Mr TIM WILSON (Goldstein) (16:04): I'm not sure everybody in the chamber here today will recall the day JobKeeper was passed through this parliament. I actually do. I was one of the few who was here, in a not dissimilar context to the one we are presented with now. Many of us came up from different parts of the country or across from different parts of the country. If I were to describe the mood, it was tense, not just in this chamber but of course across the nation, because we were staring into the abyss—the unknown. We saw people being locked up in their homes in places like China. We saw people being in lockdown, in a way that we had not experienced at that point, in places like Milan. And what hovered across the nation was a sense of fear about the unknown and where we were to go next. I remember the emergency support packages that were introduced into this chamber. Frankly, many of them raised deep philosophical questions for me, and I make no apology for that. Some people have made a virtue of deferring ideology at the point of crisis and, certainly, there was a need to reassure the Australian people at that challenging and difficult time. I remember the debate in this chamber and the mode that appeared at that time. I remember that the measures came in and the Labor Party of course were contorted about them. I had my own ideological conversations about what was necessary, but I want to make absolutely clear that I supported the legislation as the appropriate and right thing to do because of the moment we were in. But I remember the contortions that the Labor Party had at the time over that legislation and whether they could support it. I'm going to bring people into a history lesson: it had nothing to do with JobKeeper. I remember it very clearly, in fact, because they argue that they put the idea of a wage subsidy up before the government did. Their contortion was over another section of the legislation—one which I will make crystal clear I agreed with. It was the introduction of the early release of superannuation. Actively in crisis, they couldn't decide whether they were prepared to allow Australians and their families, in a moment of crisis, to access their own money. I just heard it there from one of the members opposite. They said that this was basically going to be the end of the superannuation system and retirement savings—because we dared, in a moment of crisis, to allow people to access their own superannuation to do things like pay off their mortgage, put food on the table and support their children and loved ones. They thought it was morally wrong. We all know deep down— An opposition member interjecting— Mr TIM WILSON: Go back and check the speech! I remember when those speeches were given at the time. Such was their obsession with stopping Australians being able to access their own money that some of us went back and read their speeches, and tabulated how many times speeches actively attacked the early release of superannuation. And guess how many members on the Labor Party benches opposed the early access of superannuation in that legislation? I'll give you a guess, Deputy Speaker Wallace: in a choice between zero and 100 per cent I can tell you that it doesn't sit anywhere near the zero per cent. It doesn't sit anywhere near the 50 per cent. It doesn't even get towards the part where most people would say it was a 'consensus position' of over three-quarters. It was 100 per cent, because when it came to the legislation introduced in this place, the choice they made and what they spoke out against—what they wanted to see corrected in that legislation—wasn't the measures related to JobKeeper. It was, 'How do we suffocate Australians from their own finances and their own money?' What they wanted to do was to protect the interests of their mates in the superannuation sector. And now we know why. Under the 'your future' legislation that was introduced and passed through this parliament, which they also opposed, a pathway was provided to make sure that Australians' money wasn't wasted on things like giant donations to the Australian Council of Trade Unions. They know it, I know it and that's their objective. (Time expired)