Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

Before I get to that point—and, again, I do not want a long debate on this—I make the point that the current annual liability is around $4 billion, which has come straight out of the budget. The $7 billion to $8 billion to which I referred is our actuarial estimation of the cost of public sector superannuation in the year 2020. That is my point. This fund will relieve future governments of that substantial burden. But, in drawing up this fund, as in the next few months we will have paid off general government debt—the $96 billion that we inherited—we have looked to other liabilities the government had. We looked to the legal liability we have with respect to superannuation. As I say, that is quite a separate issue to public policy programs, whether they be for Medicare, the age pension, the disability pension or anything else. They are a function of policies determined by governments and approved by parliaments, which of course are subject to the vagaries of national politics.

Future governments, in assessing the capacity of the Australian government to meet the consequences of an ageing population, are going to have to deal with a whole range of policy questions. We have already begun that process. We had a terribly difficult time in this very chamber convincing the Senate that, in order to ease the burden on future governments of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, increases in the copayment—a copayment introduced by the opposition—were necessary. We have finally achieved that. That will help future governments sustain the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. But this is a separate issue where the government knows that it has this legal liability. We are establishing an investment fund with the provision that the government should use that fund to ease the burden on the budget of meeting that liability.

Question put:

That the amendments (Senator Murray’s) be agreed to.