Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Fair Super for Young Workers) Bill 2026
Senator HUME (Victoria—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (09:47): I rise to speak on the Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Fair Super for Young Workers) Bill 2026. Can I start at the outset by saying thank you very much to the Greens political party for introducing this bill. I do think it is an important issue that's worth discussing, and the coalition would like to, at first, put on the record that Australians should always be paid the wages and entitlements that they are owed.
That includes young people. Young people should have every opportunity to be paid their entitlements, and they should also have the opportunity to get their foot in the door of the workplace in the first place. My concern with this bill is that the intention is very good, but, if you legislate an entitlement, you might also inadvertently at the same time take away an opportunity.
I do think this is worth fleshing out, though, and I would hope that the Greens political party will take this bill to a committee so that it can be fleshed out in more detail. The coalition believes that our superannuation system needs to be flexible, it needs to be fair, it needs to be transparent and, it needs to be worked out in the best interests of all Australians.
When I was minister for superannuation, one of the most important reforms that we delivered was abolishing the $450 monthly threshold. We did that with the support of the Greens, for which I was very grateful. That excluded many low-paid workers from compulsory superannuation.
I want to point out what that $450 threshold was because I think it's such an arbitrary number. People don't really understand it. If you were paid less than $450 a month, your employer didn't have to pay you superannuation.
It had been part of the superannuation system since the year dot—since, as Labor like to say, when they invented superannuation. They put that in as a deliberate design feature of the superannuation system. They said, 'If you are a low-paid earner, you don't have to be paid superannuation.' They did that because they understood that small businesses in particular that had people on a casual employment basis—maybe had somebody one day a week—were going to find the complexity of paying superannuation for those low-paid workers so onerous that they wouldn't employ them in the first place.
That's why it was there. Unfortunately, it sat there as part of the superannuation system for years and years, overlooked by Labor when they were in government. It took a coalition government to overturn that rule, to make sure that low-paid workers were paid the appropriate level of superannuation.
That wasn't a small deal, and we fleshed that one out at committee. The reason why we fleshed it out at committee was that small businesses were rightly concerned—still concerned—that even that small change was going to push them to the brink. It didn't, and I'm very pleased and very proud of that reform.
It's something that I hang my hat on. That experience taught me that when we change the rules around superannuation we need to be mindful of what the consequences might be. This is not a dissimilar reform and why we need to carefully consider the bill.
On the face of it, I agree the proposition sounds perfectly fair and reasonable. Under the Australian law at the moment, if someone is under the age of 18 and works more than 30 hours, they do receive superannuation. But, if they work fewer than 30 hours, they don't.
The employer can decide whether to pay it or not. There are some very real questions about what that means in practice. Most young people under the age of 18 are paid an award.
When you require an employer to pay superannuation on top of an award, that's an additional cost to the business. For large businesses, perhaps that might be manageable, and I know that Senator Steele-John mentioned some of those large businesses. But, for a small business, that can be quite an imposition.
When you employ a 16-year-old or a 17-year-old in their first job, you're taking a risk. You might not be necessarily getting your value for money for those wages for many years, but you are investing in their future. So there are swings and roundabouts.
We don't want to make it harder for businesses to employ young people and to give them their first chance, their first foot in the door. We want more young people to actually have a job. Youth unemployment is now double the national unemployment rate.
It's now 10.7 per cent. When Labor came to office, youth unemployment was 8.8 per cent, so it is growing at a much more rapid rate. There are now 73,000 more young people unemployed than when the coalition left office in 2022.
I think that that's something that should concern all of us. For many young Australians, their first casual job isn't about the pay packet. Of course, it makes you proud when you receive that first pay packet, and I think we can all remember it, but it is also about getting experience.
It's about taking on responsibility. It's about learning to turn up on time, work in a team, deal with customers and take responsibility. It's about getting that first reference on your resume, and, importantly, it's about that first step in your career.
So, when we legislate in this area, I think it's really important that we think about the incentives and disincentives that we create for employers to take on that young person. We don't want a situation where a small-business owner or a small-business manager says, 'I'd love to give this person a few shifts, but I simply can't afford that additional cost.' I think that would be a tragedy.
We need to make sure that young people who want to work can actually get that job. Let me be very clear. The coalition will always support young Australians getting the wages and the conditions that they are entitled to.
That is a priority. Make no mistake. I might add that Labor talk an awful lot about super.
They talk about the fact that they own super. But what they don't talk about is the fact that superannuation belongs to the individual. It doesn't belong to them.
The coalition has a very strong track record on making superannuation fairer and making sure it works for the individual—not working for government, not working for unions, not working for fund managers but working for you, the person that is putting their money away, whose deferred wages it is. When in government, we made super more flexible. We allowed Australians to catch up on the superannuation contributions that they might not have used, giving people greater control over their retirement savings.
That catch-up contribution was a really important reform, particularly for women, who may have missed out on the opportunity to contribute to super when they've taken time away from the workforce. But, once they get back in, they have an opportunity to give in more, taxed effectively, helping their retirement savings and their balance at the end of their careers—a very important reform.
That is a coalition legacy. We also made it fairer. We protected low-balance accounts from unnecessary fees and ensured that young Australians in particular weren't automatically paying for insurance that they didn't need.
Making sure that low-balance accounts were fee free was a really important reform, particularly for young people, because you need that critical mass in your superannuation, without it being eaten up by fees, to get the effects of compounding. It was only a coalition government that made that happen. In fact, before we came to government, young people were seeing their superannuation eaten up entirely, to the point where they couldn't even get past a zero balance.
