Misha Schubert

Yesterday’s revised estimate of this year’s skyrocketing bill for the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort (CSLR) confirms the scheme is now being flooded by a surge in unpaid compensation orders from a string of recent financial advice and managed investment scheme failures.

The updated estimate for this year has risen from $137.5 million to $198.1 million, driven largely by continuing fallout from Dixon Advisory and the first tranche of claims linked to the Shield and First Guardian collapses. The scale of the new forecast once again highlights the utmost urgency for the Government to legislate its interlocking consumer safety reforms to stop devastating losses like these in the first place.

“A tsunami of unpaid compensation orders is now flooding the scheme,” said Super Members Council CEO Misha Schubert. “This highlights the absolute urgency of the need for stronger laws to protect consumers from these types of devastating harms in the first place, and an equally urgent need to enable super funds to deliver more safe, trusted financial advice to their own members.”

There is an urgent need to push forward with long promised Delivering Better Financial Outcomes (DBFO) reforms to expand access to affordable financial advice. Each day of delay is a day that leaves Australians exposed to safety risks, with the affordable advice gap making consumers more vulnerable to lead generation and high‑pressure sales to switch into riskier schemes.

“Prevention is always better than clean-up. Nothing short of large-scale consumer safety reforms that comprehensively lift the bar on consumer safety will stop continuous flooding of the scheme.”

Bold reform is crucial to protect millions of Australian consumers from catastrophic harms like these – and to ensure the survival of a true ‘last resort’ compensation scheme for those who will continue to need it in future.

The Council has consistently supported the principle of a compensation scheme for victims of financial misconduct while pushing hard for those responsible for misconduct to pay those costs, instead of the bill being sent to millions of low-paid Australians.

Large-scale failures such as Shield and First Guardian are already generating vast compensation costs far beyond what was originally anticipated when the scheme was established. If safe, highly regulated parts of the system foot the bill for unrelated misconduct elsewhere, it can only further incentivise misconduct.

The compensation system is now under severe strain, with major financial collapses exposing structural weaknesses in how losses are attributed and funded. Many of the recent unpaid compensation orders for losses involved victims investing via SMSFs and super platforms.

The Council is calling on the Government to urgently:

• Scrap the proposed levy waterfall model in its CSLR consultation paper, which risks embedding cost‑shifting rather than fixing the underlying problems.
• Instead align the scheme’s funding levies more closely with the sources of consumer harm, in a model that ensures that higher-risk sectors from which misconduct has arisen bear the costs.
• Rule out an expansion of CSLR levies to safe, well-regulated APRA‑regulated super funds whose members already fund their own operational risk reserves.
• Include Managed Investment Schemes (MIS) in the scheme’s funding base.
• Adopt clear, consistent treatment of SMSFs, including:
  • excluding SMSFs from both the levy and compensation scheme, or
  • if included, requiring mandatory and universal participation in funding (no opt‑in or opt‑out)
• Limit CSLR compensation to actual losses only, removing payments for hypothetical or “but‑for” investment returns.

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Misha Schubert

Australia’s frontline carers are being made poorer in retirement because they miss out on super when caring intensively for loved ones, often for years, a new report from the Super Members Council shows.

The report, Unfinished business: Fixing gaps in the Super Guarantee, finds more than one million Australians still miss out on super simply because of who they are or the work they do.

This includes part-time workers under the age of 18 and domestic workers employed in private homes (cleaners, nannies and housekeepers) who work less than 30 hours a week, and Australians who step out of paid work to care for loved ones. Women are disproportionately harmed by these exclusions.

“Australia’s super system is meant to be universal, but today more than a million Australians are still missing out on the same guarantee as 17 million of their fellow Australians – simply because of their age, the work they do or who they are. That’s just not fair,” says the Council’s CEO Misha Schubert.

Currently, Australians who step out of the paid workforce to deliver constant intensive care to a loved one – care that would otherwise cost taxpayers vastly more to deliver with Government services – are being made poorer in retirement due to the loss of super they would otherwise earn. More than 70% are women.

Paying the 12% Super Guarantee on the Carer Payment would deliver an average $3,072 a year in super to 334,000 unpaid carers in the years they are delivering vital caregiving.

For a typical 45-year-old carer, this could boost their super by $45,000 more by retirement – due to compound returns – and mean less pressure on the Age Pension for taxpayers.

