Did super policy undermine Govt’s election performance?

Elements of the Self Managed Superannuation Funds (SMSF) sector are convinced the Government paid a price at the polls for its Budget tinkering with superannuation.

Reflecting a widely-held view about the Budget changes, Express Super and SuperGuardian chief executive, Olivia Long suggested that tinkering with superannuation may have proved fundamental to undermining the Government's performance in Saturday's Federal Election.

But she also warned that both sides of the political spectrum could not afford to ignore the poll result, with a number of the Australian Labor Party's policy proposals also problematic.

"The reality is both the major parties were culpable as Labor included these savings in its fiscal estimates," she said.

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"What the electorate has rightly discerned is that superannuation is increasingly being seen by all the political parties as a cash cow that can be milked for fiscal reasons."

"However, what we have seen in the election is that many of the people have said ‘enough is enough', and that there will be an electoral cost if you continue to change the policy settings by which people plan their retirement income strategies," Long said.

She said that SMSF trustees were already being confronted by difficult times in dealing with volatile investment markets, and these problems were being compounded by having to continually second-guess what the Government would do with superannuation policy.