Federal Revenue and Financial Services Minister Kelly O’Dwyer has branded the super policy of opposition leader Bill Shorten backwards and an attack on aspirational Australians trying to save for their retirement.
“Bill Shorten [has] announced a very retrograde superannuation package,” O’Dwyer said during a joint doorstop with Treasurer Scott Morrison.
“His scrapping of the changes for catch-up contributions will affect hundreds of thousands of Australians, those people who might have taken time out of the workforce to have a child, who might be caring for an elderly parent, who might simply have needed some time out of the workforce to start up a business and therefore is not drawing any income.”
Under the government’s policy, they would be able to catch up on their concessional contributions (CC), she said.
“In fact, from 1 July next year, on a rolling five-year basis, they will be able to catch up on as much as $125,000 of catch-up contributions,” she noted.
“So why is Bill Shorten attacking those people?
“Why is he attacking those people who simply want to get ahead, who are mums, who are dads, who are taking time out of the workforce to care for their children or who are carers for elderly parents. Why is he attacking them?”
Labor’s measures do not support the carry-forward of unused CC caps, the removal of the work test for people aged 65 to 74 and the removal of the 10 per cent rule for personal deductible super contributions.
Labor said it believed its compromise super policy would lead to a net improvement of $238 million to the budget over the forward estimates and $4.4 billion in the next decade.
