Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

What is absolutely beyond debate is that there are now adverse changes to superannuation. It is also beyond debate that there are changes to the aged pension. And it is also beyond debate, for the purposes of the member for McPherson, that there are cuts to support for elderly Australians. I will let everyone in on a secret here: superannuation impacts on all of our communities, not just those in Labor electorates. It impacts on every family, on all workers and on all our communities—as I said—not just those that happen to reside in a Labor electorate. If you look around, you will find them in your own backyard but I do not expect you to go and look there because mainly they are going to be workers—people who actually go out and work for an income—and superannuation is very important to them.

I am old enough to remember how superannuation was brought about in this country. Superannuation is a vital scheme, one that provides a benefit for those who are going to retire. It gives people the opportunity to retire with dignity. Back before the mid-eighties, the only people who had superannuation were the public servants and those who occupied white collar management positions in the private sector in this country. It did not apply to workers and it certainly did not apply to blue collar workers. I did leave parliamentarians out because they had this rolled gold untouchable superannuation scheme—some of them still do.

The trade union movement pursued superannuation throughout the mid-eighties until we had award based superannuation. It took a Labor government until about 1992 to actually legislate to provide compulsory superannuation for all Australian workers. There is one group of people that sit around these benches that opposed that. Do you know who it was? It was all those opposite. They failed to support it. They failed to support it while they were occupying those benches and while sitting on their own parliamentary superannuation scheme—the untouchable scheme that had a benefit that was far better than anybody else in this country. They said 'no' and voted against superannuation for Australian workers.

People do come to this debate with a little bit of history. What is wrong with people being able to retire with dignity? What is wrong with encouraging people to save for their future? As I said, the Libs do come to this with a little bit of history.

Russell was around long enough to actually see this unfold. Back when this legislation was going through, there was one member on that side of the House who decided to speak on behalf of the Liberal Party and who occupied the position of shadow industrial relations spokesperson. Let me quote the Prime Minister's words in 1995: Compulsory superannuation is one of the biggest con jobs ever foisted by government on the Australian people.

That is what the Liberal Party thought of compulsory superannuation. They did not mind sitting on their superannuation here in this place and, fortunately, they still supported our public servants receiving their superannuation. But for anybody else out there, they thought they should just rely on the pension. They did not even get the idea of encouraging people to provide for their future or what reducing the public's reliance on pensions would mean for community saving.

We should have heard the alarm bells go. I am sure the member for McPherson, when this promise was unveiled, probably thought it was true that no unexpected changes would be made to people's superannuation. They went to an election on that basis. And now they want to come in here and make these changes, to give the Treasurer this unfettered power to delay the further advancement of superannuation, which will not only delay the growth of current superannuation contributions to 12 per cent but it will also reduce the pool of people's savings. I would have thought that would have intergenerational impacts on future budgets as well.

If those opposite are going to reduce the amount of savings that people are going to bring to bear in their superannuation, where are they going to top that up from? They are not going to do it out of the pensions because they have already cut those. Those opposite have already moved to reduce the indexation rates of pensions and are going to make sure that these pensioners pay. How will they make them pay? They have this great idea, Tony Abbott says: they are going to make sure that people retire when they are 70. We are going to have the highest retirement age in the world. (Time expired)

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