Superannuation

 The government has made some modest changes to Superannuation.

Before we look at them let us go back in history. Keating wanted all workers to have superruantion not just public servants or white collar employees in the private sector.

He wanted only benefits taxed as income. Kelty went to Hawke and said no. Blue collar employees were entitled to get all their super tax free and then go on the pension.

Hence we got the tax on all three stages at 15% plus all the complexity that went with that.

Each time we have had changes all we have gotten is more not less complexity because no government wants to only tax benefits more so because Costello absurdly got rid of taxing benefits.

All the government has done is to give us more complexity to stop wealthy people to indulge in estate planning courtesy of the taxpayer.

It is clearly better than nothing and superannuation should only be about retirement incomes but in terms of reforming superannuation it is way down the list.