CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS

Mr HOLZBERGER (Forde) (16:14): Paul Keating was both the architect of compulsory superannuation but also the first person from whom I'd ever heard the line, 'Good policy is good politics.' The corollary of that is that bad policy is bad politics. That's why I can't believe that we're going to be able to go to the next election with the future of compulsory superannuation on the table and at stake, because there is no better policy than compulsory superannuation.

There's one thing which I haven't quite had the time, in the 2½ minutes I've got left, or in any of the speeches that I've given so far, to really talk about—one of the reasons that just really motivated me to get involved in politics in my thirties. In my young years, I was a young member of the Labor Party, and I thought that we could achieve change through government law, through collective action.

Then, in my late twenties, I was working on sheep and cattle stations, and I guess I learned a different type of value—that sort of personal responsibility and taking care of yourself. So it was that I was working in a servo in Tenterfield and my then partner gave me a book on self-improvement. It was From Zero to $5 million in Five Years.

I thought, 'What a heap of rubbish,' but by the time I'd finished it, I was hooked—not on the idea of money but on the idea that taking responsibility for yourself, taking responsibility for your finances, would give you that financial freedom to be able to follow your passion and follow your dreams. So I get this right-wing argument about how it should be all personal responsibility.

I do get it. I do get where they're coming from, but the reality is that it just doesn't happen. There is a concept in that: pay yourself first.

Pay yourself 10 per cent before you pay your taxes or any of your bills. Pay yourself first. But the reality is that that just does not happen.

That's why compulsory superannuation is exactly that across the whole community. It is 12 per cent put away before tax and before bills, so that, at the end of the day, people can have an early retirement. They can retire at 60 in dignity.

They can retire at 60 young rather than having to work through to the age of 67. The other thing that I don't get about this right-wing argument that has just gotten too extreme is that it actually takes pressure off the government. It is about people taking responsibility, looking after themselves, being able to retire without getting onto the pension.

Without compulsory superannuation, there would be something like 60 per cent on the pension compared to 50 per cent on the pension. This next election is going to be very much about compulsory superannuation. It is a debate that I am looking forward to having because it does return me to that idea that it is about an early retirement, about people being able to take that time in the rest of their life to follow their passions and the things that they've been put on Earth to work for, not to be caught in debt and caught in a cycle of hard work.