disappointing and unfortunate that the Albanese government has chosen not to provide that certainty for the Australian people.

When this policy was announced last year by the Treasurer and those opposite, there was a moment in question time that really summed up either the lack of understanding or the lack of care of the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and those opposite when it comes to people's superannuation. We on this side asked a question about a young person that would be impacted in 30 years and the percentage of Australians who would be impacted. I remember it clearly: the reaction of those opposite was to laugh at that question—an important question because, if you are 20 years old today, if you are 30 years old today, the decisions we make in this House today will impact you at that time. I appreciate, I understand and I remember well my early 20s, where you're not thinking about your superannuation and you're not thinking about the future. That's our responsibility—to make decisions today on behalf of the Australian people today and into the future. So for this government to laugh at young people's futures in 30 years time reflects poorly on them, and I hope the Prime Minister will take a moment to think about his behaviour because quite often he's happy to laugh at those doing it tough and those that need their superannuation.

Let's be clear. Let's be very clear. This is a broken promise by this Prime Minister, by this Treasurer and by this government. Australians are sick and tired of the Albanese Labor government continuing to tell Australians one thing and then do another. It's just so clear that they have the wrong priorities and a strong track record and consistency—it's just about the only thing they're consistent on—for broken promises. The PM, when he was opposition leader, talked the talk, but it's clear that he cannot deliver in government. He's all talk and no answers.

Mr Albanese, the Prime Minister, was elected on a promise to reduce electricity bills by $275. Instead, electricity prices are soaring. The Prime Minister was elected on a promise to 'make life cheaper and easier'. Instead, grocery prices are increasing, housing costs are rising, and there's no end in sight for Labor's cost-of-living crisis. The Prime Minister was elected on a promise to honour the coalition's stage 3 income tax reforms that fought bracket creep for hardworking Australians. He told the Australian people, 'My word is my bond,' and then he broke his word and he broke his bond with the Australian people. The Prime Minister was elected on a promise to leave superannuation alone, explicitly ruling out changes to superannuation. Instead, now his broken promise on superannuation taxes means that, with soaring cost-of-living pressures, Australians will be worse off today and into the future. At a time when Australians are struggling with high inflation, a GDP per capita recession, a record increase in interest rates and soaring energy prices, the message these super changes send is clear: Labor wants you to pay more.

But it's not just another broken promise; it undermines confidence in our superannuation system. As I said previously, the long-term nature of superannuation savings means that confidence in the entire system is undermined when ad hoc changes are made and promises are broken. Labor's changes to super and their failure to index these changes will punish young Australians, and it's those Australians who will pay the price in their retirement. It's very much the two-card trick. They know that many young Australians, as I said previously, in their early 20s and 30s aren't thinking about their superannuation, so they're happy to play around and not index this knowing that they can get the tax revenue moving forward. But it's the reality that it's the young people of Australia who will be impacted in the future by these changes and the decisions made today.

Analysis from the Treasurer's own Treasury department shows that a 20-year-old today earning an average wage over their lifetime will pay higher taxes under this scheme. Analysis by the tax office and census data reveal that more than two million Australians who are under the age of 25 today will be slugged in their retirement with Labor's latest tax grab. That's assuming that between now and their retirement there are no other tax grabs on superannuation from Labor. Given the Assistant Treasurer has called superannuation a honeypot, I think it's extremely likely that there'll be more changes and tax grabs, that this is just the first step in this broken promise and they'll continue to raid superannuation.

One of the submissions on the draft bill and around the lack of indexation was from Australian Super. They said:

Indexation of the threshold at which the measure applies would lead to greater certainty and promote stability and confidence in the system. This is important, given the long-term horizon of superannuation savings. This is important as members who are complying with the purposes of superannuation have a right to know how the earnings on their superannuation will be treated for tax purposes while it is compulsorily preserved.

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Thresholds in the superannuation system that relate to an individual's balance or their contributions are indexed. This includes the transfer balance cap, the concessional contributions cap and the non-concessional contributions cap.

So there is no reason why the government couldn't index this other than that they want to bank some savings, moving forward, to continue their tax-and-spend budgetary agenda.

They're also throwing conventional tax wisdom out the window, because this change will tax unrealised capital gains, meaning that Australian retirees will face tax bills on money that they haven't even earned yet. The government are going to tax you on money you haven't even earned. This is going to hit small-business owners, farming families and self-managed super funds the hardest. It's going to apply particularly to farmers.

In its submission to the Treasury consultation on the exposure draft of the bill, the National Farmers Federation gave examples of how the proposed new tax would affect farmers who have placed family farms into a self-managed super fund and who use lease payments from the next generation as their retirement income. Let's be clear: in my community we have many family farms, many of them where mum and dad are in their 70s, 80s or 90s and are retiring. Their children and grandchildren want to work on the farm, but the money required to buy the land isn't practical for anyone, so they'll put the farm into the superannuation fund to look after mum and dad and rightly pay a commercial lease to fund their retirement.

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