Super is already transforming the lives of millions of Australian retirees, paying out more than twice the value of the Age Pension each year. With millions more approaching retirement, it is as important as ever to ensure the super system remains stable. Only then can super continue to achieve its goal of improving the lives of Australians in retirement, while reducing the cost of the Age Pension on the Budget.
Super Members Council (SMC) has 12 policy priorities to strengthen and enhance your super. These priorities have three key objectives:
Safeguard the system fundamentals that make super a world-envied success
1. No changes to the principles of preservation, universality and compulsion, which protect the super of millions of everyday Australians.
2. Fix unpaid super, which costs 2.8 million Australians $5 billion a year.
3. Stick to the promised 2025 rise in the super rate to 12%.
Improve the experiences of super fund members in their working lives and retirement
4. Help Australians to get an even clearer picture of what their retirement could look like.
5. Let retirees pay super into retirement-phase super accounts.
6. Expand financial advice so Australians can get the retirement information they need.
7. Digitise binding death nominations and standardise death certificate and proof of identity processes, to speed up death benefit payments.
8. Better integrate super funds with key government agencies to speed up hardship applications.
Make super fairer for those who don’t get the full benefits of the system
9. End age discrimination by paying super to all workers under age 18.
10. Lift the Low-Income Super Tax Offset so 1.2 million workers on lower incomes get a fairer super tax cut.
11. Reform the law so family violence perpetrators can’t inherit their victim’s super.
12. Improve equity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people including by recognising kinship structures and making ID requirements simpler.
Commitments from parties and independents
Ahead of the Federal Election on 3 May, SMC asked parties and independents to commit to these 12 policy priorities to strengthen and enhance your super.
We wrote to each party and independent asking them to respond to our priorities. We asked them to respond by 17 April.
Parties
More on our super policy priorities
Super now supports millions of everyday Australians to retire with more income, dignity and freedom. Before Australia’s modern super system was created, most people survived on just the age pension in retirement.
Today, nine in ten Australian workers have super – and a typical Australian now reaches retirement with around $200,000. An average 30-year-old today is forecast to have $500,000 as they retire.
Super now pays out twice as much each year in income as the age pension, significantly lifting living standards and cutting costs for taxpayers. The share of Australians who now need to rely on any age pension at all when they turn 67 has fallen from 71% in 2003 to 39% in 2023.
Australia’s modern super system was created in 1992 with introduction of the Superannuation Guarantee. It established a minimum, near universal, employment entitlement to super.
At the heart of the system was a bargain: a portion of workers savings would be set aside for their future, in exchange for a lower tax rate on their retirement savings.
Since then, successive Australian Governments have continued super’s evolution, extending its effectiveness and efficiency, making it fairer, and adding greater consumer protections. Successive governments have also remained committed to the system’s fundamentals: a compulsory and universal system with savings preserved until retirement.
Through super, everyone shares in the income generated by Australian and global businesses and investments, not just the wealthy. Due to its scale and long-term investment time frames, super has been able to deliver strong investment returns for everyday Australians, create new jobs and build new houses for Australians to buy.
As with all intergenerational policies, super must continue to be strengthened. We must ensure the system is fair, that it is stable, and that it delivers on its promise to Australians. Super is Australians’ money for their retirement – they rightly expect and deserve the highest standards of service from their funds and their service providers.
Download SMC’s key policy priorities document, which highlights improvements to super that will further strengthen the super system and ensure it continues to deliver strong financial security to Australians in retirement.