From the AFR:
Assistant treasurer Josh Frydenberg has dampened expectations of a major shift in superannuation policy under the Turnbull government.
“On superannuation tax concessions, we took a policy to the last election and obviously the opposition has put forward some increases in the taxing of super,” he said on Wednesday.
“We rejected that in the Abbott government and I assume that will continue under a Turnbull government. It really was a commitment that we believed we should stay true to.”
If you’re going to stay true to idiotic captain’s calls then why did you dump him? As noted this morning, Malcolm Turnbull is against the grey gouge.
Super reform is low hanging fruit. Dr Martin Parkinson recently joined by a veritable conga line of experts calling for it including the Business Council of Australia, Councils on the Ageing Australia, and the Australian Council of Trade Unions. The chief executive of Industry Super Australia, David Whiteley, admitted that superannuation concessions are unfair, with some 3.5 million low-income workers paying the same amount of tax on their super as they were paying on their wages. By contrast, the top 1% of income earners are receiving large incentives to save via super.
Blind Freddy can see that the superannuation system is unfair and in desperate need of reform. Concessions on contributions/earnings overwhelmingly benefit higher paid workers:
Accordingly, the amount of concessions received overwhelmingly flows to higher income earners:
Meanwhile, superannuation concessions are costing the Budget a fortune in lost revenue, and are projected to grow by a whopping 10.8% per annum between 2014-15 and 2017-18 to some $49 billion.
Turnbull will need to moot reform of super concessions before the election or this will be a very long, painful and bad government.