You'd have a job when you were a young person, maybe stacking shelves in a supermarket, then you'd finish school and go overseas, and, by the time you'd come back to start your career again or go into another job, there would be nothing left in your superannuation, even though you'd been putting money away. That was disgraceful, but that was a deliberate design feature of the system that's gone now, thanks to the coalition.
We also made sure that young people weren't having their balances eaten up by insurance premiums on assurances that they didn't need, that they never claimed on and that were cross-subsidising the claims of older Australians. We made sure that insurance on superannuation was opt in rather than opt out for people under 25, which was a really important reform for young people.
We also gave Australians choice. You should never be told what superannuation fund you have to be in by your employer, but, again, that was the system that was invented by Labor. It was the legacy that we inherited, but we changed it.
From now on, no longer can your employer or your union tell you what superannuation fund you have to invest in. That's outrageous. If you're going to mandatorily put away and defer 12 per cent of everything you earn, how dare somebody else tell you where you must invest, but that was Labor's legacy in superannuation.
The coalition abandoned that. We also made sure that you couldn't have multiple accounts. This was the ultimate dirty little secret of superannuation funds.
Many of them, some of the bigger funds, actually had multiple accounts within their own fund for the same member—two sets of fees and two sets of insurances. No wonder people's retirement savings weren't growing at a pace fast enough. We in the coalition got rid of that as well.
We made sure that you only had one account. We made super much fairer through 'protecting your superannuation' reforms. Low-balance accounts—we made sure you couldn't be charged fees for switching funds.
Again, that was another dirty little secret of the superannuation industry. When you changed from one fund to another, they clipped the ticket on the way through. No, that's entirely unfair.
If you're a young Australian, you have a small superannuation balance. Every dollar matters, and the coalition has the track record to demonstrate that we have been the only party that has protected your rights in superannuation—lower fees, no switching fees and making sure that you're not paying for insurances that you don't need. That's the legacy of the coalition in superannuation.
Most importantly, we also gave Australians better control over their financial future. We allowed a maximum number of members in self-managed super funds to increase from four to six. That means that self-managed super funds—people who want to control their own superannuation—have the opportunity to look after their entire family in a superannuation fund.
Again, it's all about fairness and it's all about choice. It's also all about efficiency, though, because it's your money and it's your retirement. We also took action to make sure that Australians received the superannuation that was owed.
The penalties on superannuation that wasn't paid were so high we found that many employers were holding back and not paying, even when they inadvertently realised that they had messed something up. The employment system is complicated. Superannuation is complicated.
They go, 'Whoops, I might have underpaid an employee.' They held back because they were so frightened of the penalties. We gave them a one-year amnesty which put thousands of dollars into people's superannuation accounts. If people intentionally withhold superannuation, throw the book at them, I agree, but, if it's inadvertent because our employment system is so complicated and if the penalties are too high, you will simply encourage bad behaviour, and that means less money at the end of the day in people's superannuation funds.
We also stopped duplicate accounts. I told you that dirty little secret of superannuation funds, but there was another thing that, I think, was really important, and that is stapling—having your fund move with you from employer to employer, rather than opening up a whole new fund every time you started a new job. Again, a dirty little secret of the superannuation industry that is no longer.
Now you are stapled—it's very bad word, isn't it—to one fund, or one fund is stapled to you. When you change jobs, your new employer has an obligation to look and see what superannuation fund you already have rather than open up a new fund on your behalf, which is so much more efficient. I'll tell you the reform that I'm most proud of.
Actually, there are two. It was a performance test—making sure that those underperforming superannuation funds had to tell their members that they'd underperformed, and, if they'd underperformed two years in a row, then they weren't allowed to accept new members. We were holding those superannuation funds to account.
The ones that were hiding under the radar, surviving on the fact that compulsory super means that they get more money in the door every single month. It's disgraceful. Most of those superannuation funds have now merged with others or have exited the system.
Thank goodness because Australians are richer for it. That was a very good reform. Labor want to weaken the performance test.
Do not allow that to happen. We cannot go back to the dark days of superannuation where people sat in a fund that was underperforming. Most importantly, we have said that superannuation funds must act in the best financial interest of members—no more donations to political parties, no more advertising at football games that can't be justified as in the best financial interest of members.
Every decision a superannuation fund makes must be in the best financial interest of members. This is the legacy of a coalition government and its approach to superannuation. We want it to be fair, we want it to be flexible, but, most importantly, we want it to work for the member—not for the Labor Party, not for the unions and not for the fund managers but for the member.
Labor want to talk about superannuation this week. I can understand that; they've had a terrible fortnight. It's a terrible fortnight for you guys.
I can understand that, when you don't like what they're saying about you, you want to change the conversation, but I'm happy to take on this conversation because the coalition has a proud legacy in superannuation. We put the members first. We put the retirees first.
We put young people first. We put their interests first. Superannuation is not a national asset, as the Prime Minister said.
It doesn't belong to him, it doesn't belong to the Treasurer, and it doesn't belong to the unions. It's not there for the Labor Party to use for whatever national priority it has on its agenda today. They're your retirement savings, and they should always be your retirement savings.
Let me give you this guarantee: under a coalition government, we can guarantee that your superannuation will always work for you; it won't work for Labor. That's the coalition's superannuation guarantee.