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(December-2004) ALP’s slippery super slide
Former Australian Labor Party (ALP) pollster, Rod Cameron used this year’s Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) national conference in Adelaide to accuse the federal opposition of having “squibbed” on the superannuation issue during the recent federal election campaign.
Cameron, whose company, ANOP Research Services, had been retained by ASFA to gauge community views on superannuation said the ALP’s policy approach meant that it not only “squibbed” on superannuation but that it sought to milk superannuation revenues to pay for its other policies.
Cameron suggested that this represented a serious misreading of the growing importance of superannuation in the minds of Australia’s baby-boomers as they approached retirement.
He said that the ALP had chosen to largely ignore superannuation despite the party being the primary architect of the existing system and despite the Government giving clear signals that the election would be decided by baby boomers and young families with mortgages.
“But the Labor Party squibbed the issue and decided in its wisdom not to contest the issue,” Cameron said. “More than this, the Labor Party, the creative architect of compulsory superannuation, the party that so bravely laid the foundations for this industry decided to raid the super bank to pay for its other policies.”
“The net effect of Labor’s super policy was to take eight times more out of the super bank than it was putting in,” he said.
Cameron suggested that it was this approach by Labor which undermined its capacity to question the Prime Minister, John Howard’s big-spending approach to the election.
“Labor preferred to give a higher priority to the Tasmanian forests and to the café latte drinkers of Carlton and Balmain than the vast majority of voters — potentially much more interested in super than old growth forests,” he said.
“The result of Labor’s misjudgement is all too apparent,” Cameron said.
However, he said that while the ALP was not getting the message, ANOP’s research suggested that ‘the punters’ are realising they have not saved enough for their retirement and are expecting a political response.
AUTHOR
Mike Taylor
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