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Australia just got an A grade for retirement. Let’s not put that at risk
This week Australia got international recognition for an achievement decades in the making, and one that will matter enormously to the financial security of generations of Australians. For the first time, Australia’s retirement income system got an A grade in the 2026 Marsh CFA Institute Global Pension Index.
Further Shield and First Guardian action shows why strong consumer protections cannot wait
Fresh legal action this week by ASIC against one financial adviser alleged to have pocketed at least $34 million in illegal kickbacks and funnelling more than 200 clients into the collapsed funds is a sobering reminder of the critical need for much stronger consumer protections to become law alongside ongoing legal action.
Supercharging Members’ Futures: Highlights from SMC’s Canberra Super Summit 2026
On Wednesday, 9 September, SMC brought together Chairs, CEOs and senior leaders from Australia's biggest profit-to-member super funds, alongside senior representatives from the Government, Opposition, regulators and leading retirement policy experts at Parliament House in Canberra for the annual SMC Super Summit.
Why super for housing is a false promise
Like clockwork, a familiar bad idea returns to the political debate: let Australians raid their superannuation to buy a home. This week the clock ticked over, followed by proposals being floated to use super to solve housing affordability challenges. An opposition frontbencher confirming options are being considered. It follows a One Nation proposal to allow Australians to cash out a quarter of future compulsory super contributions for current spending.
The 12% Super Guarantee rate isn’t arbitrary; it is the minimum required
12% super is not a luxury. For most Australians it gives them a fighting chance of a dignified retirement. Super has one job: to provide a pay cheque through a retirement that could last almost as long as the career that funded it. Yet some are arguing the Super Guarantee should be cut. Their case rests on three claims: that a lower rate would still deliver an adequate retirement, higher super comes at the expense of wages, and lower super would not hurt the budget.
SMC’s Super Summit comes after One Nation announces reckless super cash out plan
“We’re witnessing now the biggest threat to compulsory super, with preservation at its core, in the four decades since it began.” Those were the words Treasurer Jim Chalmers gave to a packed room of super sector leaders at the Super Members Council's annual summit at Parliament House in Canberra on Wednesday, two days after One Nation announced its election commitment to allow Australians to withdraw 3% of their super for three years to deal with cost of living pressures.
Latest APRA data shows profit to member funds leading on performance
The latest APRA data shows profit-to-member super funds are continuing to lead the pack, delivering strong returns while growing their share of Australia's retirement savings system. For the year to June 2026, profit-to-member funds delivered sector-leading net returns of 8.8 per cent, outperforming retail funds, which returned 7.8 per cent. Even more importantly, they have maintained a long-term performance edge, outperforming retail funds by 1.5 percentage points a year.
Delivering scaled advice alongside a strong Best Interests Duty
A key theme of the package of consumer protection reforms announced by the Federal Government last Wednesday was improving access to safe, secure financial advice. This was welcome, in particular some much-needed movement on long-awaited DBFO reforms that will give Australians access to simple, trusted intra-fund advice in retirement, delivered by their own super fund. As more Australians approach retirement with significant super balances and increasingly complex options before them, the need for accessible advice has never been greater.
Political spat over compulsory super and watershed safety reforms: a week like no other
“The next election will be about a lot of things, but now at least in part it’ll be a referendum on super,” proclaimed Treasurer Jim Chalmers to the AFR on Sunday after One Nation leader Pauline Hanson suggested people should be able to access their super to pay off their mortgages. The Treasurer’s rebuke followed key members of the Coalition earlier in the week calling for the abolition of compulsory super entirely, setting up a political stoush that looks set to simmer away until the election in 2028. It’s disappointing that despite its obvious success, Australia’s super system remains politically contested.
From first jobs to fair starts
Last week in SuperWrap we wrote about a positive sign for one of the super system's most persistent blind spots: the growing national momentum to end a rule that denies many workers under 18 the same super rights as everyone else. This week, SMC released new modelling to put a sharper focus on the scale of this problem and, significantly, that the size of the issue is growing. Our latest analysis shows that about 530,000 teenage workers will miss out on $411 million in super this financial year because of the under-18 exclusion.
A positive sign on under-18s super
Sometimes the biggest reforms are about finishing what we started. A few weeks back the Greens in the Senate tried to change the law so all under-18 workers would be paid super. Though ultimately unsuccessful, it amplified the importance of this issue and helped put it in the national spotlight. Last week’s Australian Labor Party National Conference took an important step by amending the party platform to explicitly support paying super on every dollar earned, including for workers under 18. While a conference resolution is not government policy, it is a welcome sign that momentum is continuing to build to finally remove an age-based exclusions in Australia’s super system.
Consumers should be wary of claims they would be better off switching their super into more complex and costly products
The Super Members Council is urging Australians to be wary of suggestions they would be better off moving their super from low-cost, high-return mainstream super funds into more complex and costly products such as super ‘platform’ funds and SMSFs which require expensive ongoing financial advice fees to set up and run. The consumer alert follows a major ASIC report which found shocking gaps in trustee oversights of large advice fee deductions at several super ‘platforms’. It came just days after the Financial Services Council (FSC) published a report portraying ‘platform’ super products as potentially suitable for almost anyone, which is simply not the case.
