Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, by one estimate Australian retirees will be $135 billion worse off post pandemic from reduced superannuation, personal savings, property income and share dividends. Fixing this will take bold reform, implemented urgently, including to the age pension, compulsory superannuation and voluntary savings. For example, the pension and compulsory super need to be increased and the assets and income tests and taper rates adjusted to stop penalising people for saving for retirement. The deeming rate needs to be lowered and eligibility expanded for the Commonwealth seniors health card. To this end, Prime Minister, when will the retirement incomes review be released? And do you commit to the bold reform needed to ensure a fair go for older Australians? (Time expired)

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. The Retirement Income Review report was handed to the government in late July 2020. It was recommended by the Productivity Commission in its report, Superannuation: assessing efficiency and competitiveness. It was chaired by Mr Mike Callaghan, with fellow panellists Carolyn Kay and Deborah Ralston. The review establishes a fact base to help improve understanding of how the Australian retirement income system is operating and how it will respond to an ageing society, as the member indicated. It considers three pillars of the existing retirement income system: the age pension, compulsory super and voluntary savings. The panel has identified four principles to use in assessing the performance of Australia's retirement income system: adequacy, equity, sustainability and cohesion.

It is very true that this devastating COVID-19 recession is going to have a significant impact on Australia's incomes today and will also impact on them in the longer term. That is also true in terms of the Commonwealth's finances and those of the states and territories. What we are investing today is to ensure that Australia can make its way through these most difficult of times. And in this most difficult of times, it is true that the government has enabled people who are in hardship and distress to access their own money, their own savings and their own superannuation to assist them to get through this very difficult time.

Now, the review that was initiated by the Treasurer will continue to be considered by the government and it will be released at a time when the government will also make a response. That is the normal process. I remember when the Henry tax review was handed to the government. The shadow Treasurer will remember that because he was working for the Treasurer at the time. They held onto it, I think, for about a year and then they ignored it.

Dr Chalmers interjecting—

I'm sorry, but the shadow Treasurer is correct. They didn't ignore it; they introduced the mining tax that didn't raise any money. That was, I think, probably one of the genius recommendations from the shadow Treasurer, whose training wheels were even bigger back then than they are now.

But the matters raised by the member are very important, and we take them incredibly seriously. In this House yesterday, I indicated that the unintended possible consequences of the indexation that applies to the pension will be addressed by the government, and I want to assure pensioners to that end—as we were able to at the last election, when those opposite sought to strip away from self-refunded retirees their own earnings and their own superannuation. That's what those opposite think when it comes to people's savings, and these days they argue in this House that that money doesn't belong to those people but belongs to industry fund managers.