Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks to the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate for the question. It gives me the opportunity to remind him and those opposite, and all, that, in fact, the changing of these tax arrangements for a very, very small proportion of Australians will not take effect until 2025, after the next election. It may be that those opposite like to forget about this and like to focus on, as always, their pathology of conflict. But the reality is: what we have inherited is a trillion dollars worth of debt. We have inherited the budget in a position that is unsustainable, and we are making sensible decisions about how to deal with that. They include changing the concessional tax treatment of super balances over $3 million.

It's important, despite the rhetoric again of those opposite and their talk about doubling, to remind us all and those of us in this chamber who are on above-average incomes that there is still tax concessionality associated with earnings on these balances above $3 million. There's still tax concessionality, which is effectively funded by the sorts of workers on the sorts of incomes that Senator Walsh was describing just before question time. I, for one, don't believe that cleaners and people on the factory line should be subsidising tax concessionality for people with superannuation balances of $3 million. It is a very small proportion of people. It affects fewer than the superannuation changes that you made, possibly when you were finance minister, I can't recall. And I know that those opposite want to run a scare campaign— (Time expired)