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

Ms BRISKEY (Maribyrnong) (12:44): The superannuation legislation before this parliament today—the Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Bill 2025 and the Superannuation Guarantee Charge Amendment Bill 2025—is a once-in-a-generation reform that will finally ensure that working Australians receive the super they've earned when they've earned it. This is not a minor tweak to the system.

This is a structural fix to one of the biggest cracks in our social compact. It is a very Australian promise that, when you work hard, you get every cent you're entitled to, not just today but for your retirement. When super isn't paid, workers lose twice: they lose the money they've earned now, and they lose the compounding returns that would have grown over their lifetime.

That's theft from someone's future self. Right now, too many Australians are being robbed of their future retirement savings. The Australian Taxation Office estimates that, in 2021-22 alone, $5.2 billion in super went unpaid.

That's $100 million every single week that Australian workers earned but never received. Those missing payments disproportionately hit young people, women and those in insecure work—the people who can least afford to lose it. In a typical ATO investigation, a worker has missed out on nearly two years of super contributions.

For a 35-year-old, that shortfall can reduce their retirement savings by around $32,000 in today's dollars. When an employer collapses or goes into liquidation, the losses are even worse. Often, more than $90,000 is wiped from a worker's future retirement balance.

These aren't just figures; they are real people. They are the early childhood educator at Moonee Ponds, the retail worker at Airport West and the cleaner at a local school. All of them put in the hours but never see the super they're owed.

This reform is also about fairness for women. We know that women retire, on average, with about 25 per cent less super than men. That gap is mirrored in my electorate of Maribyrnong.

Across all ages, there is a 25 per cent gender super gap, which is almost identical to the national average. For those approaching retirement in Maribyrnong and aged 50 to 59, the median man has about $215,000 in super. But the median woman has $159,800.

That's about 26 per cent less. This is happening right now in Maribyrnong. It's not because women don't work as hard; it's because the system has historically been stacked against them, with more part-time work, more time out for caring and, too often, unpaid super from employers who fail to meet their obligations.

Payday super will make a real difference for these women. Ensuring super is paid alongside wages means women will be able to see contributions flowing in real time, not quarterly or years later. It gives women greater visibility, control and confidence over their retirement savings.

It will also make it harder for unscrupulous employers to quietly shortchange women working in part-time or casual jobs. This reform is for fairness; it is a reform for women. Once again, it shows the difference between a majority-female Labor government on this side that is delivering for women and a former coalition government that could barely fit women in the room, let alone make policies that benefited them.

In my electorate of Maribyrnong, we are a proud, hardworking community. We have people from every walk of life. The median super balance for a worker in Maribyrnong is about $69,000, which is slightly higher than the Victorian and national averages.

But behind that number are real inequities. In 2022-23, around 28 per cent of workers in Maribyrnong were affected by unpaid super. That is almost identical to the state and national average.

That's 23,000 workers in just my electorate missing an average of $1,520 each. That is a total of $35 million in unpaid super across Maribyrnong in just one year—$35 million that should have been going towards building futures. Instead, it vanished from people's accounts.

This money is hard earned, and it should have gone straight into those workers' super funds. That is why this bill is so life changing. Those numbers aren't just statistics; they're injustice measured in dollars.

From 1 July 2026, this bill will require employers to pay superannuation guarantee contributions at the same time as wages instead of quarterly. Employers must ensure the super contributions are received by the employee's fund within seven business days of their payday. This means workers will be able to see their super appear in real time, along with their payslip.

It also means the ATO can detect missed payments early, before debts become unmanageable or unrecoverable. The bill also updates the superannuation guarantee charge—the penalty employers face when they fail to pay on time—to make it fairer and stronger. Under the new framework, the charge applies per day, not per quarter; it includes notional earnings to compensate workers for lost investment returns; it includes an administrative uplift to reflect enforcement costs and encourage quick rectification; it adds a choice loading, penalising employers who fail to pay into the employees' chosen fund; and repeat offenders who still refuse to pay can face penalties up to 50 per cent of the unpaid amount.

The framework balances fairness with firmness. It encourages good behaviour and punishes bad. It is one thing to change the law and another to enforce it.

To make sure this works in practice, the ATO will use Single Touch Payroll data—from the same reporting system that already records wages—and match it with data from super funds. This gives the ATO near-real-time visibility of whether super has been paid. It's modern enforcement for a modern system.

