Superannuation

Superannuation

Ms WELLS (Lilley) (12:24): During my first speech in parliament I spoke about wanting to be a good ancestor, and I rise today to keep that promise and fight against the Liberal and National parties' incessant attacks on superannuation, attacks that are incredibly short-sighted and, possibly, are one of the greatest acts of intergenerational theft that my generation will see from a federal government.

To kick off 2020, the Morrison government passed a bill that retroactively legalised the theft of superannuation payments from workers, allowing bosses who have ripped off their workers to get off scot-free. That is an actual problem that they should be addressing-not these problems that Liberal backbenchers are freelancing about in the media.

Then, they dropped the drawbridge on superannuation, allowing desperate and vulnerable people to take out up to 33.3 billion, and almost 500,000 of those are people aged under 35. So after taking into account inflation and cost of living, a 25-year-old who withdraws 80,000 and 20,000 will be at least 44 billion.

At the same time the Morrison Government were watching hundreds of thousands of young people raid their own super, they have announced that the minimum pension drawdown rates would temporarily halve for the 2019-20 and 2020-21 financial years, assisting retirees who do not wish to sell their investments, while the value of those assets is reduced. Our lowest paid and most financially vulnerable people should not have to fund themselves through a pandemic while so many handouts are going to far more wealthy people who will never have to touch their retirement savings. The decision to protect one generation at the expense of another is one of the greatest acts of intergenerational theft of our time and will leave permanent scarring once this pandemic is over.

Generational progress in living standards has been the happy dividend of Australia's strong economic performance since the Second World War. Children could expect to be substantially healthier and wealthier and better housed than their parents at the same age. But this generational progress, the covenant of trust between generations, can no longer be taken for granted. The wealth of households under 35 has barely moved since 2004. Millennials are earning about 20 per cent less than our parents did at the same age when you adjust for inflation. Younger Australians are much less likely to own a home than their parents at the same age. Poorer, younger Australians have gone even further backwards and, now, the great public bargain that ensures workers will not retire in poverty is under attack.

I have spoken to constituents who know what it's like to live in poverty in retirement because they retired without super. A 71-year-old man from Zillmere came to chat with me at a mobile office about his experience. An oil rigger and labourer for most of his life, this man did not own his own home, was living in social housing and struggling with rising electricity costs, relying solely on the aged pension. I also spoke to a nurse who lost thousands of dollars in superannuation because of the Abbott government's decision to scrap the mandated increase to superannuation back in 2014. I wonder what she will have to say about the deliberations to scrap the 2021 rise? If we do not strengthen and protect superannuation and, instead, let this government tear it to pieces, our Australian covenant of trust that one generation will look after the next stands to fall.