Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I just did, or I thought I did. I'm very happy to—

Senator Van interjecting—

What he should be offended by is the record of this government: the lowest wage growth on record and no answer for wages and no answer for superannuation. What has their answer been on low wages? Have they reflected on the institutional factors that have driven wages down—weaker collective bargaining, an anti-growth Fair Work Commission and no effort from this government to deal with wage theft? Oh, no. Have they dealt with the issues in the labour market that are dragging wages backwards—a growing guest worker economy and temporary workers being paid $9 an hour, which is particularly rampant in agriculture, as we've discovered over the last few weeks? Oh no; they haven't got a plan to deal with that. Do they have a strategy to deal with the dead hand on wages growth, reflected in their own public sector wages cap and the wages caps of governments at the state level, Labor and Liberal, around the country? Absolutely not. On the gender wages gap, there's crickets. You don't hear a thing from these jokers about dealing with the structural inequalities that mean that women's occupations in this country are paid less and valued less than men's. We have got no answers from this government on aged care, no answers on disability care and no answers to deal with labour hire and casualisation. Oh no; that's too difficult.

The idea that this group, this sclerotic eight-year-old government that has lost its way and is tired and out of ideas could come up with an actual strategy to lift wages—an actual wages policy—is a complete anathema to them. Indeed, the previous finance minister said that low wages were a deliberate design feature of their system. So what was the only suggestion that these pea-hearted characters on the other side could come up? What could these superannuated, overpaid—$250,000 a year; well paid, like everybody across their parliament—characters come up with? That the wage increases of low-wage workers should be funded with cuts to legislated superannuation increases. That was the best that they could come up with—maybe $20 a week. If you followed the bouncing ball of their failed logic in their plan, the minister's plan—the plan of many on the backbench who go on with this stuff—it's maybe $20 a week; $80,000 less for people for their retirement incomes. So ordinary families—for the flawed ideology and failed approach of this government on wages and super—would have paid the penalty in a massive hit to their retirement incomes. And there is no plan for wages. So why would we—why would anyone in the country—believe that anything this government says on superannuation could be believed?

And then we come to today's performance, an utter shambles, utter chaos: a rabble of misanthropic, misinformed, out-of-touch, wild ideology driven from the backbench of a government that is completely out of touch and completely out of time. It's a lazy, tired and out-of-touch government led by a characterless marketing man who believes only in himself. And what is the product of it? It's another lazy, tired, dishonest, hateful and shallow assault on the retirement incomes of ordinary Australians.

What does it mean for ordinary families out there? What does it actually mean for them, their circumstances and their retirement incomes? Well, we know that the government has not got an answer on wages. Wage inequality will continue to grow. Real wages will continue to fall. We know they will continue to fall, because the best way of assessing future performance is past performance, and these jokers haven't got a plan. And what is the future for people's retirement incomes? Well, you can see it in this shambolic effort at legislating that we've seen over the last couple of months. Bits have fallen off this bill on its way into this place as if it were one of those broken-down old cars you used to see on Bush Mechanics. At every bump in the road, bits and pieces fall off it. Why? Because there's nothing coherent about this plan except the hating on the industry super schemes.

So what does it mean for ordinary families? It means more risk. It means that you're more likely to be stapled to a low-performing fund. It means more risk and uncertainty, including investment uncertainty, for the superannuation funds and their investment vehicles that have done so well, particularly those of the industry funds, to mean that more Australians retire with dignity and with the prospect of a decent retirement for them and their families. What does it mean? It means more poverty. It means poverty from lower wages, from lower-performing funds getting a leg-up and from lower retirement incomes. And for many people, particularly workers in high-risk industries, it means the risk that they are underinsured or incorrectly insured or not insured at all. In industries like the building industry, where workers have benefited from the decision of the building unions and the building employers to offer insurance across those industries at low cost, many people will lose the benefit of an insurance scheme. That means that, when misfortune befalls them or their families, they will end up living in poverty.

The last time we saw this approach from the government was in the industrial relations omnibus bill, which became less and less omnibus as we got closer and closer to the vote. There have been some concessions. The approach that the government had coming into this—that somehow the Treasurer would have the capacity to override the investment decisions of superannuation funds—has, thankfully, fallen off the agenda. That is an idea that belonged in North Korea, not in Australia. That is an idea that should have been a relic of authoritarian governments in other countries, not this government. The idea that investment decisions that have been made in boardrooms and superannuation funds could be overruled by a politician is an absolute anathema to a functioning, decent market economy and an absolute threat to the security and the future of the superannuation industry. No other industry in Australia would tolerate that level of political interference. Whose idea was it? That idea is an orphan now, but it lived large amongst the coalition for so many months leading up to the last sitting week.

The stapling mechanism will cause up to three million ordinary Australians to be stapled to underperforming funds, funds that don't do well, funds that drag retirement incomes backwards, where the cost of being in the fund and the returns on the fund mitigate against a decent retirement income for Australians. The impact on insurance—the failure to cover all of the APRA related entities that exist in superannuation. A third of the superannuation industry is explicitly excluded from what passes in the bill. There are flawed performance benchmarks. The administrative burden on funds will result in administrative costs being passed on to members through higher fees.

On the government side of this higher fees are the way that the retail funds and the big banks return big profits to shareholders and exorbitant executive salaries. But on this side of the House we stand for the industry fund model that's about low fees, that's about better performance, that's about higher retirement incomes for ordinary Australians. In truth, what this bill will do is increase the administrative burden on employers. Now, who knows what has been dealt in and what has been dealt out in this sordid legislative performance. One Nation certainly doesn't know. But 96 per cent of the time One Nation has signed up to the government's agenda, an agenda that they couldn't possibly understand. They won't be able to explain to Australians tomorrow what it is that they voted for. What is the advantage to ordinary Australians? To the ordinary working people in the regions and the suburbs of Queensland, who they purport to represent, they will not be able to explain tomorrow what on earth it is that they have done. Except we know that it has been done for their direct benefit, for their narrow political interests to suck up to, to cosy up to, the Morrison government. It is a poorly conceived, poorly drafted bill.

The Liberals can never be trusted on superannuation and retirement incomes. They have opposed it since the day that it was introduced. They have bitterly resented it. They resented it because it meant that people who they never thought should get a decent shake in life got a decent go, a decent retirement income and could retire with a little bit of dignity. They have never understood it and they certainly don't believe in it.

There is, I think, a deep loathing in the Liberal Party for industry superannuation and for the collective effort of workers. I was walking past a Liberal senator's office. It had this old poster of Robert Menzies on the front of the office and it said, 'Do you stand for Liberalism or socialism?' Bob Menzies was an old barrister who used to work for the AMWU, my old union, before he came into the parliament—represented us in the High Court on some very significant matters—and probably would never have taken the approach that passes for liberalism on the other side of this chamber on these kinds of issues. I tell you what, what is wrong with working Australians, through their unions, working together with their employers to build a system that's decent? What's wrong with them making a decision in a pluralist society, in a society where people can get together in their institutions and make a difference, to make a superannuation system that is the envy of the modern world? Well, the Liberal Party hates it and they are going to do everything they can to dismantle it. It's ordinary people who will suffer from their efforts.