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.