The highly means-tested Carer Payment is a modest payment that partially replaces someone’s income when they step away from paid work for at least six months to care constantly for a person with disability or medical condition, or a frail elderly person with intense care needs.

Like paid parental leave prior to 2025, this payment does not yet include super.

Women are three times more likely to have to take on informal caregiving demands than men. More than one-in seven women face primary caregiving demands between the ages 45 and 65, reducing their earnings by up to $40,000 a year.

The Council urges all policymakers to commit to paying super on the Carer Payment, arguing it is a practical and fair step forward to recognise the economic value of unpaid care.

While carers deliver essential support that would otherwise fall to the health and aged care systems, they are not treated the same as other forms of essential work when it comes to super.

The report also highlights gaps for gig economy workers, warning many Australians in app-based and contractor roles continue to miss out on super because they fall outside traditional employment definitions.

Creating a pathway for super in gig work would mean around 184,000 gig workers would receive an average of $2,220 a year in super — supporting a typical young gig worker to retire with around $38,000 more in super.

The Council continues to push hard to end the unfair super exclusion of part-time under-18 workers – an issue it has campaigned on heavily over the past year – and for domestic workers doing less than 30 hours a week for one employer in private homes as cleaners, housekeepers and nannies.

The denial of super for under-18s if they work less than 30 hours a week for their employer costs 515,000 teen workers nationally $405 million this financial year.

The research also shows around 37,000 domestic workers missed out on super in 2026‑27, and the overwhelming majority – 86 % – of these low-paid workers are women.

On average, each of these workers misses out on almost $4,000 a year in super, amounting to nearly $150 million nationwide, with women missing out on about $126 million in a single year.

Universal super coverage for all workers is critical to ensure a fair and effective retirement system, particularly for workers who are already at higher risk of being left behind — including young people, women, and those in insecure or part-time work.

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Misha Schubert

New Super Members Council analysis of recently released Australian Tax Office tax data shows Australians’ super balances are growing, which means more money in retirement income for millions of everyday Aussies.

But it also reveals the gender super gap is no longer closing among Australians on the runway to retirement in their early 60s, prompting renewed calls for urgent action.

In 2023/24, the super balances of millions of everyday Australians grew by 5.5% overall.

Despite super being a key driver of growing prosperity that is transforming retirement for millions of everyday Aussies, more needs to be done to fix the gender super gap.

While the gender super gap continues to narrow for younger working women, for Australians aged 60-64, concerningly the gender super gap now stands at 26% – compared to 20.5% in 2016-17.

Median super balances for Australians in this pre-retirement age bracket grew 7.4% for men, to about $236,000, and 7.0% for women, to about $175,000.

Women’s median balances still sit below men’s in every state. The gap is narrowest in the ACT (94%) and widest in WA (69%). Nationally, women’s median super balances are 20% lower than men’s (see table).

And while women make extra personal contributions at a higher rate than men (11.6% compared to 10.0%) and at a slightly higher average amount ($28,900 against $28,100) they still retire with 26% less in super.

“Super balances are growing, which is great news for millions of Australians’ retirement incomes — but women are still retiring tens of thousands of dollars behind men, and that gap must be fixed,” says Super Members Council CEO Misha Schubert.

The Council commends the Government on a series of major reforms in recent years to start to close the gender super gap such as payday super laws due to start on 1 July, paying super on paid parental leave, and lifting the Low-Income Super Tax Offset (LISTO). All three reforms will make a big difference for women.

But despite this progress, men’s super will continue to outpace women’s without further steps to tackle the gender super gap including by scrapping an outdated exclusion of part-time under 18 workers from being guaranteed super – an exclusion that particularly hurts young women.

That outdated law is recreating the gender super gap all over again for the next generation of young Australian women – our daughters and grand-daughters – from the very start of their working lives.

For older women, a recent Council report finds many common later-in-life events such as separation, unpaid caregiving for older relatives, and family violence are significantly more likely to force women into early retirement or part-time work. Those life events dramatically erode women’s ability to save for retirement – and can result in women having up to $95,000 less in super by the time they retire.

