Many Australians have forgotten that Superannuation is not ‘extra’ or ‘free’ money that is given on top of one’s wages; superannuation should be viewed as a portion of your wage that has been withheld and given to a third-party to manage…and in most cases, a fund where you have little say in how your hard-earned money is spent.
Labor’s new finance minister, Stephen Jones, has come out and said that Labor were going to look at investigating raising the superannuation levy to 15 per cent in their second term.
Labor should keep their hands off hardworking Australians’ wages. When will Labor stop raising the superannuation levy which is nothing but wage theft.
If Paul Keating had said, back in 1992, that by 2025 we were going to have 12 per cent of people’s wages taken out of their income and given to someone they’ve never met, and there’s no guarantee of them ever getting it back, do you really think that the people would have accepted that? We certainly know that they didn’t in New Zealand. In New Zealand they had a referendum on compulsory superannuation in 1997, and they voted that down—92 per cent to eight.
There is no greater drain on the economy of this country than the $30 billion paid in fees to the financial services industries and the $50 billion in tax concessions that mainly go to the top 20 per cent of income earners. To put that into perspective, the pension costs around $55 billion for the bottom 70 per cent of retirees.
Since superannuation has been introduced, the number of people on the pension or part-pension has only been reduced from about 76 per cent to 70 per cent, and a large part of that is because of the index changes made in 2018. Superannuation is not fit for purpose. It is a massive drain on the economy of Australia and it is hurting the people who need it the most: low-income-earning Australians.
