Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

John Kerin, when he delivered his 1991 budget, said superannuation is the cornerstone of encouraging greater self-provision that will help improve retirement living standards and will reduce the budgetary cost of the pension system as the population ages into the next century. I do rise to speak on this motion, brought by the honourable member for Groom, which concerns the way that the Albanese Labor government is now taxing superannuation, bringing in taxes that were not announced or discussed during the election period and that will particularly affect younger Australians. At the moment, younger Australians are already facing a current cost-of-living crisis, with less money in their pay cheques each week. Now this government is going to ensure they have less money into the future as well, because this government is now increasing taxes on our superannuation.

Since 1992, in Australia we've had an enforced savings scheme with compulsory superannuation, but governments—and this government in particular—need to remember that this is Australians' own money. It is Australia's money to deliver quality of life in retirement, not a piggy bank for governments to tax and spend. Despite the promise of no changes to superannuation before the election, the government is now proposing to effectively double superannuation taxes on one in 10 Australians by the time they retire. When the government brought the legislation in, it said, 'There will only be a few of you affected.' That is not true, because the government has failed to index the taxation threshold, which means that, at the moment, the average 25-year-old in Australia will be paying this tax, double the tax that is currently being paid on superannuation balances over $3 million. Analysis of ATO and census data reveals that more than two million Australians currently under the age of 25 will also be slugged with this tax. How can this government in any way say that it is trying to look after younger Australians now and into the future? It should be empowering and incentivising younger Australians to save for a comfortable retirement.

Confidence in our superannuation system is always eroded whenever governments come in and make ad hoc changes to superannuation that were not accounted for. When people are planning for retirement, they do it as a long-term strategy. They get advice and then, without anything being said about it before the election, this government comes in and is effectively doubling the rate of tax on superannuation.

Even worse than that, this government is also going to tax unrealised capital gains. This means that Australians will be paying tax on paper gains. This will especially affect farmers and also a lot of small-business owners, who may move assets into their superannuation scheme. They will now be paying tax on that even though those assets are not, in fact, income generating. This is an abhorrent use of the tax policy. Taxation of unrealised gains is particularly unfair to people such as farmers and small-business owners. We can look, for example, at what Mr Peter Burgess of the SMSF Association said:

Taxing unrealised capital gains is a tax on market movements and changes in asset values, not on income …

This government, in bringing in this tax, is in fact going against all of the usual principles for the way that taxes should be imposed.

While we're on superannuation, I've previously spoken about the links between superannuation funds and the union movement. I particularly commend the work of Senator Andrew Bragg in the other place, who has recently pointed out that superannuation funds paid $10 million in political payments to unions from 2021 to 2022. Superannuation needs to be looked at, but not in the way that this government has taxed it in this latest budget.

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