The Council has consistently called for further reforms to narrow the gender gap, including:

• Close gendered loopholes in super coverage by paying super for all workers including nannies, housekeepers and carers, and for all workers aged under 18.
• Remove barriers to women’s workforce participation by boosting access to childcare and aged care and strengthen workplace flexibility.
• Enabling fairer splitting of super in divorce settlements whether or not they are handled in a court.
• Boost Commonwealth Rent Assistance to give immediate help, and invest in new social housing over the medium-term, to protect vulnerable older women who are renting or at risk of homelessness.

Australians’ super balances are expected to grow further in coming years thanks to the Super Guarantee rate reaching 12% last year.

The 0.5 percentage point increase last year alone could see a typical 30-year-old retire with $22,000 more in super. Taken together with the full increase from 9% to 12% over the past decade, it could add up to $132,000 in extra superannuation savings by retirement for your average working Australian.

“Crucial recent reforms like payday super laws, paying super on paid parental leave, and boosting support for low‑income working people have made big strides forward for women — but this data confirms that we need to fix the remaining gaps in super coverage so no woman is left behind,” Ms Schubert said.

 ———

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Misha Schubert

The Super Members Council says the Government should not hand the bill for the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort to millions of low-paid Australians, warning it would be a dangerous departure from both the scheme’s original risk-based design controls and its purpose as a genuine last resort.

“This should be a fair, sustainable compensation scheme of genuine last resort that doesn’t double-tax hardworking Australians in safe, well-regulated parts of the super system — not one that socialises the cost of financial misconduct to the nation’s lowest-wage earners instead of holding the people responsible to account,” says the Council’s CEO Misha Schubert.

In a submission on Treasury’s proposed reforms, the Council highlights that the scheme was originally intended to compensate victims of financial misconduct only as a very last resort after all other options to recover money had been exhausted.

But it has rapidly become overwhelmed in its first few years by the scale of collapses and misconduct in higher-risk pockets of financial services.

The collapse of one financial advice firm alone eclipsed several years’ worth of the original actuarial predictions for the scheme’s total costs – and a string of others has since followed. Soon thousands more claims from the Shield and First Guardian collapses will start to make their way onto the scheme.

A key design principle for the scheme at the outset was that the part of the financial system from which the consumer harms and unpaid compensation orders had arisen should bear the costs of funding it.

It would be a clear breach of that principle to expand the levy onto unrelated sectors that have not caused the underlying misconduct, and to force millions of everyday Australians – including the nation’s lowest-paid workers in safe, highly regulated profit-to-member super funds – to pay it.

Spreading surging costs to unrelated sub‑sectors would further embed and escalate moral hazard. If safe, highly regulated parts of the system foot the bill for unrelated misconduct elsewhere, it can only further escalate risky behaviour, weaken accountability, and incentivise misconduct and poor practices.

SMC’s submission highlights the unfairness of what occurred last December – when the Government forced 12 million Australians in safe, well-run super funds to pay a one-off special levy to fund the skyrocketing 2025 compensation bill but Australians with SMSFs did not pay.

The current reform consultation now canvasses a new levy ‘waterfall’, in which a levy would cascade down levels in the financial system starting with sectors closest to the causes of harm – but then also permanently pull parts of the safe mainstream super system into the scheme’s third tier of funding.

It also proposes to require everyday Australians in mainstream super funds to permanently pay the levy yet puts forward  the idea of giving SMSFs an opt-in/opt-out choice on whether to pay the levy and be able to claim.

Consistent with the principle that Australians in APRA-regulated superannuation funds should not be part of the scheme, the Council’s view is that SMSFs should similarly be excluded — from both the levy and the ability to claim on the scheme. Both must be treated equally. SMSFs should not be afforded an opt-in/opt-out choice if 12.5 million Australians in mainstream super funds do not have that same choice.

“It would be deeply unjust for the Government to compulsorily force millions of the nations lowest-paid workers to pay a levy for this scheme they will never claim on but then give wealthier Australians with SMSFs a choice to opt in or opt out that no-on else gets,” Ms Schubert said.

The compensation system is now under severe strain, with major financial collapses exposing structural weaknesses in how losses are attributed and funded. In its first few years, the scheme has been flooded by a tsunami of unpaid compensation orders for losses caused by collapsed financial advice firms and managed investment schemes, with the victims often investing via SMSFs and super platforms.

