Joe Bullock (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am grateful for the opportunity to take note of Senator Cormann's answer to Senator Lundy's question. As I indicated in my first speech, when issues come before the Senate my instinct will be to examine them from the perspective of their effects upon shop assistants.

Superannuation is an issue of great interest to shop assistants. In the early 1980s I was the national industrial officer of the SDA, charged with the responsibility of developing our superannuation policy. Back then, few shop assistants had access to superannuation funds, which were then run by their employers and which therefore offered no portability from job to job and in which the vesting of employer contributions was deferred, often for many years.

At the time, I proposed an accumulation fund with full vesting of contributions immediately to the employee and with portability to allow employees to move around the industry without forfeiting their superannuation. I was pleased to find that Garry Weaven of the ACTU was advocating the same idea and, from this idea, developed industry superannuation funds.

In the retail industry we have developed the Retail Employees Superannuation Trust, REST, and CARE, two of Australia's leading industry superannuation funds. Today, shop assistants have almost universal access to superannuation, and REST has over $32 billion in shop assistants' retirement savings and is consistently among the best-performing funds in the country.

Initial claims for superannuation were modest but, under the wage-fixing principles of the time, were offset against wage increases. Superannuation has always been opposed by the Liberals. First, the Liberals joined with employers to argue that superannuation was not an industrial matter. Then in 1992 they opposed then Prime Minister Paul Keating when he increased the superannuation contribution. Then Prime Minister Howard reneged on a promise to increase superannuation, after he was elected in 1996.

Now they propose the freezing of superannuation contributions of 9½ per cent for seven years—yes, seven years. July 2014 to July 2021 is seven years, not six as Senator Cormann tried to tell me yesterday. It will not reach 12 per cent until 2025.