Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Bill 2025, Superannuation Guarantee Charge Amendment Bill 2025
Ms AMBIHAIPAHAR (Barton) (13:03): One of the most common questions I was asked during my decade as an employment lawyer was this: 'How can my employer get away with not paying me what I've earned?' It wasn't always about wages. Often it was also about something far less visible: unpaid superannuation. Super isn't just a number on a pay slip; it's the promise that the years we devote to our work will be rewarded with dignity in retirement.
Yet the member for Goldstein thinks this bill is about cartel kickbacks to the unions. According to him, this is all a big conspiracy. 'It's like the beginning of The Lion King,' he says. 'It's so perverse it's beautiful.' Well, at least the member for Goldstein is trying. Can we say the same about the rest of the opposition?
Probably not. In any case, this is not the big conspiracy that the member makes it out to be. We are not selling the future of our young Australians, as he says.
In fact, this amendment will help young Australians save more super by the time they retire. This bill is not about going after small businesses, either. Labor back our small-business community.
In fact, small businesses in Barton make our home the diverse, wonderful place it is. We have many members of caucus who have come from business—the fantastic member for Blair, Shayne Neumann, and the formidable member for Macquarie, Susan Templeman, for example. They constantly advocate for small business in our caucus and in our movement.
The different is that they get that good policy is a balance between small business, big business and workers' rights. It's not one way or the other, as the opposition would like to make it out to be. We believe in working together with all sections of the workforce rather than pitting one group against another.
I come to this place having acted as a lawyer for unions but also as a lawyer for industry. I know that workers' rights are best protected when we consider the pressures that small businesses are under. And that is what this bill does.
The member for Goldstein wants to peddle conspiracies about Australia's superannuation scheme. Good job, good job—but keep trying. I think you've missed the mark on this one.
Superannuation is the cornerstone of Australia's social compact: that every worker, no matter where they come from or what job they do, should have a decent, secure retirement. But, for too long, that promise has been broken for millions of Australians, and that's why these bills, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Bill 2025 and the accompanying Superannuation Guarantee Charge Amendment Bill 2025, matter so deeply.
From 1 July 2026 employers will be required to pay their employees' superannuation guarantee at the same time as their salary and wages. It may be perceived as a minor administrative change, but it's one that will make a profound difference to the lives of all working Australians. The scale of unpaid super is quite staggering.
According to the Super Members Council, 3.3 million Australians were not paid the super they earned in the 2022-23 year period. That's not a rounding error; that's one in four working people. In total, unpaid super is costing Australians $5.7 billion each year, and that's $110 million every single week.
In my home state of New South Wales, more than one million workers—that's 29 per cent of the workforce—missed out on an average of $1,760 each in unpaid super in 2022-23. Over the past six years, that's a collective loss of $9.9 billion. In my own electorate of Barton, the numbers are heartbreaking.
In just one year, 29,800 workers missed out on their proper super. That's 32 per cent of local workers underpaid by an average of $1,670. Altogether, workers in Barton were shortchanged by $49.7 million in the 2022-23 year period alone and by $245.8 million since 2017-18.
That's not abstract data; these are real people. They're the childcare worker in Kogarah, the cleaner in Bexley North, the factory hand in Rockdale and the small-business employee in Earlwood. They're people who get up early, work hard, pay their taxes and deserve better than to have their retirement stolen bit by bit.
The superannuation guarantee is a core feature of our superannuation system. It ensures that employees receive a minimum level of super support from their employers. All employers are liable to pay a tax called the SG charge.
However, employers can reduce the amount of the SG charge they pay by making SG contributions for their employees within the legislated timeframes. The bill amends the Superannuation Guarantee Charge Act to create a strong incentive for employers to make superannuation contributions for their employees at the same time as they pay the employees' qualifying earnings.
Specifically, it aligns the payment of SG contributions with the payment of wages. Previously, SG contributions only had to be made quarterly rather than weekly or fortnightly, like pay. This change will make it easier for workers, employers and the ATO to track and identify unpaid super early; prevent the accumulation of large debts that workers only discover years later; help ensure employers are meeting their obligations in real time, not months down the track; impose new administrative penalties for employers who do not pay their SG charge; create higher retirement savings from more frequent and earlier superannuation contributions; and build a fairer, more transparent system where every worker can see their super grow alongside their wages.
It's a change that the community overwhelmingly supports. A polling and insights survey for the Super Members Council found that more than 70 per cent of Australians want payday super laws to come into effect on 1 July 2026, with fewer than one in 10 believing they should be delayed. That's because Australians understand fairness.
They understand that when you do the right thing, when you work hard and when you play by the rules, you should get what you've earned. As someone who's spent years on the frontlines of employment law, I've seen firsthand how devastating unpaid super can be. In countless underpayment cases I've handled, we'd sit across from employers who owed workers thousands in unpaid wages, and then we'd uncover an even greater debt with unpaid super.
