The Federal Opposition has accused Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of policy on the run with respect to superannuation in the wake of yesterday's third leader's debate in which he traversed the issue of changing the superannuation preservation age.
The Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Senator Mathias Cormann, claimed that despite the Government having gone to the election promising no major changes to superannuation policy, the Prime Minister had been guilty of using the leaders' debate to canvass changes to a key element of the policy settings.
"He [the Prime Minister] was suggesting that he might let older people access their super earlier when all of the experts were pushing for the opposite," Cormann said.
The debate transcript indicated that the Prime Minister had referred to reviewing the systems around accessing superannuation and that it might be time to look at how older people gained access to their superannuation money.
Cormann claimed Rudd's willingness to traverse such policy changes during a leadership debate served to emphasise that only the Coalition had promised not to make any unexpected changes to superannuation.
