Here's an interesting figure: Australia's household debt (mortgages, credit cards, loans etc) is $3400 billion. Australia's total superannuation assets are valued at $4400 billion.

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Having a lot more assets than debt is a fairly secure place to be. Normally, fiscal conservatives would urge us to maintain that healthy balance sheet. But No, superannuation was set up by the Keating Labor government, so it must be a Bad Thing. Yet, arguably it is the best thing any Australian government has ever done.

If it had not been set up, that $4500 billion would have been squandered mostly on imported junk that would have ended up in landfill.

Instead, it will give millions of Australians a decent, secure retirement and relieve taxpayers of what would have been a massive government pension liability with an ageing population and a shrinking work-age population to support them.

That is worth noting as One Nation attempts to undermine the scheme with a simplistic appeal that people should be able to have "their" money now.

Last week, Treasurer Jim Chalmers released modelling that showed that the government's pension liability will come down over the next 40 years as nine million Australians hit the pension age, but only half will draw any government pension compared to two-thirds of people of pensionable age now.

We should be safeguarding and nurturing the superannuation scheme not chipping away at it with endless ideologically driven, harebrained, open-slather schemes to allow people early access to funds in their accounts.

Schemes to give people money from super to buy a home only increase demand and drive up housing prices. Other schemes for early access are often abused, such as paying for cosmetic dentistry.

Research by the Institute International Economic Policy shows that when the Morrison government allowed people access to up to $20,000 of their superannuation to ease the burdens of COVID-19, Australians, especially low-wealth Australians with low super balances, jumped at it.

They withdrew the maximum allowed and went out and spent it on consumables, including gambling. They withdrew $38 billion. Typically, withdrawers took out half their balance, leaving them $120,000 worse off at retirement. At the time, Treasury severely underestimated the reckless imprudence of low-wealth Australians.

Sadly, Australians are chronically incapable of resisting the........

© Canberra Times