To make the scheme more sustainable and restore it to its original purpose of truly being a mechanism of last resort, the Council is calling on the Government to:

• Scrap the proposed levy waterfall model in the consultation paper, which risks embedding cost‑shifting rather than fixing the underlying problems.
• Instead align the scheme’s funding levies more closely with the sources of consumer harm, in a model that ensures that higher-risk sectors from which misconduct has arisen bear the costs.
• Rule out an expansion of CSLR levies to safe, well-regulated APRA‑regulated super funds whose members already fund their own operational risk reserves.
• Include Managed Investment Schemes (MIS) in the funding base, to better align costs with where risks originate.
• Adopt clear, consistent treatment of SMSFs, including:excluding SMSFs from both the levy and compensation scheme, or
• if included, requiring mandatory and universal participation in funding (no opt‑in or opt‑out)
  Limit CSLR compensation to actual losses only, removing payments for hypothetical or “but‑for” investment returns.

“The scheme is now being flooded by a tsunami of compensation bills that should have been paid by the collapsed firms and schemes who lost Australians’ life savings and then left them in the lurch,” said Super Members Council CEO Misha Schubert.

“Prevention is always better than clean-up. Nothing short of large-scale consumer safety reforms that comprehensively lift the bar on consumer safety will stop continuous flooding of the scheme. Merely tinkering around the edges on safety will only lead to more Shield and First Guardian style collapses.”

——–

The opinions above are those of the author in their capacity as spokesperson for Super Members Council of Australia (SMC). SMC, the authors and all other persons involved in the preparation of this information are thereby not giving legal, financial or professional advice for individual persons or organisations.

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Misha Schubert

Yesterday marks one month until the start of payday super – a reform that has very strong backing from the Australian public, new research has found.

An Ideally survey of more than 1,000 Australians for the Super Members Council found near universal support for payday super, with only 2% of people opposed.

“Australians right across the country overwhelmingly back payday super, because they want more visibility and confidence that their super is being paid properly – on time, every time, in full,” says the Council’s CEO Misha Schubert.

The Australian Taxation Office has said it will adopt a graduated approach to enforcement as businesses transition to the new system in the first 12 months, focusing its resources on areas of highest risk.

From July 1, 2026, payday super laws will require all employers to pay super at the same time as wages – instead of once every three months. Contributions need to reach the employee’s super fund within 7 business days of payday

The reform will be a gamechanger to tackle unpaid super, and 62% of survey respondents say payday super must start on July 1 as planned.

Recent analysis by the Council revealed the scale of the scourge of unpaid super, finding Aussie workers were underpaid a shocking total of $24.4 billion over the five years to 2023.

More than 70% of people surveyed agreed it will help them keep track of whether their employers are paying their super correctly, and more than half said they will now check their super more regularly.

The Council has long championed payday super laws as a key reform to help stamp out unpaid super, coupled with more proactive recovery of unpaid super by the ATO.

The Council’s modelling shows a worker being underpaid $1,730 in super in 2022-23, and a typical affected worker could be more than $30,000 worse off at retirement due to the loss of compounding investment returns.

Unpaid super disproportionately hurts vulnerable groups. Among the hardest hit workers from unpaid super are women, who already retire with a quarter less super than men.

Younger workers, and low-income earners are also at risk: one in two workers who earn less than $25,000 a year have unpaid super entitlements.

The new laws will also make it much easier for employers to stay on top of their cashflow and worker entitlements, and level the playing field for all the businesses already doing the right thing by their staff.

With digital payroll and single touch payroll reporting systems now available to all employers, around 40% of businesses already pay super more frequently than quarterly.

ATO data shows that since payday super was announced, around 19,000 more employers are paying super more frequently than quarterly – a 2.4 percentage point increase in the share of employers doing so.

Ahead of July 1, the Council is urging employers to take immediate, practical steps to get their systems ready.

“Payday super will be a big change for some employers that will make a very big difference for the workers they employ,” Ms Schubert said.

“For employers making this transition, we appreciate the scale of the task and that’s why we support the ATO’s graduated approach on enforcement in the first 12 months.”

“Unpaid super is a silent pay cut that costs Australian workers nearly $6 billion each year. This is money Australians have earned but never been paid – and it’s leaving millions much poorer at retirement.”

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Misha Schubert

The Super Members Council has called for a comprehensive set of consumer safety reforms to create a level playing field of universally high standards of governance, accountability and oversight across Australia’s super system to prevent further Shield and First Guardian style collapses.

