SG rise tied to MRRT: Shorten

The Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, Bill Shorten (pictured), has made clear that delivering an increase in the superannuation guarantee to 12 per cent is inexorably tied to the delivery of a Mineral Resource Rent Tax (MRRT).

Addressing the Conference of Major Superannuation Funds (CMSF) on the Gold Coast, Shorten asked superannuation fund trustees to drive home the message that passage of the MRRT legislation was directly linked to ensuring Australians did not grow old in poverty.

He described the MRRT as “a really good tax” based on the special prosperity of the mining boom.

“They [the mining companies] can afford it, but Australians can’t afford to grow old poor,” Shorten said.

In doing so, Shorten and the Government appear to have stepped away from the promise of the Hawke and Keating Governments that the superannuation guarantee always needed to be viewed as a non-wage benefit rather than as a tax.

Shorten, referring to the policies of the “Gillard/Swan Government” said he did not believe that a decent retirement issue should be a partisan political issue.

“It is not a partisan issue, it is an Australian issue,” he said.

The minister exhorted CMSF delegates to direct some of their time and attention to prosecuting the benefits of the MRRT as a means of underwriting the increase in the superannuation guarantee to 12 per cent.

He said that to do so would be to ensure that they would not regret in the future that they had not done enough.