Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister representing the Prime Minister (Senator Cormann) to a question without notice asked by Senator Marielle Smith today relating to superannuation.

As our population gets older, ensuring a fair and proper superannuation system is vital. This is especially the case for women, who have child-raising breaks in their career and a longer life expectancy than men. In the early nineties, the very idea of compulsory superannuation was denounced by the LNP, those opposite, and the business lobby as a 'company killer'—that unemployment would rise and the economy would be damaged. All that was wrong, of course. Now we have the LNP again, led by Senator Bragg, telling low-income earners that superannuation isn't working for them. It's a bit rich for someone on over $200,000 a year to tell someone on less than $50,000 a year that they don't need a decent retirement income. How dare they? Not to be left out on his own, in the other place Mr Tim Wilson and Mr Craig Kelly also want to talk about the planned super rate rise to 12 per cent being handed to workers as being a 'pay rise', not superannuation.

This LNP government want to get their hands on the superannuation of workers. They want to take it away. They want to stop them getting the rise. Senator Cormann stood here today and said he refuted that, but he didn't rule out that it would be in the review. He didn't rule that out. How dare they come in here and tell people on low incomes that they're not worthy of a decent retirement income, that they should look forward to their retirement existing on the age pension—that's what they expect them to do—and not have anything extra to enjoy those little things in life like maybe a visit to their interstate family or that little trip that they could not afford in their younger days when they were raising their kids, struggling every day on a pension to pay their power bills, to buy food, to buy medications. They want them to do all that again while existing on the age pension.

We know that women have less superannuation than men. I've highlighted that many times in this place. But until the superannuation guarantee act came into place in the early 1990s, many working women had no retirement savings at all. There were many men who also had no retirement savings until that act came into place. But let me tell you a little bit about the working women. Women currently retire with 47 per cent less superannuation than men. On average, women live five years longer than men. Women only receive a third of the government tax concessions on super. Men receive the other two-thirds. Forty per cent of older single retired women live in poverty and experience economic insecurity in their retirement. Some 46.9 per cent of women are in the workforce. So the statistics are skewed. Forty-four per cent of women rely on their partner's income as the main source of funds for their retirement. The average female salary is $44,000. That includes part-time workers. Female graduates earn $5,000 less than male graduates in the same role. Women spend an average of five hours more per day caring for children than men. Forty-three per cent of women work part-time and yet they earn under $50,000. The statistics are glaring. What the backbench over there, and in the other place, are supporting is that that money should not be going into a superannuation fund for these workers to retire on. It is outrageous. Women take an average of five years out of the workforce to care for their families. So what we're seeing here again and again are deep divisions in the government ranks, with the Prime Minister urging his MPs to go through the usual internal party processes. But there are a growing number of Liberal MPs who are agitating on this issue. To them and to the Prime Minister I have four words: hands off our super. (Time expired)