Labor axes ‘aspirational’ 15pc super guarantee goal
Labor’s goal of achieving a superannuation guarantee of 15 per cent was purely ‘aspirational’ and the party has ‘no plans’ to move on the policy enshrined in its national platform.
Labor’s goal of achieving a superannuation guarantee of 15 per cent was purely “aspirational” and the party had “no plans” to move on the policy enshrined in its national platform, with Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones defending the decision to back away from an idea he previously said he would look at by the end of the current term.
After being frozen under previous Coalition governments, the superannuation guarantee rose from 9.5 per cent of salary to 10 per cent in 2021 and will increase to 12 per cent by July 2025.
According to Labor’s national platform, which was agreed upon by representatives elected by the party at the national conference in 2023, “a pathway” to increasing the guarantee to 15 per cent must be set after the 12 per cent guarantee is reached.
Mr Jones hosed down the possibility of Labor taking the 15 per cent guarantee to the election, saying the platform represented a set of principles rather than binding commitments.
“As a broad democratic party, of course, we have things within our platform which are aspirational, and it’s then up to the parliamentary party to determine the policy that we’ll take to the election and the policies that we’ll implement over every year of a term in government,” he said on Tuesday.
“And we have no current plans to be moving beyond 12 per cent.”
However, Mr Jones said the party still wanted to increase tax on superannuation balances worth over $3m, despite a lack of support from the Greens – who believe higher taxes should be applied to balances worth just over $2m – and the Coalition.
When grilled on the possibility of moving to a 15 per cent guarantee at some point in the future, Mr Jones refused to “start looking at hypotheticals”.
The comments come despite Mr Jones in June 2022 confirming Labor would “look at pathways beyond 12 per cent towards the back-end of this term”.
“Our objectives around superannuation are to ensure that it continues to deliver great investment returns, and it is, and to ensure that funds are delivering on the service level standards that are required of them and expected of them by the members,” he said.
The focus on ensuring a “higher standard” of service delivery follows incidents by providers such as Cbus, which last year failed to process death and disability insurance claims for thousands of members.
Mr Jones confirmed on Tuesday that the government intended to introduce new mandatory service standards to initially target the timely and compassionate handling of death benefits, along with fair and efficient processing of insurance claims.
Labor will also scrutinise the level of communication that companies were having with members and ensure that it was “clear respectful and accessible”.
“We’ve just got to get better at the way the funds are dealing with their members – we’ve put the funds on notice,” Mr Jones said.
“Funds … have got to get better at the way that you’re dealing with your members.
“You’ve done a great job of growing their retirement balances, but you haven’t done a great job across the board on ensuring members are getting the level of superannuation fund service that they deserve.”
The topic of superannuation has remained central in recent months after findings against Cbus and, more recently, the push from within the Coalition for Peter Dutton to implement wide-ranging superannuation reforms of his own.
Rather than an increase of the superannuation guarantee, Coalition backbenchers told The Australian they wanted it lowered back to 9 per cent, allowing workers to pocket retirement payments if they were going through financial distress and providing more flexibility for Australians to raid their savings before they turned 65.
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