Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Bill 2025, Superannuation Guarantee Charge Amendment Bill 2025

Mr McCORMACK (Riverina) (16:53): The older you get, the more you find in your Facebook algorithms suggestions for how much retirement savings, how much superannuation, you will require when you call it a day from your work. The probable answer, ignoring what AI might suggest, is that it's not enough. Whatever they suggest is never really enough.

Most people don't ever think about or like to talk about superannuation, because it is complicated. On the coalition side, we are fortunate. We have Senator Jane Hume, who likes to talk about superannuation.

I know she has a lot of good ideas about superannuation splitting. Senator Matthew Canavan is of a similar view: make sure partners, usually the males, can share their superannuation with their female partners. They're good ideas, and they're worth investigating.

We also note—as much as we don't like to talk or think about superannuation—that women who are retiring don't ever have enough. We talk about the pay gap, but the superannuation gap is even wider, for all sorts of reasons—any number of reasons. Women often find, when they stop working, that there simply isn't enough in the kitty to keep them going, particularly if they're single, particularly if they don't have support.

This is a real concern. The number of homeless women and the number of women on the poverty line is higher in that older age group, when those women have finished their working lives. It's important to have a discussion in relation to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Bill 2025 and the amendment.

As a coalition we've always believed that superannuation is part of a worker's pay. It's not a bonus, not an extra; it's their money. Absolutely it's the worker's money.

They've earned it; they're owed it. As the member for Macquarie quite rightly pointed out, most companies, most small businesses, do the right thing by their workers in terms of their employees' entitlements. They put away the superannuation.

And I'm pleased that the Australian Taxation Office, many years ago, in the 1970s, was relocated to Albury, a great show of decentralisation. I'm amazed that those opposite are not yelling out to me that it happened under their watch! Well, it did.

It goes to show what can be done when an organisation such as the ATO moves into a regional centre. The ATO will cooperate with businesses that do the right thing. As the member for Macquarie rightly pointed out, if they find that an innocent or unwitting error has been made in nonpayments of superannuation, they will work with the business to make sure the workers are looked after as they should be.

Unpaid super is a persistent problem, as we know. It's a serious issue—an amount of around $5 billion in unpaid contributions each year. Not all that is wilful, but certainly in areas where it is then those companies should be hit, and hit hard, by the ATO, by ASIC and by any other institution that has carriage of that responsibility.

As a coalition government—indeed, as a parliament—we want to ensure that Australians receive every cent they've earned through the perspiration and efforts and the hours that they've put in. It's their superannuation. We're hopeful that more frequent payments will help close that gap, will help bridge that divide.

I have to say that, as with most things, Labor has bungled the rollout with the rushed and reckless implementation. That's usually the case; that's usually the way. It's poorly planned.

It risks difficulties for small businesses right across the country. Like the member for Macquarie, who made a contribution just now, I've also run a small business—a successful media publishing company. I was in it for eight years before I entered parliament.

The business continued long after I began my parliamentary career in 2010. I know how difficult it is to run a small business. It was hard then, let alone now.

The difficulty we face as a nation is that small businesses are going to the wall right across the country. It's very hard in regional Australia for small businesses to find workers, to find hired hands, to find help. If you go along any main street in any country centre, large or small, you will often find notes in the window saying that there is work available within.

These small businesses simply can't find people to fill the vacancies. For those small businesses that are operating, there is this deluge of compliance, of bureaucratic tape, of difficulty—and not just with the federal government but often also with local councils, with slow processing of development applications. Council and even state government compliance is onerous on those small businesses.

Often, when you talk to a small-business operator, they'll tell you that they're taking home less pay than the workers that they are giving an opportunity to. Whilst I appreciate that running a small business is often a ticket to a better life later down the track, it's hard for those small-business operators in this day and age. They're putting in the work, taking the risk, leasing or renting the building, hiring the people and sometimes unwittingly not meeting all the requirements that they should, and then they're taking home less pay than the workers.

And it's hard because they often don't take holidays, yet they have to meet all of this bureaucracy. That's why I'm glad that we have the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman in place. I know the work that Kate Carnell and Bruce Billson, a former small-business minister, did in regard to helping small businesses.

Any of those small-business operators who may well be listening to this broadcast can go to the ASBFEO website and see what is available to assist them as small-business operators on matters such as superannuation, industrial relations, grants and those sorts of things. There is a mine of data that is very helpful and recommended. Just last week we saw that the hapless treasurer completely botched his hapless unrealised gains.

