Clearing house costing $177 per transaction

The Federal Opposition has claimed the Government’s Medibank-based superannuation clearing house for small businesses is costing $177 for every transaction.

In a statement justifying the Coalition’s own plans for establishing a different clearing house arrangement, the Opposition spokesmen on Financial Services and Small Business, Senator Mathias Cormann (pictured) and Bruce Bilson claimed that almost all of Australia’s 2.1 million businesses had ignored the Medicare clearing house, with only 4,500 registrations to use its facilities.

They claimed that at a cost of $16 million a year for 90,000 transactions, this equated to a cost of $177 per transaction.

Cormann and Bilson said that the low take-up by small business suggested owners were voting with their feet.

“Rather than assisting small business, Labor’s policy has added another layer of red tape as businesses already have to report to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and then need to go to Medicare to report their superannuation commitments,” they said.

The two Opposition front-benchers said the Coalition plan to streamline superannuation clearing house arrangements for small business through the ATO would cut red tape and increase compliance with employer superannuation contributions.

However, the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, Bill Shorten released his own research claiming 99 per cent of the small businesses using the Medicare clearing house were satisfied with its service.

"Ninety-six per cent of customers have said the clearing house reduces the time it takes to make their superannuation payments,” he said. “Of these, three quarters say it’s saved them up to three hours per quarter, 15 per cent say up to seven hours and nine per cent say they’ve saved up to eight hours per quarter.”