Pauline Hanson’s super plan may be high on populism and low on economic support but it has once again left the Liberals scrambling to respond, writes political columnist MICHELLE GRATTAN

Pauline Hanson’s attention-grabbing policy to give mortgage holders and renters greater access to their super is high populism while being – according to its many critics – low economics and bad for people’s retirement.

That said, one “teal” independent, Kate Chaney, says it’s worth examining. And Liberal maverick frontbencher Andrew Bragg doesn’t seem to be entirely writing off the idea either.

Once again, One Nation is out in front, leaving the Liberals in particular in its dust. The Coalition was gazumped on tobacco excise policy. Now the Liberals are having to argue why the Hanson prescription for helping people with their cost of living is flawed.

Under the Hanson proposal, renters and those with mortgages could choose to receive a quarter of their future superannuation contributions in their take-home pay for up to three years.

Employers would continue to pay the full current contribution, which is 12 per cent of wages.

“If you take the boost, one quarter of this contribution will be paid directly to you by your super fund,” Hanson said in a statement. This money would receive the same concessional tax treatment as if it had stayed in the fund. “For most Australians, that means it will be taxed at 15 per cent rather than their higher personal income tax rate.”

Hanson says a full-time worker on $90,500 would receive about $2300 a year after tax ($44 a week).

Pauline Hanson’s proposed change to super access

The policy would not apply to investment properties. Nor would it apply to past super contributions.

At present there is some provision for access to superannuation in cases of “severe financial hardship” but it is very limited.

Predictably the industry doesn’t like the Hanson idea. The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia said, “This policy would push up inflation and make people poorer in retirement. It’s as simple as that.”

Hanson insists the measure would be neutral for inflation, although the party has not produced any modelling. One Nation’s treasury spokesman, Barnaby Joyce, argues only some people would opt to take out money, and the effect on inflation would be “undetectable”.

Politically, Kos Samaras, from the Redbridge Group, doesn’t believe the policy will be a winner, saying it’s “ill thought-out”.

He says the voters to whom it is pitched are more likely to have parents on the pension. They would view their super “as the only thing they’ve got that would have them living a different life to their parents”.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers described the policy as “a recipe to make Australian workers tens of thousands of dollars worse off in retirement”.

Opposition leader Angus Taylor said the policy left many unanswered questions, declaring “what we see with these policy announcements constantly is no detail, and the detail really matters”.

The Liberals themselves have unanswered questions when it comes to superannuation. They’ve previously proposed allowing first home buyers to dip into their super to help with a housing deposit but are not saying whether they’ll persist with that proposal.

Bragg told News24 the opposition presently has under review “the intersection of the retirement and housing policies”.

As to Hanson’s policy: “Look, anything that’s going to help Australians with their cost of living right now is going to be worth looking at,” he said. “But I make the point that it doesn’t address the long-term structural challenge here, which is that we see a doubling of retired renters over the next couple of decades. That’s a trend we want to kill because we want people to be in their own house when they are retired.”

Economist Richard Holden, from UNSW, says the One Nation policy is hard to assess without concrete details and a costing from the Parliamentary Budget Office. He said a thought bubble was better than having no thoughts but that did not add up to a proper policy.

Independent economist Chris Richardson tweeted that about two-thirds of Australians would be eligible for the Hanson policy.

“If everyone took that money, that’d be an extra $26 billion a year available to be spent. Much of that money would be spent on housing – as One Nation notes. But Australia doesn’t have a lack of money chasing our housing. What we have is a lack of housing.”

Chaney is open-minded, saying the One Nation idea deserves “further consideration”.

She references work by independent think tank the Grattan Institute.

In 2024 Grattan Institute’s Brendan Coates, told the Australian Financial Review Super and Wealth Summit: “There is now a really strong case for allowing early access – ideally, not just for housing, but to allow people some choice”.

“The best model is to basically allow people to cash out anything above about 8 to 9 per cent of wages each year at tax time, and have those withdrawals be added to their taxable income and taxed as wages.”

Coates maintained people were being forced to put away more money than they needed. “That’s the conclusion of Grattan’s work – retirees typically have a higher standard of living in retirement than they have working – and that remains true regardless of whether you’re looking at full-time workers, part-time workers, those that take career breaks.”

Coates is now in treasury. He was recruited to help beef up the department’s advice on housing.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra. Republished from The Conversation.

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