Protection of super and equity the hot topics

James Sherbon

Mar 30, 2023 – 9.01am

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Chief executive of industry super fund Aware Super, Deanne Stewart is all for the federal government slamming the door shut on early release of superannuation as proposed by Treasurer Dr Jim Chalmers last month.

“You want to make sure that superannuation is protected quite frankly from the needs of the day, whether it’s a budget issue or political issue,” Stewart says.

AustralianSuper chief executive Paul Schroder says using super in nation-building exercises is a “terrible idea”. Jeremy Piper

“It’s Australians’ nest egg for retirement.”

Stewart was speaking at the recent Sustainable Business roundtable hosted by Westpac, and was elaborating on several hot-button issues in Australia’s ongoing debate about superannuation’s purpose.

Commenting on Chalmers’ proposed extra 15 per cent tax surcharge on earnings from superannuation balances above $3million, which will affect less than 0.5 per cent of working Australians, Stewart says she’d like to see tax concessions given out in a more equitable way.

“While we have a world-class system, the one kink in it is that it’s not equitable. If you look at where the tax concessions go, something like 55 per cent of the tax concessions go to the wealthiest 20 per cent because super is based on wages,” she says.

“You’ve got over 70 per cent of the tax concessions going to men and less than 30per cent going to women, so there’s some really obvious bits there from an equity point of view.”

Stewart says taking a serious look at how tax concessions apply across the board is more productive than policymakers discussing how we can use superannuation as some sort of honeypot, whether that be for first home buyers or nation-building at a time when there might be budget problems.

Fellow roundtable participant, AustralianSuper chief executive Paul Schroder says using super in nation-building exercises is a “terrible idea”.

“We deliberately changed our tag to be, ‘It’s Australian. It’s super. And it’s yours’ and anybody who gets in the way of it being yours, that is the members, is in a world of pain,” Schroder says.

“Once you start talking about nation-building, most people’s response will be, ‘I’ve already paid tax. You build the nation. I’m going to build my retirement balance’.”

Schroder says AustralianSuper members only want the fund to make the most risk-adjusted money over the longest duration. However, they are happy to invest in nation-building projects if they’re forecast to get the same return as something else.