Former Keating adviser urges lift in SG
Paul Keating
A key adviser to former Prime Minister and Treasurer Paul Keating at the time the Hawke Labor Government introduced the superannuation guarantee charge has argued that it should be lifted beyond its current level of 9 per cent.
BNY Mellon director of institutional business in Australia Don Russell told the Investment and Financial Services Association national conference on the Gold Coast that he believed a lift in the compulsory superannuation guarantee to the 15 per cent originally envisaged by the Hawke/Keating Government was both sensible and sustainable.
His argument came in the face of a claim by a former Federal Labor back-bencher and adviser to the former Finance Minister, Peter Walsh, that if the Government wants to increase the level of saving it should not be in the business of trying to influence the direction of investment.
The head of Government Relations at Challenger Financial Services Group, David Cox, said that if governments wanted to maximise the economic benefits of additional saving it should leave it to the market.
Cox said that if the Government decided to provide more taxpayer funded assistance for superannuation, it should be directed at addressing the very real issue exposed by Federal Treasury’s life expectancy tables, longevity risk.
“That would suggest incentives to commit to pension products with specified features that would address longevity risk,” he said.
“Without it we risk a significant proportion of the 1.6 million frail-aged in 2046-47 being totally dependent on the age pension when their retirement savings run out.”
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