QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Dr MULINO (Fraser—Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services) (14:53): I thank the member for Leichhardt for this question. I know that the member for Leichhardt, like all members on this side of the House, is proud to be a member of a party and a government that backs the superannuation system and Australian workers in retirement. The government is doing what all good Labor governments do—building on our legacy to improve the superannuation system.
We've done this by legislating payday super so that workers receive their super on the same day they receive their wages, and I back the Treasurer's leadership on this really important matter. Strengthening the low income superannuation tax offset, benefiting around 1.3 million Australians and strengthening consumer protections so that Australians can have confidence that their retirement savings are being managed well.
We know that many people are doing it tough. That's why we're helping Australians with the cost of living, and that's the central focus of this government. There is always more to do, but, so far, we have delivered tax cuts for every taxpayer—five different tax cuts in three different ways—tilting the housing market in favour of first home buyers and delivering cheaper medicines, with PBS medicines costing $25 or less.
We've done this despite opposition from the parties of the status quo at every step of the way. I'm asked if there are any risks to our nation's retirement savings. The Liberals, Nationals and One Nation are having a race to the bottom in relation to superannuation.
Their policies to raid people's super balances are going to leave Australians worse off in retirement. This is just the latest example of the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation playing policy musical chairs—pinching each other's ideas, recycling each other's talking points and, increasingly, merging into one indistinguishable policy entity. We saw it reported this morning that One Nation's latest brainwave on superannuation is, in fact, little more than a reheated coalition policy that even the coalition had abandoned.
I think a lot of Australians would have been wondering how One Nation managed to come up with a superannuation policy quite so ill conceived, damaging and detached from reality. Well, mystery solved—it came from the Liberal Party. At this point, the game of policy musical chairs between the coalition and One Nation is getting hard to follow.
One week, the coalition is scrambling to sit in One Nation's seat; the next, One Nation is racing to claim a policy chair the coalition abandoned years ago. With all this idea swapping, what are we going to see next? One Nation soon announcing that they're going to bring back knighthoods?
It would be funny, if the impacts were not so serious. The best way to help people who are struggling is not to have them run down their super savings. SMC modelling has shown that a worker on the median wage is going to be $25,000 poorer as a result of the One Nation policy.
It takes a lot of skill to put forward a policy that makes people $25,000 poorer and argue that they're better off. Labor is the party of superannuation, and this government will always put the interests of Australian workers first.