Senator BRAGG (New South Wales) (19:20): I rise tonight to speak about a very important national matter: the inability of the opposition to seriously and credibly engage in the economic policy debate in this country, especially in respect of superannuation. I want to give you a few examples, Acting Deputy President. Firstly, during the last election campaign, one of Labor's signature policies was the retiree tax, which was conceived by their friends at Industry Super Australia. It was announced in March 2018, and it was such a ham-fisted policy design that it had to be redesigned and sent out again for circulation just two weeks later. This was a policy that was going to hit almost a million self-funded retirees and a number of retirees who were taking a pension and no other form of income. Even in the first iteration of this policy Industry Super Australia said: Super funds where most Australians have their retirement savings will be largely unaffected by this proposal because the imputation credits are exhausted offsetting tax liabilities of the fund. Translation: Labor have a policy which we've designed called the retiree tax, which won't affect us but will hit a lot of other people who were in self-managed super funds and the like. This sort of infection of Labor's policy development process meant that they took to the election this policy which was unfair and retrospective. It would have pulled the rug out from under almost a million Australians. It demonstrated the strength of the internal advocacy and lobbying of a particular interest group to carve out this policy. Secondly, we spent a chunk of today talking about insurance reforms. It really is pathetic to hear Labor run all the insurance company lines—absolutely pathetic. The Productivity Commission has said that almost $2 billion each and every year is being drained from people's retirement savings for unnecessary insurance. The Grattan Institute, CHOICE—all the honest brokers, effectively—have said that this reform of our government being led by the Assistant Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and Financial Technology, Senator Hume, is a good thing. Labor say it's bad and it's no good; they're just running lines from the insurance companies. They're crying tears for the insurance companies—I really do feel for them! We heard the SDA lines just before from the REST fund, which has spent a lot of resources trying to oppose these changes. We're in the business of backing workers, not vested interests. We put forward policies which will advance our nation's interests and advance the interests of workers, not any particular interest group. That takes me to the third example, again in the superannuation space, of a principal recommendation of the Hayne royal commission, which was that workers should only have one default fund across their lifetime. We have accepted this recommendation, but the Labor Party, again, have struggled to support this. They said before the election that Industry Super Australia—again—who put forward an alternative way this could be done, would support that. Across the board you see a Labor Party totally bereft of any internal policy development capability, whether it's disastrous policies like the retiree tax, where the former shadow Treasurer encouraged people not to vote for the Labor Party, or more contemporaneous issues, as we've been debating today in the Senate, on improving the superannuation scheme for workers. Labor will only run the lines and the arguments which are given to them on a platter by the unions and parts of the financial services sector. I really do worry about the future of policy contests here in the Australian parliament if Labor can only run the lines of vested interests.