Brendan Coates, Grattan Institute Want more to retire on?In its long-awaited final report on the efficiency and competitiveness of Australia’s leaky superannuation system, Australia’s Productivity Commission
BRENDAN COATES, GRATTAN INSTITUTEIt’s conventional wisdom that Australians don’t save enough for retirement.
Some odd promotions, if you ask me:
At last, an end to the Reserve Bank’s two-year freeze on interest rates is in sight. But not this year, and not because of particularly high wage growth.
The third and final stage of the government's proposed income tax cuts would overwhelmingly benefit men, late evidence presented to the Senate inquiry shows.
The inquiry will report on Monday that calculations prepared by the Parliamentary Budget Office show 1.894 million men would benefit from the final flattening of the tax scales and only 767,000 women.
If women were to be taxed differently to men, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Treasurer Scott Morrison says the idea is absurd.
“You don’t fill out pink forms and blue forms on your tax return. It doesn’t look at what your gender is any more than it looks at whether you are left-handed or right-handed,” he said last week.
He even said, wrongly, that Labor has been suggesting it.
But such a move has happened before.
So toxic has much of Australia’s superannuation industry become that some at the very top of the government think the Productivity Commission hasn’t gone far enough.
We’re apathetic about super, until we’re not.
On Tuesday phone lines to Australia’s biggest bank-run super funds buckled under a deluge of calls from customers wanting to close multiple accounts. Traffic to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s website for consolidating your super jumped 500 per cent.