In its submission to Treasury’s proposed reforms to strengthen consumer safety, the Council urges the Government to act decisively to lift governance and accountability obligations for both platforms and SMSFs to match the high standards that apply for mainstream APRA-regulated super funds.

“Right now, safety gaps in some parts of the super system are being exploited, putting Australians at serious risk of losing the money they’ve worked hard their whole lives to save for retirement,” said Super Members Council CEO Misha Schubert.

“We urgently need to level the playing field and lift protections and accountability in the parts of the system where they are weakest, bringing them up to the same high level as the strong safeguards that apply in mainstream super funds – so that every Australian can have confidence their super is safe, protected and working hard in their best interests.”

Almost 12,000 Australians lost more than $1 billion of their life savings in the Shield and First Guardian collapses, and comprehensive safety reforms are urgently needed to avoid future consumer disasters.

Those cases show how aggressive lead generation practices, high‑pressure sales tactics, conflicted pay incentives and poor oversight can funnel Australians out of safe, high-performing, low-cost, tightly‑regulated super funds and into high-risk, unsafe or unsuitable products such as the collapsed schemes, losing people’s compulsory life savings and undermining trust in super safeguards.

Those failures were not isolated incidents, but an ominous warning sign about serious risks of consumer harm in any part of the super system where governance, accountability and regulatory oversights are weaker.

Access to safe, affordable, high-quality financial advice is also a crucial consumer protection, and a key defence against predatory practices. Each day of delay in the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes (DBFO) reforms is a day that leaves Australians exposed to safety risks, with the affordable advice gap making consumers more vulnerable to lead generation and high‑pressure sales.

This is particularly important when APRA data shows advice fee deductions from super have doubled over the past five years — growing from $1.464 billion in 2020 to $2.975 billion in 2025, with a sharp $1.1 billion increase in just the past two years, largely concentrated in platform channels.

ASIC’s Report 781 on advice fee charging raised concerns about “inappropriate balance erosion” of members’ retirement savings and pointed to “weaknesses in trustees’ assurance processes” as a key risk factor driving harm.

To protect Australians from more Shield and First Guardian style collapses, the Council is calling for:

• A major uplift in consumer safety protections across the rest of the super system architecture to match the highest APRA‑regulated standards that apply in master trust super funds.
• Urgent legislation to pass the DBFO reforms.
• A ban on conflicted payments and incentives that distort investment decisions and drive harmful switching behaviour. Restrictions should cover any fee, rebate, marketing/support payment, “shelf-space” payment, data/access fee, or other benefit provided directly or indirectly in exchange for platform access.
• Ending “trustee-for-hire” models.
• Stronger governance of platforms, including, mandatory due diligence standards, risk-based holding limits for higher-risk investments and active trustee gatekeeping of products
• Targeted protections at the point of SMSF establishment and switching, including mandatory, standardised warnings when moving to higher-risk settings, instead of proposed cooling off periods.
• Closing the SMSF protection gap, including clear warnings about the loss of consumer protections when leaving APRA-regulated super, mandatory education and knowledge checks for SMSF trustees, equivalent safeguards on advice fee deductions, and minimum balance recommendations.
• Stronger oversight of advice fee deductions, including a requirement for trustee-set fee caps, protections against balance erosion for low balances, and stronger transparency and reporting.
• Better regulator visibility of switching and fund flows, enabling earlier intervention to stop harm.

A recent survey of more than 1,000 Australians found strong public support for the Government to be bold in strengthening consumer protections.

“Millions of low- and middle-income Australians also urgently need the promised DBFO reforms to become law to unlock access to safe, affordable guidance and advice from their own trusted super funds,” Ms Schubert said.

“They are a key consumer protection measure in their own right that will help protect Australians from predatory social media ads and high-pressure sales.”

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Misha Schubert

The Super Members Council is calling for an outright ban on lead generation targeting Australians’ superannuation, warning these predatory sales tactics are putting retirement savings at serious risk.

The urgent call comes in the wake of disastrous collapses such as Shield and First Guardian, where high-pressure sales funnels that started with social media ads and clickbait opened the door to thousands of Australians losing more than $1 billion of their hard-earned retirement savings.

Lead generation models are designed to look like helpful “super health checks” or consumer comparisons but are in reality industrial-scale sales funnels that harvest personal data, pressure consumers, and steer them towards costly or risky financial products.

