Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to take note of the answer given by Senator Cormann to a question asked by my colleague Senator Marielle Smith. At the outset, in response to Senator Cormann's statement, 'All this was transparent throughout the election campaign, all this was part of the policies we put to the people,' I want to use one example from Senator Bragg's speech, and it goes to the point:

We have the fourth-largest private pension pool in the world with only 25 million people. It remains a strange but huge experiment.

Where, in what land, does a contribution in this chamber about having the fourth-largest savings pool in the world from a relatively small population become, somehow, a 'strange but huge experiment'? It is a very successful example of what Australia can do well. It's not without challenges, but you never went to the election saying you're going to delay superannuation payments of 12.5 per cent. You never went to the election and said: 'We've got this strange, huge experiment; we've actually got too much money in workers' retirement accounts!' Try and sell that out there!

Kerry Packer said, 'You only get one Alan Bond in your lifetime and I've had mine.' Maybe the senator will be the one we get. We'll only get one Senator Andrew Bragg, who's so ridiculous in his ideology that he's going to go try and tell 10 million or 12 million Australian workers they've got 'too much money in their accounts! Too much money! It's a strange experiment!' What a load of you know; come on. Anyway, we're lucky to have him. This is good for us. I'm sure that people who have an $80,000, $90,000 or $100,000 investment account in super are going to look at his comments and say: 'They're more than passing strange. I get comfort from having a retirement balance of whatever amount. If I get TPD, income protection and, dare I say, life insurance from a respectable group life insurance policy, I get some comfort from that as well.'

Senator Urquhart is exactly right. There is no greater example of the disparity of the earning capacity of women than in superannuation. Their accounts are invariably lower, they're invariably out of the workforce for longer periods of time and they're almost always lower-paid.

I've had people put it to me that the actual value of that superannuation account for most of their 35 or 40 working years, is the security of having group insurance for death, TPD and income protection. When they do get to that retirement phase, they have had that security overlay in all their working life. If you lot take it away for younger people and for less fortunate people in the workforce who earn less money, what happens when they get injured? What happens when they're totally and permanently disabled and can no longer work? What happens if, unfortunately, someone gets killed and they've got dependants? I actually know, because we used to have a barbecue—I worked at mine sites where we donated a day's pay after a death. I know what the system was before, and you lot want to take us halfway back there. It's an absolute disgrace! And you let loose those ideologues over the back there—the Patersons, the Stokers—probably never done a decent hard day's work in their lives! You let loose those ideologues—