Unions
“Untold hardship for hundreds of thousands”: Morrison’s retirement poverty legacy
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This has led to over $27 billions dollars being withdrawn from superannuation coffers.