In a submission to Treasury, the Council warns that simply licencing lead generation is not a solution, as consumer harm does not hinge on whether an operator is licenced or not — it stems from the structure of the lead generation funnel itself. Two lead generators in the Shield and First Guardian cases were licenced.

That’s why banning lead generation is the single most effective way to stop devastating harm to Australians before it happens — by shutting down the high-pressure sales pipeline that pushes them into moving their super into high‑risk products like the collapsed Shield and First Guardian schemes.

The current regulatory framework is being gamed, with lead generation models breaking the sales process into multiple steps that can individually appear legally compliant but collectively lead to devastating consumer harm.

A network of operators runs ads, harvests data, qualifies the sales lead, makes the cold call, books the meeting, and then hands the consumer to an adviser who pays the lead generator a cut of the fees the consumer will end up paying out of their own super.

Lead generation is very different from safe and legitimate activity by trusted institutions engaging their own members – such as super funds communicating with and educating their members, including general advice provided under strict legal safeguards, or an employer or union giving staff access to information about their workplace super fund – all of which helps Australians make informed decisions.

Recent consumer research by Ideally for the Super Members Council shows overwhelming public support for ending lead generation: four in five Australians on social media support an outright ban.

The research underscores the serious risks of predatory clickbait, with more than 70% of people saying they found it difficult to tell the difference between a scam and an ad from a reputable source.

To shut the door on harmful lead generation, while protecting legitimate member communications, the Council is calling for:

• A total ban on lead generation in financial services for both licenced and unlicenced operators.
• Targeted carve‑outs for safe, legitimate education and communication activities.
• Alignment with Delivering Better Financial Outcomes (DBFO) reforms, to expand access to safe.

“These sorts of clickbait ads and high‑pressure sales funnels are putting Australians’ life savings at risk, misleading them into switching into high‑risk products like the collapsed Shield and First Guardian schemes,” says the Council’s CEO Misha Schubert.

“Incremental changes — such as adding a bit more disclosure or tighter licencing rules — simply will not be enough to stop this terrible harm – and would risk just shifting dangerous pressure sales into new forms.”

“The most effective fix is to ban this conduct outright — to stop the harm before it can happen.”

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Misha Schubert

The Super Members Council welcomes a $17.8 million Budget boost tonight to strengthen consumer safety in super following the devastating collapses of the Shield and First Guardian schemes – and urges the Government to move swiftly next to guarantee super for all young workers.

Tonight’s tax-reform framed Budget also reveals that the Australian Taxation Office has not yet set itself any performance targets for unpaid super recovery when game-changing payday super laws start on July 1.

Unpaid super currently costs 3.3 million working Aussies a shocking $5.7 billion a year – this is money they have earned and are legally owed by their employers. Yet the ATO has signalled it will only set a new performance target for unpaid super recovery when it has “sufficient data on which to determine a performance benchmark”.

“Overall, this is a steady as she goes budget for super, with a handful of modest but important new investments to boost oversight of investment schemes like those in the Shield and First Guardian collapses,” said Super Members Council CEO Misha Schubert.

“Further urgent reforms are needed to make super safer by strengthening consumer protections and transparency, including applying the super performance test on super platform products where millions of consumers are still flying blind on whether their super is performing for them or not.”

“It’s also crucial that the Government fast-track long-promised reforms to help Australians to get more safe guidance and advice from their own super fund – those tools are crucial to keep consumers safe from predatory social media clickbait ads like those that targeted the Shield and First Guardian victims.”

“The new payday super laws from 1 July will mean that for the first time, the ATO will soon have real-time visibility on which workers have been unpaid or underpaid super every single pay cycle. The Government must set the ATO bold targets to swiftly recover that money owed to everyday working Australians.”

“It is also long past time to end an unfair, outdated and discriminatory exclusion of under-18 workers from being guaranteed super if they work less than 30 hours a week for the one employer. This will be a watershed moment for intergenerational equity.”

Ending the denial of guaranteed super for young workers and domestic workers such as cleaners and nannies who work in people’s homes would powerfully build on the Government’s reforms in recent budgets. Those earlier reforms include payday super laws, adding super to Commonwealth Paid Parental Leave, and boosting the Low-Income Super Tax Offset for 1.3 million low-paid workers from 1 July 2027.