At least this backflip was a bit of help for small businesses and, in particular, for farmers, who may have had land locked up in their superannuation accounts, because, if it went over $3 million, they were then going to face a tax bill on the property value going up. At least the Treasurer has had the foresight and the gumption, but he's been dragged kicking and screaming to the table; we know that.

He's been dragged there kicking and screaming. Finally, he's come up with the view that he will shelve that for now—but for how long? It was doomed policy from the start.

It should never have happened. It was hardly talked about in the lead-up to the election. Thankfully, it's been put on ice, and, hopefully, it will never ever see the light of day, because those unrealised capital gains were an impost on the ability of farmers, in particular, in regional Australia to use superannuation to help their retirement planning and their succession planning.

When it comes to superannuation, I said at the start that people don't like to talk about succession planning. A lot of farmers don't like the prospect of succession planning, but it's something that's very important, particularly in this day and age, when it's not necessarily the elder son who's going to take over the farm. Once upon a time, that was generally the case.

The elder son who worked the farm took over the farm when the farmer retired. That was back in the days when farmers were generally men. These days they're not necessarily always men.

In those days, when the firstborn son was going to take over the farm—although not necessarily, and it's a good thing that that doesn't always happen now. The number of women making a mighty contribution to agriculture has to be applauded, and I do applaud what AgriFutures has done in that regard. Anybody who doesn't believe me only needs to go to the AgriFutures woman of the year each and every year in this place to see the amazing contributions made by women to the future of agriculture.

They now realise there's money to be made and a future to be had in agriculture, and good luck to them. But again I say that those unrealised capital gains were going to be such a disadvantage for our farmers who had their land locked up in that regard. Thankfully, the Treasurer, the member for Rankin, has seen the error of his ways.

He was told to pull his horns in, and he's done so. Labor have dropped the ball on this superannuation issue, and they're now expecting small business to pick it up. We know that small business is already doing it tough, especially in the areas of construction and transport.

Every day, every single day, when you pick up the paper or go online or listen to the radio or turn on the television for the news, you'll see that some transport company—or indeed a construction company—that's been operating for decades has gone to the wall. Those two sectors in particular are in freefall at the moment, and it's because of the compliance forced upon them particularly by Canberra and particularly by this Labor government, which I have to say doesn't give a jot or two hoots about small business.

That is to the great detriment of this nation and particularly the trucking industry, which kept this nation going during COVID. It was agriculture and transport which kept this nation going: the transport industry carted the food and the vaccines, and agriculture provided the food. I have to say the government has been very lax in supporting those industries which supported this nation through COVID-19.

In the government's own documents for this bill, you'll see the great revelation. Just turn to page 102 of the explanatory memorandum. The plan was for an 18-month lead time between passing the laws in late 2024 and starting in July next year.

Instead, businesses are being given just eight months—not eight months from when the laws are passed but from the day the bill was introduced. That, I have to say, is not responsible. It's not realistic.

Again, it places pressure on small businesses, who are already doing it tough. Why is it right that a business person has to open their doors very early in the morning and work all day, working their insides out, hoping that customers will come back, trying to attract new ones and trying to keep the good customers they've had for years, and then, after they've turned the lights out, as the last to leave, and gone home they have to have the responsibility of looking up new laws and meeting all of Labor's bureaucratic tape?

It is so tough for businesses. It's alright for us. Yes, we work long hours too, but we don't have the risk of not knowing where our next pay packet is going to come from; we just don't.

Yet we make these laws, and the government put in place this legislation without so much as a thought to what they're doing to small business, to what they're doing to the good, honest, hardworking small businesses which keep this nation running, which keep this nation's lights on, which keep this nation fed and which keep this nation clothed. That's what this government is doing, and it's time to think about small businesses and to listen to small businesses.

When Labor members go back to their electorates the week after next, they should go and listen to small businesses and hear what they are saying. Go to any of the high streets or main streets and visit the small businesses, listen to them and take on board their complaints and concerns about the onerous red tape that you're thrusting and foisting upon them. Then—here's a thought—do something about it when you come back here.

You should absolutely do so. Labor delayed this legislation for a full year and, in doing so, cut the transition time for businesses in half. What was the hold up?

I'll tell you what it was: procrastination. It's what Labor is good at: procrastination and compliance. It's important legislation.

It's about time you were getting on with it, but have a thought for small business.