Mr FRYDENBERG (Kooyong—Assistant Treasurer) (15:23): We have clearly struck a chord: the Leader of the Opposition, who calls superannuation a legalised tax haven, insulting millions of Australians with 14 million superannuation accounts, $2 trillion of funds under management which grew from $300 billion in just 1997 and which will go to $9 trillion by 2040. The Leader of the Opposition is extremely sensitive today to the fact that we have read back to him the words of a doorstop he held less than two weeks ago. He was so impressed with his own words, and I am going to read them again. On 3 June the Leader of the Opposition held a doorstop. When asked by a journalist, 'What is Labor's policy on superannuation?', he said: 'If you've got $2 million in superannuation and you're in retirement and you're earning an income of $100,000, we are proposing you pay a reduction in the tax concession.' Well, that is not Labor's policy, because I have their press release here from 22 April this year, where he actually said that Labor's policy is to put a tax on earnings above $75,000, not $100,000, and on balances above $1.5 million, not $2 million. The Leader of the Opposition has no standing in this place on superannuation, because he does not even know his own policy. He was thinking back to 2013, when he put out a press release with his best friend back then, the member for Lilley, saying that the tax on super that Labor proposed was on earnings above $100,000. Now we know that it was above $75,000. In its press release on 22 April this year, Labor had the audacity to say that it is only going to affect some 170,000 Australians. David Leyonhjelm had the Parliamentary Budget Office do the same sort of modelling for the same proposal, because the Labor Party would not release the modelling. Mr Nikolic: What did they find? Mr FRYDENBERG: I am asked by the member for Bass a very telling question: what did they find? What did the Parliamentary Budget Office find? It found that Labor's proposals for two increases in taxes, on contributions and on earnings, would affect 425,000-plus people. Now, Labor has refused to index the threshold, which means that more and more people will go into those thresholds and more and more people will pay additional tax. The question is, why has Labor done this? Do they not like superannuation? Paul Keating did put the idea first on superannuation, and we supported him. But why has Labor done it? It is clear that Labor has done it in a desperate grab for cash to fill its budget black hole. Superannuation is the budget pinata: strap on the blindfold, grab a big stick and take a whack at people's hard-earned savings in super. It is the budget pinata, because you know that Labor's budget black hole is some $58.6 billion of measures that they are not supporting, including measures that the member for McMahon, sitting opposite, took to the last election as Labor's Treasurer and is now refusing to support in this parliament. Shame on Labor. So, $58.6 billion is this budget black hole, which only grew when the Leader of the Opposition got up here on budget night and spent $220 million a minute. They have no way of balancing the books. In fact, the member for McMahon knows how to balance the books. While they were in government he put out a note to his electorate about the surplus they were to deliver. He was very proud of the budget surplus that would never eventuate. That is Labor's shortcut to surplus. We have to do the hard yards. We have to do the long, hard yards to get to surplus, and we are doing that by prudent economic management. But what we will not do when it comes to superannuation is what Labor did: promise no changes and then introduce a whole lot of changes. We went to the last election saying we would make no adverse, unexpected changes to super in this term, and we will keep that commitment. Kevin Rudd went to the 2007 election and said he would not change superannuation one jot, one tittle. And what happened? There were 12 adverse changes, including to contributions, including to earnings, including to the self-managed super fund levy, going up under Labor, when we came up with self-managed super funds in 1999, under John Howard. And now one million Australians, like many of my colleagues know—members of their own electorate—put their hard-earned savings in their self-managed super funds. They are the people who were hit by Labor's additional taxes on superannuation. Those opposite were addicted to tax—wrongly, for the Australian people. To digress, as Margaret Thatcher said, the problem with socialism—and you could say the problem with Labor—is that eventually you run out of other people's money. And that is the problem. They ran out of other people's money, and now they want to raid superannuation, even though the member for McMahon rushed out a press release in 2013 and said in the headline, 'We will make no changes for five years to superannuation'. That lasted all of 48 hours. Now we are in 2015 and the member for McMahon is supporting the member for Fraser, who is supporting the member for Watson, who is supporting the member for Maribyrnong—all increasing two taxes on super which, we know from the Parliamentary Budget Office, will hit at least 425,000 Australians. That is a shameful record. But another problem that Labor has is pensions, with a sustainable retirement income, and the member for Jagajaga knows this all too well. As the member for Cook said in this place today, 'Superannuation is the hard-earned retirement savings of Australians and a pension is a welfare payment from one taxpayer to a pensioner.' And the more people save for super, the less they rely on the taxpayer for the pension. The Prime Minister said today that we want to take people with $1 million-plus off the pension so that we can have a sustainable pension over the long term. The member for Jagajaga may not be aware that pension is the largest single budget item. Ms Macklin interjecting— The SPEAKER: The member for Jagajaga will get an opportunity. Mr FRYDENBERG: If the member for Jagajaga would stop interrupting, she may like to know that the pension is the largest single budget item—some 10 per cent—more than $40 billion and growing at six per cent per annum. We in this place have said that we will ensure the pension is sustainable over time, reducing the burden on the taxpayer. How are we doing that? We are changing the taper rate and the assets-free threshold and are ensuring that some people who are currently getting a part pension will no longer get a part pension. But some people who are needy, some 50,000, who are getting the part pension will now get the full pension and 170,000 Australians who are on the pension will get an extra $30 a fortnight. Why is the Labor Party and the member for Jagajaga against low-income and low-asset-holding Australians getting an extra $30 a fortnight under us? We have seen Labor's hopeless record on the pension and on superannuation—let me just add a third. That is the unclaimed moneys regime whereby Labor changed the years, from seven years to three years. Another desperate cash grab. And do not think that this does not hurt older, senior Australians. Because I will tell you a story, which was in The Daily Telegraph, of 82-year-old Maura Stanford, who went to her local bank to take out money from a 'rainy day' fund to pay a tradesman. When she went to get the money, it was not there. What had happened? Was it targeted by a scammer? No. It was targeted by the now Leader of the Opposition and the Labor Party. The problem with the Labor Party is that they do not value, they do not understand and they do not trust Australians to save for their own retirement, to reduce pressure on the pension. The final thing I want to mention is the reason why we are committed to superannuation, a sustainable pension and to saving people's money that is unclaimed is that we have an ageing population. We will have 40,000 centenarians in Australia over the next 40 years, compared to just 122 in 1974. The number of people over the age of 65 in Australia by 2055 will have doubled and the ratio of working Australians to retired Australians will go from 4.5 to 2.7. The coalition are better prepared to look after the senior citizens of Australia.