Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Tackling the Gender Super Gap) Bill 2025
Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (09:24): We support this concept in One Nation because One Nation supports families, but I'll get on to that more in a little while. When I saw the title of this bill, the Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Tackling the Gender Super Gap) Bill 2025, I thought: 'This one is going in the bin. It's more woke rubbish from the Liberals and Nationals.' But the bill title is false; it's misleading.
Why? Is it because the Liberal Party needs to appease the Liberal moderates? Is it to attract the Greens vote?
Is it because the Liberal-Nationals have become woke, continue to be woke? Oh, by the way, Liberal and Labor are exchanging barbs about females and looking after females. There's only one party with a female leader, and that's One Nation.
Senator McKim interjecting— Senator ROBERTS: Oh, that's right; you're correct—the Greens. Senator O'Neill: What about Senator Wong? Women are invisible to you.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator O'Neill, you should not be interjecting—on your feet particularly. Senator ROBERTS: I'm not sure why the Liberals would feel the need to give this bill a woke name when the contents of the bill are nothing of the sort. This bill allows a spouse to transfer some of their super to their spouse's superannuation account, to even them out.
That makes sense. Small super accounts grow more slowly than larger accounts, so lifting up your partner's account is a sensible exercise in financial management. The bill is well worded.
The calculation on how much of a person's balance can be transferred is clearly expressed and fair. In an era where women are earning more university degrees than men, 58 per cent to 42 per cent female to male, it's inevitable that female earnings will outstrip male earnings in some households. This bill works both ways.
It builds on our superannuation income-splitting policy of lowering the tax rates for a family with at least one dependent child and one partner not working so he or she can look after the child, splitting the income and reducing the tax to give more after-tax income, to encourage families. We introduced that concept. We also introduced tax bracket indexation to get rid of the stealth tax on income tax.
Families need support. That's a key plank to One Nation policy. There are eight keys to human progress.
They include: (1) freedom, which is being destroyed in this country under the uni party; (2) rule of law, which is being destroyed by making feelings part of law and ignoring the truth and contradicting the truth; (3) constitutional continuation for the stability of governance; (4) secure property rights; (5) strong families—strong families are essential for human progress.
Families are one of the building blocks, one of the two key structures. The other is the nation state rather than a globalist approach. No. 6 is fair, efficient taxation to pay for government but to minimise that taxation, to minimise the size of government; (7) is to have cheap, affordable energy; and (8) is to have honest money.
All of these things are being destroyed by the Labor and Liberal uni party. One Nation supports families. We want to apply this to super, and this bill we support.
Labor opposes it because Labor loves to gouge tax from taxpayers. Labor wants to maximise tax—tax, tax, tax. How about we shrink government to fit the Constitution to restore human dignity, to restore human progress?
And where does Labor's tax tax, tax money go? It goes to waste, waste, waste and is destroyed while increasing inflation, increasing the cost to families, reducing after-tax disposable income, crippling people, increasing the lower working class at the expense of the middle class, destroying the middle class. And we have teachers, nurses, police who are suffering from an erosion of their income.
This is a fair bill. One Nation will support this bill.