Election 2022: Zealots ousted for assault on super, says Paul Keating

Paul Keating says the ‘cultural warriors’ and ‘zealots’ in the ­Liberal Party who tried to put a ‘wrecking ball” through super­annuation have paid the ultimate price.

Former Labor PM Paul Keating. Picture: Katje Ford

Paul Keating says the “cultural warriors” and “zealots” in the ­Liberal Party who tried to put a “wrecking ball” through super­annuation have paid the ultimate price by losing their seats and contributing to the defeat of Scott Morrison’s government.

The former prime minister, who welcomed Labor’s election victory, said the Liberal Party had marginalised itself by failing to ­accept that superannuation, like Medicare, was now a “community standard” that gave working Australians economic independence.

In his first comments since the election of an Anthony Albanese-led Labor government, Mr Keating noted that those who “barracked” for first-home buyers accessing superannuation – Josh Frydenberg, Tim Wilson, Jason Falinski, Trent Zimmerman and Dave Sharma – had been rejected by voters.

“Scott Morrison let the cultural warriors put the busting of super at the centrepiece of his party’s ­policy launch in Brisbane last Sunday week and now every one of the cultural warriors who had their name on the maker’s label have lost their seat,” Mr Keating said.

“The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, who condoned it, Tim Wilson in Goldstein, who proselytised for it, Jason Falinski in Mackellar, Trent Zimmerman in North Sydney, Dave Sharma in Wentworth, all who barracked for it, are now gone. What is the moral in this? Policy vendettas, borne of ­indulgent cultural spitefulness, unrelated to any nominal or real community concern, are a recipe for political marginalisation.

“Wilson, Falinski, Zimmerman, Sharma and Andrew Bragg, hiding in the Senate, would have been more approved of keeping Scott Morrison steered toward a more moderate communal policy course than amusing themselves wheeling the wrecking ball into super.”

Mr Morrison announced at the Coalition’s campaign launch that, if re-elected, first-home buyers could withdraw 40 per cent of their superannuation, up to $50,000, to fund the purchase of a home. Labor opposed the policy as it would reduce retirement income by reducing compound interest.

“It was not that superannuation was not working or not working as intended,” Mr Keating said. “It is, in fact, working like clockwork. The big superannuation funds are chalking up 10 per cent rates of return on average, for each year over a decade, while wages are stuck at zero, and for a decade. In other words, there was no policy reason to justify the Liberal Party’s objection to superannuation – no unrequited community concern – no community objection to it.

“The Liberals decided for ­purely indulgent cultural and spiteful reasons to attack superannuation at its core, by wrecking the principle of preservation – the mechanism of compounding – by encouraging, then permitting, young people to drain their ­savings away.”

Mr Keating, who served as prime minister from 1991 to 1996, attended Labor’s campaign launch in Perth and was in the audience for Mr Albanese’s address to the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Sydney. He provided counsel to senior Labor figures during the campaign.

The superannuation guarantee increased to 10 per cent of wages in 2021 and will increase to 12 per cent by 2025. Mr Keating, as treasurer and prime minister, was the ­architect of the $3 trillion universal superannuation system.

“Superannuation is the first ­opportunity working Australians have ever had in having their ­savings professionally managed,” he said. “Before super, most people had savings in bank accounts earning as little as 1 per cent a year. With savings in superannuation, those people are earning 9-10 per cent a year on average. Their superannuation accumulations double roughly every eight years.

“Most people know and understand this. You would have to have a giant case of policy disregard to attempt to wreck this. The one pathway to genuine economic ­independence for working Australians, these zealots did their best to destroy.

“Like Medicare, superannuation is universal and now an ­Australian community standard. So an attack upon it will be ­perceived by the electorate as damaging to the community’s wider interests.”

Mr Keating said the Morrison government’s assault on universal superannuation echoed the ­Howard government’s Work Choices and the Abbott government’s undermining of Medicare as they each tore at the social and economic fabric.

“Despite the Keating government abandoning Australia’s century-old, centralised wage-fixing system for a system of enterprise bargaining, John Howard overturned that co-operative model for his ideologically driven Work Choices,” he said.

“And, broadly, that ideological indulgence cost Howard his government, and Howard his own seat in parliament. The Liberals decided to follow Howard’s cultural pathway and tear at the core of the superannuation system – draining the superannuation savings of young people, encouraging them to pour it into housing.”