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

The government's scheme to allow emergency access to superannuation is perhaps one of the worst public policy decisions in their sordid history. The emergency access scheme has been a disaster. Some 1.63 million Australians have withdrawn a total of $12 billion from their accounts, encouraged by the government, doing tens of thousands of dollars damage to their future retirement incomes. Research from the firms AlphaBeta and illion has found that, rather than the scheme being a measure of last resort, 40 per cent of the people who applied for the scheme did not see their income drop over the course of the crisis. Sixty-four per cent of the money withdrawn went to entirely discretionary items. Eleven per cent of the emergency super release went straight into gambling.

The government's haste in opening up workers' savings meant that they failed to consider that their program opened up the gates for organised crime. On the same day that the Australian tax office alerted the AFP to this fraud, the person who passes for the minister for superannuation claimed that the ATO has substantial checks in place to guard against fraud. Every Australian superannuation accountholder who has not checked their account should do it tomorrow. We have no idea of the real extent of fraud in this botched, ill-conceived, poorly executed catastrophe of a policy.

The harm already done by the government to super brings me to a senator for New South Wales, Senator Bragg. His first speech in the chamber included a call to make superannuation optional for low-income workers. That would have done immeasurable damage to the retirement incomes of women. I note that Senator Bragg has released an entire book critiquing the superannuation system. It's unwise to make predictions about the year 2020, but I predict this: it will be remaindered before the year is out, it won't be on anybody's Christmas book list, it won't be read on beaches across Australia and it will be lining budgie cages all over Woollahra. Even his mates won't be able to credibly pretend that they have read it. One dishonest claim made in that book deserves special attention, and it undermines any authority or credibility that he might have and the credibility of people who push the same argument that he does. Senator Bragg is so determined to paint the union movement as an illegitimate vested interest that he goes so far as to publish these lines:

Make no mistake, industry super funds are on track to be the biggest political donors in Australia. They'll be bigger than the CFMMEU and Co.

Except they're not, and Senator Bragg knows that they are not. He makes the claim over and over again. He's been provided with the returns from the Electoral Commission. The funds have written to him setting out the truth of the matter.

When I saw him make this outrageous, baseless and pathetic claim, I asked for a search to be done to check. Industry super funds have made only two donations to the Labor Party in their history, a total of less than $25,000, mostly to attend events. They are a tiny fraction of a percentage of the donations that are made to political organisations. He knows this. He continues to make the claim. What do you call a claim that is repeatedly made where the maker of the claim knows it to be false, misleading and a dishonest attempt to pervert the public debate and to stigmatise honest people performing their work for not-for-profit funds dedicated only to building the retirement savings of their members? It is, of course, a lie. 'Lie' is not a big enough word to describe what Senator Bragg perpetuates in his book and what is perpetuated in all the breathless accounting in the newspaper of that book. He should withdraw it and he should not be taken seriously when he makes contributions to this debate.

Senate adjourned at 20:00