David Bushby (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would be interested to see the cost. It is certainly not $1.2 billion over four years, as you intimated, because I suspect that the vast majority of superannuation accounts from temporary residents who are overseas will not be affected at all by this amendment.

I think we heard evidence on this in the Senate Economics Committee—if not I stand to be corrected—but I think the vast majority will be for small accounts from people who have come here, for example, students, and worked for short periods while they were here. They will have small balances, as I think the minister mentioned. The vast majority of those people have left the country and they will never think twice about their superannuation. They are not in contact regularly with their super fund and they are not actively managing those funds and looking forward to accessing them when they turn 60. The percentage of temporary residents who maintain super funds in Australia and actually actively manage them are fully aware that they are there and stay in contact with their superannuation fund providers, is, I would suggest, probably very small—probably a smaller percentage in terms of actual numbers than dollars. I concede that, because those who are actively managing them probably have higher account balances. I put trust in the Treasury that they will actually have a reasonable guess at this or an estimate when they do put those numbers together, but I am sure that they will show that it is a reasonably small percentage of this $1.2 billion that this measure, without the amendment, is expected to raise over the next four years.

Ultimately, the reason I am supportive of this amendment—and I believe the coalition is supportive—is that it comes back to a simple principle of equity. As I said in my speech during the second reading debate, there is no issue at all where the super is lost in the sense that most people would think of lost super—that is, that the owners of that money have lost contact, they are not aware that the money is there or they have forgotten about it, and/or the super funds cannot find the owners of that money. That is good and appropriate. The purpose of the bill, when the coalition was looking at it, was to scoop all that together and put it into consolidated revenue where, as the minister mentioned earlier, it is easier to access. There are certainly advantages in the bill. We are supporting the bill.

But there is the circumstance where the owners of the superannuation are aware that it is there and they have made a conscious decision, under the laws that apply in this country up until the point where this bill may be passed, to leave it there. There could be a number of reasons: they may come from a nation where investing money in superannuation is not a particularly safe thing to do and they like the stability and the security of a well-managed financial system that we have in Australia or they may have chosen to leave it here, comfortable in the knowledge that we have laws that allow them to access it when they turn 60 years of age. I am very uncomfortable with people being in that circumstance, particularly, as Senator Xenophon mentioned, where they put additional funds in themselves out of their own pockets. But I am very uncomfortable with people in those circumstances losing their rights to manage their funds, in the way that they have been, and losing their rights to obtain dividends and returns over the long term and to grow those funds while they remain in Australia, and, ultimately, losing their rights to access them at the age of 60 on the terms and on the basis they expected.