Often, those workers never even realised it. Super doesn't hit your bank account. You don't feel it missing until years later, when you check your balance and realise the gap and when you try to retire and find that the nest egg you were promised simply wasn't there.
Recovering unpaid super is not simple. Unlike wage underpayments, super debts can take years to identify and even longer to chase. They often fall through the cracks, especially for casual workers, migrants and women working multiple part-time jobs.
In my time of legal practice, I saw people lose tens of thousands of dollars they were rightfully owed, and every dollar lost compounds over time. The average Australian worker could lose more than $30,000 from their final retirement savings if unpaid super isn't fixed urgently. Moreover, this reform makes the system fairer for those employers already doing the right thing by their workers.
At the moment, employers who do not regularly make SG contributions gain an unfair advantage over those who do. Why should they? We should be incentivising workplace practices that put their people first, rather than facilitating an uneven playing field.
This new framework will deliver harsher penalties for ongoing and repeated nonpayment of the SG charge and bring all workplaces in line with best practice for the employees. That's why this reform matters. It means accountability is built into the system from day one, not after the damage is done.
This reform is not only about financial security; it's also about fairness and dignity. Australia's superannuation system was built on a simple idea: everyone deserves to retire with dignity. It's one of the greatest Labor legacies—visionary, world leading and profoundly human.
The total pool of superannuation assets in this country is now valued at over $4.1 trillion as of September 2024. It means that, after a long working life, Australians can rest with security and pride. But, like all great systems, it relies on trust—the trust that employers will do the right thing and that the law will ensure they do.
When that trust is broken the consequences ripple across lives and generations. Workers are forced to retire later. Families have less security.
The inequality between men and women grows wider, because women, who already take more time out for caring responsibilities, are often the hardest hit by unpaid super. By requiring super to be paid with every pay cycle, we're closing one of the biggest loopholes in our wage and super framework. We're saying, very clearly, your retirement savings are not optional; they are your right.
In my work with Vinnies, I've seen the human side of financial insecurity. I've have met people who, after decades of honest work, found themselves struggling to pay rent or buy groceries in retirement, because their super had been eroded or unpaid. I've spoken with single parents who had to choose between keeping the lights on and putting money aside for the future.
At Vinnies, we see the direct link between income insecurity today and poverty tomorrow. And we see how easily that slide can happen—not because of personal failure but because of systemic neglect. Empathy is not a weakness in policymaking; it's absolutely a strength.
When we legislate with empathy, we see the whole picture—the person, not just the policy. These bills reflect that. It's about preventing avoidable hardship.
It's about ensuring that no-one falls through the cracks simply because the system made it easy for someone else to take advantage. Some have raised concerns about the administrative burden for small businesses. Let me be clear.
The government recognise that small businesses are the backbone of our economy, and this reform will be implemented with them in mind. By aligning super payments with regular payroll systems, most of which are now automated, we're simplifying compliance, not complicating it. It also reduces the risk of large super debts building up, protecting both employers and employees from financial shocks.
In fact, the move to payday super creates a fairer, more level playing field for small businesses that are already doing the right thing by ensuring that they're not undercut by those who delay or dodge their obligations. When the superannuation guarantee was introduced by a Labor government in 1992—also driven by the unions—it was a bold reform that reshaped the future for generations.
Now, more than 30 years later, this bill continues that proud legacy. It modernises the system for this century. Payday super will mean that workers can see their super growing in real time, that the ATO can act faster when super isn't paid and that Australians can retire with more security and dignity.
It's the kind of reform that quietly, steadily and permanently improves the lives of millions of Australians. And it's one that only a Labor government, guided by fairness, empathy and the belief in collective prosperity, would champion. In my years as an employment lawyer I saw how the law can be both a shield and a mirror, reflecting our values as a society.
Every case I took on was about fairness: an electrical apprentice unpaid by their employer, a nurse denied penalty rates, a tradesperson whose super never appeared. And behind every case was a story of trust broken, of hard work undervalued. But I also saw something else: resilience and faith in justice.
People believed that if they spoke up someone would listen. This bill listens. It listens to workers who've been short-changed, it listens to the superannuation funds who've been calling for the change and it listens to the millions of Australians who just want a fair go.
It's trauma informed policy in the truest sense. It recognises the harm caused by systemic neglect and it acts to prevent that harm before it happens. This is more than a financial reform; it's a moral one.
It says to every worker in this country, 'Your hard work will be honoured, your future will be protected and an Albanese Labor government will stand up for you,' because super isn't a privilege; it's a promise. With this bill, the Albanese Labor government is keeping that promise, for every worker in every suburb in every corner of this nation, so that the childcare worker in Kogarah, the cleaner in Bexley North, the factory hand in Rockdale and the small-business employee in Earlwood can look to their future with confidence, knowing that every dollar they've earned will be there when they need it most.