Following hot on the heels of the Australian Council of Social Service’s president, Cassandra Goldie’s, demand today that the Turnbull Government implement its superannuation package in full:
“That lifetime and annual cap are very modest measures to make superannuation fairer, to ensure that people who have high net worth are not using the superannuation system for essentially tax minimisation arrangements”…
“We strongly oppose any weakening of these. They’re modest, not extreme. And they are going to affect a every small percentage of the people who fall into the most wealthy groups in the country and are receiving overwhelmingly too generous tax concessions.
“What has the government learned from the election outcome? To listen better. Well, who’s it listening to?”
The CEO for the lobby group for older Australians – Councils on the Ageing’s (COTA) Ian Yates – has penned a thoughtful piece arguing that the Coalition’s integrity is at stake if it does not implement its super package in full. From The Guardian:
That the prime minister and treasurer are under pressure to reverse sound policy to make super fairer based on a weak narrative about selected poor election results would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious…
The fact is, only those at the very top end will lose out, the vast majority in the middle won’t be impacted, and those at the lower end will be better off.
The Coalition party room now has an obligation to the majority of the electorate that voted it into office and supported a superannuation policy that puts an end to wasteful, unfair tax expenditure.
Any exemptions for wealthy estates and the people at the very top end will be a signal to the community that the Coalition has no interest in making super policy fairer and that they govern only for the top few per cent.
The Coalition party room needs to stand strong on this in the interests of good social and economic policy, electoral integrity and budget reform…
The notion that super tax breaks are some kind of reward for Liberal party supporters’ votes, donations and turning up to polling booths is macabre and disturbing.
Hear, hear. Getting superannuation reform through the Coalition party room is shaping up as the biggest test of Malcolm Turnbull’s Prime Ministership. If he kowtows to the loony right within his own party and abandons sensible reform, then Turnbull will prove once and for all that he has no authority and is unfit to lead the nation.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man.
