Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Fair Super for Young Workers) Bill 2026

Senator STEELE-JOHN (Western Australia) (09:31): This morning I am proud to speak in support of the Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Fair Super for Young Workers) Bill 2026, which was presented to the parliament by my colleague and friend Senator Barbara Pocock. This bill would ensure fair superannuation for young workers across the country, and it is a piece of legislation whose time has come.

Corporations making billion-dollar profits, stealing from young workers—that ain't it, that ain't on, that's not okay. Yet in Australia, under the law as we currently have it, if you are under the age of 18 and work fewer than 30 hours a week, you don't have to be paid super by your corporate employer. That's cooked.

That's wrong. That's so wrong. Let's be really clear: 530,000 young workers who are below the age of 18 work less than 30 hours a week, so they are not entitled to super in Australia right now.

What will this mean for them? What does it actually look like? It looks like about $411 million that they will not receive in their superannuation because of this law, setting them back significantly in terms of their savings and security for the rest of their lives.

This makes me so angry. We have had politicians in this debate contributing to this discussion. When asked about this issue, when young people, young workers, have said: 'This isn't fair.

This isn't on. Where's our fair go?' the response of certain Liberal MPs has been to say: 'Well, if we pay workers under the age of 18 superannuation, what's next? Super for cats and dogs?' What a shameful, disgusting response to what is effectively legalised wage and retirement theft in this country.

A lot of folks in this place probably don't take a lot of time to talk to young workers, to listen to young workers, about their experience, about what it's actually like to work in the industries dominated by young workers. But we in the Greens have, and Senator Pocock has, and their voices and demands are represented in this bill. Let me tell you, it's hard work.

You're doing the cleaning up. You're stacking the shelves. You're dealing with the grumpy folks.

You're working between your school hours, or you're working between TAFE—that's often the case for young carers, for example—to be able to put a bit more money in the pot to pay the power bill or to pay the grocery bill, often to the very parasitic corporation—or should I actually say 'fresh food people'—that you may be working for. These are the very corporations that proudly proclaim 'down down, prices are down' while your family is driven into the ground, because they cut your shifts unexpectedly or fire you after the holiday period is done.

But you go back every time they put another ad out. You do as much as you can, for as long as you can, to contribute. You do all of this, and they don't pay your super because they aren't legally required to do so in Australia.

There are some corporations that have, but the big ones don't. That's where the law should come in. That is where the government should act, because we know that if corporations are left to their own damned devices they will exploit their workers.

I rather thought that a Labor government would understand that. You cannot make fairness and equality from an employer an optional extra. Yet, for so long, this government has sat idly by and let that be the case for young Australian workers.

We have seen recently, at the Labor Party conference, the passage of a resolution calling on the government, and adopted by the party, to fix this problem. This is an urgent problem, and it is urgently needed that words are translated into action. We've heard contributions from MPs on the government side supportive of the idea.

Words need to be put into action. The government needs to step up and take on these big corporations because they are ripping young workers off. Senator Barbara Pocock interjecting— Senator STEELE-JOHN: Very well pointed out, Senator Pocock.

We have young workers in the gallery. There are folks right up there that may well be taking their first shift, or they're a couple of days or years away from doing that, for the first time. They should be paid their superannuation—same pay for same work.

This is discrimination, and it's been allowed to go on for too long. It is not like these corporations can't afford it. Let me just remind everyone in here the profits of the big three in this space.

Coles, in the last financial year, what was their bottom line—$1.08 billion? I bet they were quite disappointed that it wasn't $1.1 billion flat. It must be a tough time for the folks at Coles, for the corporate leadership.

It's hard operating a monopoly that parasitically extracts wealth from the Australian public because they have an ability, at the stroke of a pen, to jack up the price of cheese whenever they want to make a quick buck. Woolworths made $1.38 billion profit in the last financial year. You're telling me they couldn't pay their young workers super?

This is greed. Maccas had a global profit last year exceeding $13 billion. These are the corporations allowed by the loopholes in the law to get away with not paying young people their super.

Shame! The Greens have a bill, right now, to fix this problem. Here's one we prepared earlier.

I say to the government back the bill. Back the bill. Let's get this done.

Let's get young workers the pay and the super they deserve. If there are some politicians on the fence about this, I would ask you to consider two things: firstly, that these massively profitable corporations are saying to Australian workers right now, 'Sorry, we're not going to pay you super,' and the government of the day is saying, 'Sorry, you don't qualify for compulsory super, so you've got to just kind of live at the whim of the employer.' Ask yourself if that seems fair to you.

I'd ask you how you would feel, as members of parliament, if there were reform to your superannuation entitlements that meant that you didn't get paid super unless you turned up and could demonstrate that you'd done more than 30 hours a week of actual parliamentary work. I reckon you'd be a bit salty about that. I reckon you'd think that was unfair.

Yet that is the situation politics has allowed to exist, and government has allowed to continue for young workers in Australia. I would also ask you to consider what it is actually like to work these jobs. It's hard work, disproportionately done by women.

It's hard work in which not you're not only often on the front line of copping the frustration of many people with the corporate practice—the abuse at the till, the discriminatory comments. You're also then asked to do the hard, lonely work—the stacking of the shelves and the sweeping of the floors. If the air conditioner is broken or something has exploded somewhere and you've got to clean it up, you're the one asked to do that work.

You do that work and you are, in some ways, relieved that you can do it because you can pay the bills, but that doesn't mean it isn't hard. I was talking to an employee of Coles in WA just yesterday. He shared with me that they and their store understand very clearly why the cameras are installed in Coles nowadays.

Overwhelmingly, they're not to look somebody nicking something or to generally keep an eye on people that might be buying things in the store. All the workers know the primary purpose, now, is to actually surveil the workers. There are really clear KPIs in place around how fast you've got to check things through the till, for instance—10 in a minute.

If you do less than that, if the camera catches you even taking a breath, then you're pulled up. It builds this sense of anxiety of being watched constantly that is often the reason why people just cannot continue to take the work at these places anymore even though they really need the money. Many push through.

I think some in here think that, if you're under the age of 18 and working less than 30 hours a week, you must be doing an hour here and an hour there, just for a bit of pocket money. That's not the lived reality of so many young workers. They are doing hard work, wearing the same uniform—often doing even the same tasks or harder tasks than those over the age of 18—because the boss thinks they can get away with giving the hard stuff to the younger worker.

Yet they're not paid the same superannuation. I will comment and point out that still, in Australia, they're not paid the same wage either. We still have different wages in this country based on your age.

The Greens want to see them eliminated. There's some work happening now to bring the minimum wage to those working in some industries from the age of 18, but we've got to wipe out age based discrimination in pay. It's just not acceptable.

The government has a role to play here. The politics comes in because it is the Labor government who have decided to allow the loophole in the law to remain. The loophole must be closed.

Young workers deserve the same fair pay and the same fair super.