In tonight’s Budget, the $17.8 million in new consumer safety funding will resource ASIC to strengthen governance requirements for managed investment schemes and use data to more closely supervise these schemes – and will be partially offset by cost recovery.

The Budget has also confirmed a shift to a “tell us once” approach to data reporting and affirmed further red tape busting reforms to streamline current duplication that costs consumers in super.

The centrepieces of the Budget included a new Working Australians Tax Offset for 13 million Australian wage earners, and sweeping reforms to negative gearing and capital gains taxes.

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Nineteen super funds say they are finding getting ready for the RIC challenging.

The Super Members Council welcomes the Senate Economics Legislation Committee’s payday super regulations inquiry final report^[1], which strongly backs the start of payday super from 1 July and declares in-principle, cross-party support to close an unfair loophole denying most under 18 workers from being guaranteed super.

The denial of super for under-18s if they work less than 30 hours a week for their employer cost 515,000 teen workers nationally $405 million this financial year, the Council’s analysis shows.

Under current rules, many younger workers and some domestic workers can still miss out on super contributions, despite doing the same work as 17 million other Australians who are fully covered.

The Council has pushed to end the unfair super exclusion of under-18s and domestic workers doing less than 30 hours a week for one employer in private homes as cleaners, housekeepers and nannies.

Its analysis shows around 37,000 domestic workers missed out on super in 2026‑27, and the overwhelming majority – 86 per cent – of these low-paid workers are women.

On average, each of these workers misses out on almost $4,000 a year in super contributions, amounting to nearly $150 million nationwide, with women missing out on about $126 million in a single year alone.

A recent report by the Council^[2] found axing the 30-hour threshold would help close the gender super gap.

The current age-based minimum-hours rule means most teenage workers, especially young women who are more likely to work part-time, are not yet paid super on their wages. Women currently retire with 25 per cent less super than men, and the gap can start from their very first day at work.

The report found that if all under-18s were guaranteed super, a typical teenage girl could have nearly $2,500 more in her super by age 18, which could grow into $11,000 more by retirement with investment returns.

Universal coverage of super is critical to building a fair and effective retirement system, particularly for workers who are already at higher risk of being left behind — including young people, women, and those in insecure or part-time work.

“When something is outdated, you fix it. Fixing these outdated laws would help close the gender super gap and boost the retirement savings of thousands of hardworking Australians

“It doesn’t pass the pub test that some workers can still miss out on super because of their age or the type of work they do — that’s a gap that should be closed.”

“The Government must get on with fixing this gap as soon as possible after payday super laws are implemented.”

———

Notes:
[1] Payday super regulations inquiry final report
[2] https://smcaustralia.com/reports/closing-the-gender-super-gap-under-18s/

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Misha Schubert

The Super Members Council has strongly welcomed the Australian Government’s plan to introduce mandatory service standards for superannuation funds.

Member service is at the heart of what superannuation funds do. This is a clear way to ensure millions of Australians get the service they rightly deserve by setting minimum service standards that uplift customer service across the industry.

The new standards will focus on the key service areas of processing death benefits, insurance claims, and communications with members.

Super Members Council CEO Misha Schubert said super fund members rightly expect the highest standards of service, communication, and care.

“Super funds have tens of millions of interactions with their members every year, and members expect those interactions to be timely, responsive and clear.”

“We look forward to working with the Government to ensure the new mandatory standards improve the experience when members are dealing with their fund – often on complex and challenging issues.”

Developing the new standards through industry consultation will ensure the Government can draw on the significant work that has already been undertaken by industry to lift standards.

SMC held a roundtable in February 2024 with Government and industry to identify initiatives to streamline and strengthen customer service, including:

• Creating a simple and digital binding death nomination form – which would eliminate the need for submitting hardcopy forms with dual signatures from two witnesses. Claims with binding nominations are generally able to be processed more efficiently
• Ensuring all ID documents issued by States and Territories are included in the Government’s digital verification service and that the detail on death certificates is enough to process claims
• Legally recognising Indigenous kinship arrangements and culturally adopted children as death benefit beneficiaries.

A new service standard on death benefit payments was launched in September 2024.

That process was convened by ASFA and involved funds, consumer groups, SMC, CALI, and the regulators, and was led by expert and former Chair of the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal, Jocelyn Furlan.

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