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(August-2001) Brownie points don’t equal super votes
ASFA, armed with research findings and a TV ad campaign, has been doing its best to turn up the heat on both political parties in the hope of placing super firmly on the election agenda. Its research shows voters in the electorate of Moreton in Brisbane (currently held by the Liberal Party with a margin of 0.6 per cent) found that adequacy of retirement incomes is a key issue for nine out of 10 people, coming well ahead of economic topics such as the GST, tax cuts and the Budget.
Let’s hope that it isn’t just the people of Moreton, but a wider part of Australia, that are not hooked on instant gratification and do not see retirement as a long way off.
Politicians, of course, are a different breed, generally focused on holding on to their seats in the short-term, which means that the concept of taking pain now for long-term gain rings few bells for them.
ASFA CEO Philippa Smith believes that her organisation’s research identifies a clear gap for a political party willing to take the lead on the issue of retirement savings.
When questioned on which party was better at helping people save for retirement, more than 40 per cent of the Moreton-based respondents could not nominate any party.
I get the feeling, somehow, that the Government considered superannuation some time ago as an election issue and promptly buried it. It doesn’t want to highlight its track record in this area. That’s why we never heard anything more from the Government, after it hinted last year that it would review and simplify super.
Labor has grabbed the mantle and we now talk about Labor’s proposed review of super. This will earn Labor brownie points from people in the super industry, but will it lasso in broader voters?
I wonder if promising a review is a nice way of taking credit for doing something, while at the same time taking the issue out of the present and putting it out of sight until (after the election) it is safe to open up the can.
The least we can ask for is mature debate to take matters forward, and not a repeat of the handling of Shadow Treasurer Simon Crean’s recent remarks about raising SG contributions. Crean told a newspaper that he believed that the SG should be taken above nine per cent to meet adequacy on superannuation. He did not, however, discuss who would fund the rise, adding only that “the level, timing and mechanism are for our review of superannuation to determine”.
The Prime Minister immediately issued a press statement entitled “Labor slug for small business”, which claimed: “Up to 200,000 jobs would be at risk under Labor’s plan to lift the superannuation guarantee charge from nine per cent to 15 per cent”.
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