Workers Are Waking Up To The Super Nightmare

The most ridiculous taxation proposal in recent memory might finally trigger the beginning of the end for compulsory superannuation in Australia.

Maybe Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ plan to tax unrealised capital gains on some superannuation accounts isn’t such a bad idea after all. The way things are going, his scheme will wind up benefiting more people than he ever imagined, albeit unintentionally.

The first benefit, which even Chalmers will have noticed to his immense chagrin, is that superannuation has become a common topic of conversation. Sure, this has been triggered by the Treasurer’s proposal to tax only accounts owned by filthy rich people, which in these Marxist times should be as safe as Henry VIII pillaging jewels and gold artefacts from Catholic churches in the 16th century.

But alas. Trust in government is so low these days, especially since Chalmers’ own government reneged on its promise to reduce power bills three years ago, that hardly a person in Australia believes that this proposed new tax will remain focused on the filthy rich for long.

Once that source of revenue is normalised, the government will find reasons to lower the threshold to pay for some other ridiculous idea that it needs to finance. You know it, and Chalmers knows you know it.

But the best consequence of these conversations is the seed that’s planted — a nest egg of an idea, if you will — in the minds of all people who are worried about this plan, which is to wonder why the hell all this money is being forcibly diverted to these funds in the first place.

I call it super fatigue. For decades, Australian workers were able to be fooled that the super they were accumulating wasn’t really their money, that it was some kind of bonus employers were putting aside out of their own benevolence, which would be delivered in a massive package upon retirement.

This was made possible by the sleight of hand that introduced compulsory superannuation in the first place: Paul Keating and ACTU chief Bill Kelty stitched a deal by which virtually everyone in the country got a pay rise that went straight into super. Nobody saw it happen, but suddenly there it was.

Labor has done its best to maintain the illusion ever since. In 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said “universal superannuation” (she meant compulsory) was “one of the great Labor pillars of social justice and opportunity for all Australians”.

Not as much of an opportunity as it has been for Labor retirees and union hacks who control the trillions of dollars in the biggest funds, of course. These working-class heroes pull in massive directors’ fees for funnelling investments to their preferred union-controlled projects, green boondoggles and of course back to the Labor party itself.

(The original reason for the system — that it would reduce reliance on the aged pension — has not eventuated. The super industry itself is so inefficient that even the left-leaning Conversation now says it should be scrapped.)

In a self-congratulatory opinion piece in the Financial Review in 2023, Treasurer Chalmers took the rhetoric to a new low by referring to workers “receiving the super guarantee”. They weren’t receiving it. They had earned it. It’s their money. Chalmers was, and still is, simply making sure those workers don’t get their hands on it until his Labor mates have had some fun with it, and creamed off a generous chunk for themselves, first.

Now that the first people to be forced en masse into the scheme in 1992 are drawing their super down, the illusions are starting to clear. This was our money all along? I could have paid off my mortgage years ago with this money!

If you are aggrieved bout this — as you should be — then an opinion piece by Robert Gottliebsen in The Australian yesterday will fill your heart with joy. In it, Gottliebsen reports the Keating is “white hot with anger” about Chalmers having the audacity to tamper with his biggest, most enduring legacy.

It was when I read that that I started to think Chalmers might be onto something here.

Gottliebsen said that the proposed tax had united parts of the superannuation industry, the union movement and the business community — “a combination without precedent”.

This in turn is increasing pressure for a debate about it within Cabinet.

“Albanese does not like his senior ministers to be forced into lengthy cabinet debates with those which have a different view. He is particularly protective of Chalmers.

“But the enormity of what is about to happen will put great pressure on the PM to allow debate because members of both the cabinet and the total caucus do not want to be shackled with the lifetime reputation of being elected to parliament and then, in virtually their first action, destroying Keating’s universal superannuation savings vision.”

Oh, be still me beating heart! Did The Australian publish a piece containing the words “destroying Keating’s universal superannuation savings vision”? Could this really be the beginning of the end? It’s like Zeus telling Sisyphus he doesn’t need to roll the rock up the mountain any more because it’s worth the same wherever it is.

The most amusing part is that there are Labor MPs who don’t want to be “shackled” with the reputation of having blown up Keating’s precious legacy. Australian workers will forever be grateful to them, but they won’t even notice. Labor stopped caring what worker thought decades ago.

The opportunity is now available for a conservative alternative to propose (as the Libertarians already do) dismantling the whole charade, once and for all. It should be the easiest election campaign in democratic history: We will let you keep your own money, and you can spend it however you see fit.

Who wouldn’t vote for that?