In Committee
Senator MOORE (Queensland) (22:04):
The Labor opposition will be opposing this amendment-I am sure that is a surprise to the minister. This is not a technical amendment. This is actually of deep importance to every person who has superannuation in our nation. It will mean literally billions of dollars to individual superannuation recipients across our country, as the indexation of the rise is changed. This is a common element of the budget provisions that came through recently, where in a number of our standard payments the government claims that there is no decrease but that, in fact, it is just a change. This is a slower rate of increase.
So we disagree with this. We have an expectation of an effective super future in our nation. Treasury analysis shows that a continuation of Labor's policy settings in this area would result in the proportion of older Australians on the full rate of age pension being reduced. That is the whole idea of the process. An effective super scheme, which, as we all know, is so important to Labor policy and our heritage, ensures that people have a sustainable future and that they will not be reliant on welfare into their futures. We believe that through maintaining our proposal for the growth of the super guarantee we would give more security to the process. People would understand their relationship with their super and they would gain more earnings. We believe this is a backward step and completely disagree with the government's position.