Super only has one purpose
This week at the Australian Financial Review's Superannuation Lending Roundtable, we were once again treated to politicians suggesting that a portion of superannuation savings should be directed into areas of sovereign capability such as housing, infrastructure, the energy transition and pandemic preparedness. While such interventions are predictable, they are also unhelpful. They distract from what must remain super's sole purpose: to grow the retirement savings of everyday Australians. It is not the job of super funds to solve every problem in our economy. Nor should it ever be.
ASIC review and CSLR levy blowout builds case for stronger protections
While the Federal Government mulls over a package of reforms to strengthen protections for Australians’ super in the wake of the collapses of Shield and First Guardian, a recent ASIC review of advice fees and a blow out on the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort (CSLR,) are yet more evidence of the need for those protections to be comprehensive – tinkering around the edges just won’t do. ASIC’s scathing report was informed by lessons from those collapses, in which almost 12,000 Australians lost more than $1 billion of their life savings on two schemes listed on four super platforms.
Payday super now in effect
Wednesday was an historic day for anyone who has been campaigning for payday super over the years, after new laws came into effect requiring employers to pay super at the same time as wages instead of only once every three months. But more importantly, it’s a historic day for victims of unpaid super. Sadly, many victims never realise they are one or only do once it’s too late. SMC’s latest analysis of recently released tax data shows unpaid super is now costing Australians $6.3 billion each year in lost retirement savings – a $500 million increase on the previous year.
Fixing the gaps in super coverage
Last Friday, SMC launched a new report Unfinished business: Fixing gaps in the Super Guarantee alongside Carers Australia, COTA, Women in Super and Minister for Social Services Tanya Plibersek. The event in Sydney highlighted the fact that more than one million Australians still miss out on super simply because of who they are or the work they do. Carers is one group particularly excluded from super. SMC analysis showing a typical 45‑year‑old carer who pauses their career to provide 24/7 care for a loved one can miss out on around $45,000 by retirement. This is not a gender-neutral issue. More than 70% of Carer Payment recipients are women, given women are far more likely to take on informal caring responsibilities across their lives. The result? Another structural driver of the gender super gap.
Why performance test coverage needs extending
Submissions on strengthening the superannuation performance test will begin trickling into Treasury’s inbox next week ahead of the 19 June deadline. One commonsense reform that should be on everyone’s list is extending coverage of the test. The performance test is not perfect but has been one of the most effective consumer safeguards introduced in recent years. By holding products to account for long-term returns and fees, it has lifted standards and sharpened outcomes across the system. As the super system evolves, the test must evolve with it.
Payday super is coming — and it’s good for business
Some employers hear “more frequent super payments” and think “more administration”. In practice, paying super with wages can make payroll simpler, clearer and less risky by turning super from a growing quarterly bill into a routine payroll expense.
Advancing superannuation for First Nations members
Last week, leaders from across the superannuation sector came together for a First Nations Super Roundtable — a focused, solutions-oriented discussion on how we move from understanding the challenges to delivering genuine, system-wide change.
How to plug the holes in consumer protections
This week we released two submissions to Treasury’s proposed reforms to strengthen consumer safety; one focused on lead generators and another on the need to lift governance and accountability obligations for platforms and SMSFs to match the high standards that apply for mainstream APRA-regulated super funds. Australians trust the super system to deliver on one simple promise: that the super money they set aside every payday will be there for them in retirement. But recent events have shown that promise can be undermined when gaps in consumer protections are exploited — and when bad actors find ways to game the system.
Public backs strong consumer safety reforms
While the nation continues to process one of the most significant reform Budgets of the past 25 years, this week the super sector has been finalising submissions on some major reforms in their own right. Last month Treasury released three consultation papers with proposed reforms to lead generation, consumer safety and the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort (CSLR). We will be releasing our submissions publicly next week, all of which will make the case for a comprehensive set of safety reforms, that bring governance and accountability to other parts of the system in line with APRA-regulated funds.
1 in 4 Aussies are not getting paid their super… are you one of them?
Misha Schubert, CEO of Super Members Council recently met with Molly Benjamin of Ladies Finance club on her podcast, cutting through the jargon and confusion to give you a clear, honest look at what’s happening with super right now — and what you can do to protect what could be one of your biggest assets. Here’s the reality: 1 in 4 working Australians aren’t being paid some or all of the super they’ve earned. That’s not a minor oversight. That’s your money — money you worked for — simply not landing in your account. And with major new payday super laws coming into effect on 1 July 2026, now is the moment to understand exactly what you’re entitled to.
A budget to remember
Wherever your views sit in relation to the Budget that was handed down by the Government on Tuesday, it was undeniably one of the most talked about budgets in recent memory. Budgets usually only register among political, financial and industry bubbles, but the bubbles have burst with this one. Everyone has taken an interest. That’s because it delivered one most significant waves of tax reform in decades — reshaping negative gearing, capital gains tax and trust taxation. For super, this was a steady as she goes budget, with a handful of modest but important new investments. The Budget also revealed that the Australian Taxation Office has not yet set itself any performance targets for unpaid super recovery when game-changing payday super laws start on July 1.
SMC Post Federal Budget Webinar 2026-27
Join Super Members Council CEO Misha Schubert, along with Executive General Manager Strategy & Insights Matt Linden, as they unpack the 2026 Budget. With two decades of experience each in offering powerful analysis of Federal Budgets and economic policy settings, Misha and Matt will delve into both the broader economic context and all the details on the Budget’s super decisions, with compelling insights and behind-the-scenes detail.