James Morrow: Albo’s superannuation magic trick won’t make controversy disappear

Labor wants voters to think that changes to superannuation tax arrangements are just hitting the very wealthy. Don’t fall for it, because at heart they still think it is their money first to spend.

Roll up, roll up! Albo the Magnificent is back with his greatest illusion yet!

Just step into this tent, folks, and for the small and reasonable price of control over your retirement, be amazed as the Illusionist of Illawarra Rd casts his hypnotic spell and has you believe he is only going after the superannuation accounts of the very wealthy indeed. Sigh.

It would be almost funny if politics were in fact a circus, as Canberra has often (not unfairly, it must be said) been called.

But while it is easy to squint and imagine the giant flagpole over Parliament House as the tent pole supporting the big top that houses all the clowns and jugglers within, the fact is we are now not only talking about real money but our money.

This is why the superannuation debate has hit home a lot harder than the usual debates that take place in the nation’s capital.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra to announce changes to superannuation. Picture: NCA NewsWire

And it is also why the Marrickville Magician’s act has been seen to slip, with his sleight of hand now suddenly obvious to all.

The key here is remembering that the whole debate over changing the rules did not start around tax concessions for high-value account holders at all.

Jim Chalmers says most of us will still get “generous” tax concessions. Picture: NCA NewsWire

If it had, this never would have blown up in the government’s face – broken campaign promise or not.

Labor could have incrementally wedged the Coalition, bringing up Angus Taylor’s 2016 comments on Sunrise about tax concessions being “inappropriate” for those who had put away millions for good measure.

Instead, it was, and continues to be, about who is working for whom, and whether the fruits of their labour belong to them or can be tapped for some politicised version of the greater good.

Rewind the tape and you’ll see this all kicked off with Treasurer Jim Chalmers pushing the case for legislating the purpose of super (all the better to stop a future Coalition government from allowing you to buy a house with it) while talking about equity and sustainability and housing and climate.

Labor would like to see you invest your super in affordable housing projects. Picture: David Clark

While he did mention super tax concessions, the general gist of what he had in mind was much broader.

Nation building. Climate change.

Redistribution – er, sorry, “levelling up” – retirement accounts of women who’d left the workforce to raise children.

You’ll still get a return (even on non-commercial projects like affordable housing) but you’ll be doing it our way was the key message many voters were taking home.

And that “dignified” retirement?

Well, again, voters could be forgiven for preferring not to leave that definition to government types who will ride out their old age on gold plated pensions the rest of us not in the nomenklatura could only dream of. This is why Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones’s clumsy metaphor at a bee-themed SMSF conference about superannuation and honey and the hive hit such a nerve.

Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones has been accused of treating Australians’ super as a hive of honey. Picture: Britta Campion

It went to the heart of the philosophical worry many Australians have about this government. Namely, that Labor regards everyone’s earnings and savings – and not just those of the wealthy – as theirs to play with for the greater good.

And to make it worse, that Labor was tricky about not promising super changes and instead operated on a plan of avoiding Bill Shorten’s mistakes in 2019 by staying shtum about their intentions and then hoping that they could get away with asking forgiveness rather than permission once in power.

Given what has happened so far, reasonable people would be forgiven for mentally pencilling in the words “for now” at the end of government’s statement that 99.5 per cent of Australians “will continue to receive the same generous tax breaks”.

It’s also worth noting that both Chalmers and Albanese have been playing with these ideas for some time.

Bill Shorten was too revealing of Labor’s plans in 2019. Picture: AAP Image

Not only was there his magnum opus in The Monthly but if you dive into the record you will see that last August, Chalmers was already toying with these ideas, floating housing and climate projects and “impact investing” as areas of interest in a speech to the Superannuation Lending Roundtable.

And this is before we get to the PM’s history of fighting Tories, working for one of the only Hawke government ministers to oppose the Hawke government’s economic reforms and his history in NSW Labor’s “hard left” faction.

This is why no matter how hard the PM tries to turn down the temperature of the debate, it will still keep gurgling on as the May budget approaches, causing trouble for Labor in the coming NSW state election and the federal by-election in Aston.

It is hard to discern the tactics here unless the aim was to send Chalmers off on a suicide mission to damage his future viability as a Labor challenger, though even that is a bit cynical for this column.

The alternative, that the Prime Minister is hoping to use a period of economic dislocation to slug it to “high earners” (in a country where the top 10 per cent of incomes kicks in at $130,000 a year) by pulling the class warfare lever, is too depressing to contemplate.

Send in the clowns, indeed.