Tinkering with superannuation may have proved fundamental to undermining the Government’s performance in Saturday’s Federal Election, according to Express Super and SuperGuardian chief executive, Olivia Long.
Long said she believed a clear message had been sent to all political parties that they would continue tinkering with superannuation at their peril.
What is more, Long believes that the danger crosses party lines and that although the Coalition Government felt a voter backlash, it could just as easily have been felt by the Australian Labor Party.
“The reality is both the major parties were culpable as Labor included these savings in its fiscal estimates,” she said.
“What the electorate has rightly discerned is that superannuation is increasingly being seen by all the political parties as a cash cow that can be milked for fiscal reasons.”
“However, what we have seen in the election is that many of the people have said ‘enough is enough’, and that there will be an electoral cost if you continue to change the policy settings by which people plan their retirement income strategies,” Long said.
She said that SMSF trustees were already being confronted by difficult times in dealing with volatile investment markets, and these problems were being compounded by having to continually second-guess what the Government would do with superannuation policy.
