James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Waste Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of this amendment to the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Adding Superannuation for a More Secure Retirement) Bill 2024, and I hope that the government are deeply reflecting on the sensible proposal that we are putting forward to provide greater flexibility and greater choice to young parents with regard to how they structure their finances at a time that has got quite significant renewed financial pressures on them. We absolutely support superannuation being paid on paid parental leave, and that has been made abundantly clear by our lead speaker in the coalition and others that are contributing on this debate from our side of the chamber. It is an important reform and one that is very logical, makes a lot of sense and is overdue, as others have commented. As a parliament, we look forward to seeing this legislated. But we've obviously taken the opportunity to provide a very constructive and sensible suggestion to make this even better for young parents.

It comes back to our fundamental position when it comes to superannuation. In the Liberal Party, in the coalition, we strongly support superannuation. In fact, we defend superannuation in this very parliament when certain policy positions are brought forward to punitively tax people's superannuation against what they believed and understood to be the policy settings when they were provisioning for their retirement and what they expected to be a reliable, consistent policy from all sides of politics.

In my first campaign for this parliament in 2019, we again had to fight very passionately to defend superannuation from the greedy policy positions of the then Labor opposition to try and use superannuation as some kind of piggy bank to prop up exorbitant Labor government expenditure—taking the hard-saved retirement provisions from hardworking Australians to pump into recurrent government expenditure. That's not what superannuation is about. Superannuation is about people providing for their retirement and people being incentivised to put money away for when they reach retirement age, getting preferential tax treatment, which is absolutely appropriate for those retirement savings, as opposed to being taxed in the income year in which they've earned.

It's obviously an extremely significant service to the Commonwealth government because everyone that provisions for their own retirement is taking an enormous burden off the taxpayer. Every time I speak on superannuation legislation, I say thank you to every self-funded superannuant out there who has saved for their retirement, who is self-funding, because we believe in a safety net. It's vitally important. There are people that need government support in their retirement, and they're entitled to it—absolutely entitled to it—but to every person that through their own savings does not therefore require the extent of support that others do in their retirement we are very grateful. We need to stop policy positions coming through this parliament—this isn't one of them, but we're talking about superannuation—changing the rules and moving the goalposts on people when it comes to superannuation.

The other thing that's really important when it comes to superannuation is something that on this side of the House we understand instinctively but doesn't always seem to be something that's as appreciated by others: superannuation belongs to the people that have saved it. It's their money. It doesn't belong to the super funds or the lobby groups that think they've got these trillions of dollars that they can move around these battlefields and play games with. It belongs to each and every individual Australian that has a superannuation account, and they should get to decide what happens with their own money.

The amendment that we've moved on the second reading, and the proposition that we're putting forward on this, is exactly in line with that fundamental value we have in the coalition, which is that superannuation should be available to support people in the best way possible for their retirement. That can include having access to it earlier to, for example, help buy a home or help offset costs when taking parental leave, because the costs that are offset at that stage in life put people in a position to be much more financially advanced when they reach retirement age. We've got this nonsensical insanity going on now where people are reaching retirement age and having to use a big chunk of their super to pay off the mortgage that they haven't finished paying off because they couldn't get into the housing market until they were their 40s.

By allowing people more flexibility over their super, which is what we're proposing here, and letting people make their own decisions about their own money—which you wouldn't think was very controversial, but apparently some believe it is—we're empowering people to make their own decisions about their own economic circumstances and future economic security and also to make decisions that are specific to their particular circumstances. There should be nothing controversial about that, because we trust Australians to make their own decisions about their own financial futures in their best financial interests. That is human nature.

Other than at a time when people are starting or expanding their family, they are never at such a heightened point of thinking about their family's future and the responsibility they've got to their family in raising their children and provisioning for their children's future and their own future as well. That's what parents think when they have children: 'I've got this additional responsibility, having had a child. As a parent I have to make sure I've got a plan to provide for them.' That is the most basic human instinct. What we're proposing is to let those parents, who we think know what's in the best interests of their family, their children and themselves, to have more flexibility about what to do and how to expend their own money.

I implore the government to think very genuinely about this proposition. I think it's fair to say that it's a new idea that they would not have necessarily considered. There's an opportunity for us all to work together here, to come together and say, 'At its best, the point of this parliament—and the 151 people in this chamber from every corner of the nation, with different ideological hues, genders, ages, perspectives—is to, through debate, find a way to improve a piece of legislation.' That is in the greatest traditions of the Westminster system. What we're doing, by virtue of the amendment that the member for Deakin has put forward, is provide that great opportunity for this House to do exactly what we're here to do and improve legislation—a principle that we already support—enhance it and make it better for all the people that we represent.

There's no harm in the government saying, 'Good idea—we hadn't thought of that.' That's the whole point of having these debates. That's why we have a legislature. The executive aren't the exclusive repository of the entirety of wisdom when it comes to public policy—neither is any one particular ideology or any one particular side of politics. There's no harm in them saying, 'We like your suggestion; let's work together on it, and let's make a decision that's in the best interests of the families that this policy position is designed to assist.'

We absolutely support this bill. We would absolutely like to see sensible, enhanced flexibility around decisions people make about their own money. Do you know what? If this isn't a good idea, 100 per cent of people eligible for it will simply follow the path of having it paid into their super account. So, if it's not a good idea, it has no consequence whatsoever, because, if it's not a good idea, every single Australian that's given the option to make the choice will say, 'No, I want that exclusively going into my super fund'—no worries at all, and, in success, people have made a decision about their own money.

My superannuation belongs to me. Everyone else's in this chamber belongs to them. Every Australian's super belongs to them, and it is their money. We've got to start remembering that. There's some pretty loose talk that comes from some members of the government about what they want to do with super and how they want to ratchet taxes up on it, referring to it as a 'honeypot'. That really frightens the average person that is perfectly entitled to think to themselves: 'My superannuation belongs to me. The tax treatment of it will not change. The goalposts won't be shifted. The rules won't be adjusted on me.' When you're talking about provisioning for your retirement, you're making decisions for decades ahead, not months or years ahead. When you leave the workforce and the government changes the policy settings on you and you don't have as much money as you thought you would because they ratcheted the taxes up on you, you can't really just re-enter the workforce a couple years later. It is not easy to do that. All the Australian people, particularly those approaching retirement age, want to know is that there is going to be consistency in and no change to the way in which their superannuation is treated by the government.

On this side of the chamber, we will always defend that. We'll always stand up for self-funded retirees. We welcome the opportunity to support the principles of this bill before us, and we've got a very sensible suggestion to improve flexibility and empower individual Australians to make decisions about their own money. We implore the government to support us in that.

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