nurses and super - Lamp Online

Australian Unions have described the Morrison Government’s superannuation withdrawals scheme as a “reprehensible attack on the retirement savings of working Australians”.

In a statement, Australian Unions Assistant Secretary Scott Connolly savaged the scheme, indicating that the long-term poverty created by the move will be “the greatest legacy of this Government… causing untold hardship for hundreds of thousands of people.”

The Morrison Government’s scheme allowed Australians who were economically affected by COVID-19 to access some of their superannuation, to a maximum of $20,000 between the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 financial years.

“The scheme is having a disastrous impact on the retirement savings. A 25-30 year old who withdraws $20,000 over these two years will be $79,000-$95,000 worse off by retirement”, Mr Connolly said.

“The scheme shows that the Morrison Government has not done enough to support working people, and has instead decided to force people to sacrifice their retirements”, he added.

To date, 2.5 million Australians have raided their super through COVID-19, with almost 500,000 people emptying their accounts.

This has led to over $27 billions dollars being withdrawn from superannuation coffers.

Australian Unions has called on the Prime Minister to reject calls from Liberal Party backbenchers to reverse legislated superannuation increases.

Liberal Party MPs, including NSW’s Dave Sharma, Jason Falinski and Craig Kelly, are currently pushing the Government to scrap legislated increases to superannuation, which have been slated to commence in 2021. These changes would see superannuation guarantees rise from 9.5% to 12% by 2025.

The scrapping of this policy would have major impacts upon the retirement savings of Australian workers, including nurses and midwives.

Australian Unions Assistant Secretary Scott Connolly has condemned the attacks on superannuation, describing the moves as “pandemic political profiteering”.

“If the Liberal Party’s only solution to the problems of the pandemic is to raid people’s super, then they’ve clearly run out of ideas”, Connolly said in a statement.

“These backbenchers need to be put in their place by the Morrison Government, and workers need to be given reassurance that their retirement savings will go up as currently legislated”.

These proposals from the Liberal Party backbench occur in the context of the Berejiklian State Government’s attempts to freeze nurses and midwives’ wages. According to the Centre for Future Work’s Dr Jim Stanford, this wage freeze proposal would further impact upon the retirement savings of health workers.

Nurses and midwives are currently guaranteed superannuation of 9.5%, while Federal Parliamentarians received superannuation of 15.4%. This is on top of their parliamentary pension and other post-parliamentary benefits.

“Untold hardship for hundreds of thousands”: Morrison’s retirement poverty legacy

Nurses and midwives’ super under threat from backbench coup