The government has committed $404 million to implement this reform—to build the technology, enhance data matching and increase ATO capability. In the first year, the ATO will take a facilitative approach. Employers who make genuine efforts to comply, even if they hit technical issues, will not be targeted for punitive action.

This is not a 'gotcha' exercise. It's about changing the system, not catching people out. I also want to speak directly to small businesses, because this reform supports them too.

In Maribyrnong, small and family run businesses are the backbone of our local economy. I've had the pleasure of meeting so many wonderful local businesses, all of whom want to do the right thing by their workers. Payday super will make their lives easier by aligning super with payroll.

This means no more massive quarterly reconciliations or sudden end-of-quarter bills. It reduces the risk of errors and makes compliance more straightforward. It's good for workers and good for employers.

It is a system that rewards honesty and simplicity. The urgency of this bill is to give employers, payroll providers, super funds and the ATO the time they need to prepare for implementation by 1 July 2026. Every month we delay, more workers miss out on money that rightfully belongs to them, and once those payments are lost, especially when businesses fold, they are almost impossible to recover.

Justice delayed, in this case, is justice denied. This reform is also necessary because of almost a decade of neglect under the former coalition government. For a coalition that loves to call itself the better economic managers, it's never managed to deliver an economy that actually works for working people.

For years they knew billions were being stolen from workers' super and did nothing. They promised to get tough on unpaid super and failed. They promised to protect workers and failed.

They promised to fix the system and failed. Under their watch, wage growth stagnated, penalty rates were cut and super compliance plummeted. Do good economic managers preside over record unpaid super, record household debt and record corporate profits at the expense of workers?

I don't think so, and nor did the Australian people. Those opposite had a chance to act, and they didn't. While they delayed, billions were siphoned away from the retirement savings of working Australians.

Their decade of cuts, chaos, denial, destruction, debt and deficit has left every corner of our country worse off. Labor is once again cleaning up their mess. We're doing so with Medicare, with wages, with housing and with action on climate change.

We're doing what Australians rightly expect: delivering an economy that works for them. This bill is one part of Labor's broader plan to strengthen super for everyone, especially those who've been left behind. We've also committed to improving the low-income superannuation tax offset, or LISTO, an automatic tax rebate paid on the super accounts of low-income earners to offset the 15 per cent contributions tax.

Right now, because of outdated income thresholds, some low-income workers are paying more tax on their super than on their take-home pay. By lifting the threshold from $37,000 to $45,000 and increasing the maximum rebate from $500 to $810, Labor will boost the super of around 7,600 low-income earners in Maribyrnong, delivering an extra $3.1 million in total. And here's what matters most: two-thirds of those beneficiaries will be women, and 69 per cent of those payments will go to women's super accounts.

That's how you close the gender gap—not with slogans but with action. As our population ages, these reforms will only grow in importance. In Maribyrnong, about 17 per cent of residents are aged over 65, similar to the national average, but only 8.5 per cent of our community receive the age pension, lower than the Victorian rate and the national rate.

That means more people in my community are relying on superannuation to fund their retirement, and they can't afford to be short-changed along the way. Payday super will protect that independence and ensure that those who've worked all their lives can retire with dignity and security. Labor was re-elected with a clear promise: to build Australia's future.

This is yet another way that we're delivering on that commitment. We're fixing what's unfair, we're standing up for working people and we're delivering reforms that make life fairer and futures more secure. Superannuation itself is a Labor achievement.

It is a proud legacy of the Hawke and Keating governments. Under this government, led by our prime minister, we're strengthening that legacy again. We're making sure the promise of super isn't just words on a page.

It's real money in people's accounts every single payday. This bill is another Labor reform for fairness. It's a reform for women, it's a reform for working people and it's a reform for the people of Maribyrnong, who'll greatly benefit from it.

It's about making sure that 23,000 local workers in my community who missed out on their super last year will never lose out again. It's about making sure that the women with $159,000 in super don't retire with 25 per cent less than their male colleagues simply because their employer didn't pay on time. It's about building a system that works for people who built and continue to build our country.

The aged-care worker, the educator, the cleaner, the tradie, the small-business owner—they all deserve to know their super is safe, secure and paid when it should be. I say to the opposition: fight off your impulses and don't stand in the way of fairness. Don't delay economic justice for working Australians.

Stand with us. Stand with workers. Stand for a stronger super system that pays people what they've earnt.

In Maribyrnong and across Australia, that is what Labor has always done. We back working people. I commend the bill to the House.