Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Given the Prime Minister's new-found passion for sensible conversations about facts and Australians living longer, why did the government freeze superannuation increases for 11 million Australians, costing billions of dollars in forgone requirement income and extra age pension expenditure?

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not accept the premise of the question, because we have made no changes to superannuation rules other than doing what we said we would do before the last election. That was not paying out for policies that were supposed to be funded by the mining tax, which raised no money. We said before the election that we were not going to continue policies that were funded by the mining tax, because the mining tax was a bad tax that was raising no money. It was costing jobs and it was damaging confidence. How could you sustain policies that were supposed to be funded by a tax that was raising no money?

This was the genius of members opposite. They were the only government in our history that was able to find a new tax that raised no money but did damage jobs and did damage confidence. That is the only change in superannuation that I can recall; that is, the changes that we made arising from our repeal of the mining tax. We were absolutely upfront before the last election about what we are going to do here. What we said we would do, we have done. We deliver. That is what this government does.