Arthur Sinodinos (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy President. You look very much at home in the chair. I take as my text something taken from Senator Cormann's question earlier today about the promise made by this government to Australian super savers before the 2010 election, that it would never remove tax-free superannuation payments for the over 60s. One of the proudest boasts of the Howard government was the fact that we took tax off super for the over 60s in—I think—the 2006 budget. It was a great measure. I particularly liked it because it was very easy to sell, because you are taking a whole tax off. People could understand this very, very clearly. They understood that if they undertook the effort to save, there would be recognition by the government and, at the end of the day, they would get their savings—their nest egg— and it would be tax-free. They had certainty about what they were getting and they could plan accordingly and get on with their lives—very, very important.

Superannuation is very much about the long term. It is not a plaything of the parliament. It is not about the parliament saying, every year or so: 'We've got a problem. Where do we look for a bit more money? Let's look at super again.' We have been doing this for too long. There have been too many changes to super over too many years. When you talk to the industry and people out there they say, 'We're sick and tired of the tinkering'. Now we have a situation where the government are seeding speculation that they may be about to tax superannuation for high-income earners. But the problem is this: they are not talking about taxing just Gina Rinehart or James Packer. They are talking about nest eggs of around $800,000 to $1 million, which provide a pension of about $50,000 a year if you use a investment rate of around five per cent. These are not high income sums that we are talking about. There are many medium-income people and aspirational Australians in that category.

If this is meant to be a class war, it is a class war by Labor on middle Australians, not just on high-income earners and people with big boats and yachts who travel to the island of Jersey and all those other interesting places where you can set up tax havens. This is ordinary Australians that we are talking about, who have put away a bit. Maybe they have had a small business and they have worked all their lives, they have put up with everything, they have met the payroll every week, they have put their house on the line. They come to the end of their time in business, they roll over their assets and, lo and behold, they get hit. That is the recognition they get for all the hard work. That is the recognition they get for all the regulations they had to put up with. That is the recognition they get for all that government puts on them in terms of various laws, rules, and so on and so forth. That is not good enough for our fellow Australians.

Paul Kelly, in an article today, talks about superannuation. He says:

Labor creates more uncertainty and invites retaliation by putting superannuation benefits on the table for cutting, thereby setting the scene for three months of pre-budget fear and confusion. How on earth does this help Labor's economic standing?

Indeed, how does it help Labor's economic standing? Labor says it is committed to national savings. Labor has not been able to achieve a budget surplus since coming to power. Labor is now tinkering with super. We are not just talking about public savings, we are talking about private savings being affected by measures that Labor wants to take. There does have to be a better way. The very industry super funds which have been set up by the trade union movement should be out there telling the Labor government this is not the way right way to go, because it undermines confidence in all super. But Labor is bent on a class war. It wants to be able to say—in the name of fairness—'We will fund Gonski education reforms, we will fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme and you, the high-income earners, as defined by us, the government, will pay for it. You will have to put up with it, and if you do that we will win, because we think there are more low-income and middle-income people in Australia than there are high-income people.' Jim Cairns had the same idea; he could never understand why the working class could vote for a centre-right party. But the reason was very clear, because centre-right parties want to look after all aspirational Australians. And we will do so, if we are the government after 14 September. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.